Fairy tales (1)/The Fairy Song

a

SONG

sung by the

QUEEN of the FAIRIES.

COME, follow, follow me,
⁠Ye fairy elves that be,
⁠Like tripping oe’r the green,
⁠Come follow all your Queen!
Hand in hand we'll dance around,
For this place is fairy ground.

⁠When mortals are at rest,
⁠And snoring in their nest,
⁠Unheard and unespied
⁠Thro’ key holes we do glide;
Over tables, stools, and shelves,
We trip it with our fairy elves.

⁠And if the house be foul,
⁠With platter, dish or bowl,
⁠Up stairs we nimbly creep,
⁠And find the sluts asleep;
Then we pinch their arms and thighs.
None us hears and none us spies.

⁠But if the house be swept,
⁠And from uncleanness kept,
⁠We praise the houshold maid,
⁠And surely she is paid;
Every night before we go,
We drop a tester in her shoe.

⁠Then over a mushroom’s head
⁠Our table cloth we spread;
⁠A grain of rye or wheat,
⁠The diet that we eat;
Early drops of dew we drink
In corn cups fill’d to the brink.

⁠The brains of nightingales,
⁠With unctuous fat of snails,
⁠Between two cackels stew’d,
⁠Is meat that’s easily chew’d;
Brains of worms and marrow of mice,
Do make a feast that’s wond’rous nice.

⁠The grashopper, gnat, and fly,
⁠Serve for our minstrelsy;
⁠Grace said, we dance a while,
⁠And so the time beguile:
But if the moon doth hide her head,
The glow-worm lights us home to bed.

⁠O’er tops of dewy grass,
⁠So nimbly we do pass,
⁠The young and tender stalk
⁠Ne’er bends where we do walk;
Yet in the morning may be seen
Where we the night before have been.

 

FINIS.