Mercutio's Mab, though she were "no bigger than an agate-stone on the forefinger of an alderman," was of herself a pretty good kernel for the hazel-nut which served her for a coach. In short, Shakespeare's fairies were of Brobdignagian breed compared with Drayton's; how else should Bottom's untrained senses have seen and heard them? how else could proud Titania embrace an ass? I shall be told that fairies have the power of accommodating their stature to circumstances, and this I will admit. It is plain that the elves of the Midsummer Night's Dream could not have been very big when they crept into acorn-cups to hide themselves (singly or not, we do not know), and the division of time into "the third part of a minute" seems to be one that in the ordinary business of life would only commend itself to very tiny folk.[1] Drayton's Tita[2] was of a build more easily appreciable by the naked eye than were his Mab and her crew. The nymph was adorned for her bridal with due regard to what was supposed to be her majesty's taste. Fairy millinery is almost as mysterious in its terminology as Le Follet; but I gather that her coronet was of the little feathers that encircle a jay's eyes, that her buskins were of lady-cow's wings, and that the seams of her gown—I know not of what stuff it was—were stitched with fine spider's web. Her train was of the cast slough of a snake (Shakespeare's Titania's coverlet), out of all proportion to the other weeds, even more so than is the wont of trains. How the male fairies would catch their feet in it and swear! But enough of this.
And now the faithful Nyraphidia prepared her charms to baffle Puck:
"And first her fern-seed doth bestow,
The kernel of the mistletow,
And here and there as Puck should go,
With terror to affright him,
She nightshade straws to work him ill,
Therewith her vervain and her dill,
That hind'reth witches of their will,[3]
Of purpose to despight him.
- ↑ Act ii. sc. 1; act ii. sc. 2.
- ↑ Nymphal, viii. [iv. 1508. 1509].
- ↑ For testimony pro and con, see Henderson's Folk-Lore of the Northern Counties (F.L.S.), pp. 226, 227.
