And For Our Dear Lord...

All Hail!

The “elf-queen” and the “elf-king”, if we may call her match or make thus, are godheads in but the thinnest of hidlocks (=disguises), as will be seen from what followeth.

King James I in his Dæmonologie (1597):

PHILOMATHES. Now I pray you come on to that fourth kinde of spirites. 
EPI. That fourth kinde of spirites, which by the Gentiles was called Diana, and her wandring court, and amongst vs was called the Phairie (as I tould you) or our good neighboures, was one of the sortes of illusiones that was rifest in the time of Papistrie: for although it was holden odious to Prophesie by the deuill, yet whome these kinde of Spirites carryed awaie, and informed, they were thought to be sonsiest and of best life. To speake of the many vaine trattles founded vpon that illusion: How there was a King and Queene of Phairie, of such a iolly court & train as they had, how they had a teynd, & dutie, as it were, of all goods: how they naturallie rode and went, eate and drank, and did all other actiones like naturall men and women: I thinke it liker VIRGILS Campi Elysij, nor anie thing that ought to be beleeued by Christians,...

In the so-called “Flyting of Montgomerie & Polwart”:

THE SECUND INVECTIVE.
 
Into the hinderend of harvest, on ane alhallow evin,
quhen our goode nichtbouris ryddis, if I reid richt, 269
...
the king of pharie, with þe court of the elph quene,
with mony alrege incubus, ryddand that nicht. 275

MONTGOMERYES ANSWEIR TO POLUART.

In the hinder end of harvest, on ahallow even,
Quhen our good neighboures doth ryd, If I reid rycht, 275
...
The King of pharie, and his Court, with the elph queine, 280
With mony elrich Incubus, was rydand that nycht.

Elrich, or alrege, meaneth “otherworldly”.

Notwithstanding that the “elf-queen” was widely evened with the Romans' gyden Diana, Chaucer in the Merchant's Tale eveneth her with Proserpina and the “elf-king”with Proserpina's husband, Pluto:

Full often time he, Pluto, and his queen
Proserpina, and all their faerie,
Disported them and made melody
About that well, and danced, as men told.
....
Pluto, that is the king of Faerie,
And many a lady in his company
Following his wife, the queen Proserpina, --

And Thomas Campion (1567 – 1620) in his leeth (=poem) Harke, al you ladies that doth sleep ... hath “The fayry queen Proserpina”. In William Dunbar's The Goldyn Targe lines 125 to 126, the Roman god is almost lost sight of behind all the much more northerly tokening Dunbar is here borrowing:

“There was Pluto, the elrich incubus,
In cloke of grene...”.

It is worthwhile here to mark William Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream.  Truly indeed of Shakespeare it is written: “He was not of an age, but for all time!”  In this we meet the “fairy king” (so-called once in act 4 scene 1) and the “fairy queen” (so-called four times in act 2 scene 1, act 2 scene 2, act 3 scene 1, act 4 scene 1).  The king he further nameth Oberon and the queen Titania.  In calling the “elf-queen” Titania Shakespeare is hiding the name of Diana, as in Ovid's Metamorphoses book 3 line 173 Diana is so called.  Although in Romeo and Juliet, Act I, scene IV it would seem he calleth her “Mab”:

“O, then, I see Queen Mab hath been with you.
She is the fairies’ midwife, …”.

Michael Drayton (1563 – 1631), another Warwickshire man, in his Nymphidia, The Court of Fairy would also seem to be of this mind:

Hence Oberon him sport to make,
Their rest when weary mortals take, 50
And none but only fairies wake,
Descendeth for his pleasure ;
And Mab, his merry Queen, …

And:

If Oberon had chanced to hear 150
That Mab his Queen should have been there,
He would not have abode it.
...

“Mab” is not a word borrowed from Irish as some do say.  It is seemingly a shortening of the lady's name “Mabel”, yet here somewhat misbrooked (=misused) for a gyden or an elfen.  But as we have seen with the “Mag” of the magpie, such names often hide a much deeper and older meaning.  I think Thomas Keightley (The Fairy Mythology..., Deal II, (1833), lf. 135) is therefore right to make it stem from “dame Habonde” as she is called in the Roman de la Rose (see J. Grimm Teutonic Mythology, Deal I (1882), chap. 13, lvs. 286 to 288), and who we know from William of Auvergne's De Universo (written in the 1230s) still had a lingering worship in Frankland (=France) in his days.  “dame Habonde” being yet another name for the “elf-queen”.

  Sir Joseph Noel Paton FRSA, LL. D. (1821 – 1901) 

The Quarrel of Oberon and Titania (1849).  

Now in The National Gallery of Scotland.ᛋ

The name of Oberon is taken from the Boke of Duke Huon of Burdeux done into English by Sir John Bourchier, Lord Berners and first thrutched (=printed) about 1534.  Oberon or Auberon is meant to be a French awending of Alberich the king of the dwarves in Otnit (see J. Grimm Teut. Myth. Deal II (1883), chap 17, lvs. 452 to 453) although in Orendel inde Brîde we also find a helpful dwarf called Albân (“ein gidwerch dô zô zir quam,/ daz was giheizen Albân”) who is likely to be the same.  But be this as it may, the name Alberich is itself the same as our old man's name Ælfriċ (said “Alvrich”), and which meaneth no more than “elf-king”!  I believe however, that the German leeths (=poems) have formenged here dwarves and elves, and which to begin with were to be told asunder, although dwarves are indeed a kind of elf.  Thus among the Northerners Snorri Sturluson can, in his Edda, seemingly name dwarves as dark or swart elves (see Gylfaginning 17, 34 and Skáldskaparmál 46).  And maybe with us also, if we minn (=recall) here Iohn Walsh's “ther be. iii. kindes of Feries, white, greene, & black”. Likewise in England the short height of elves, which in Shakespeare's time had reached a laughworthy low stead (and maybe also the making of them dwell in the earth at times), is also from a formenging of elves with dwarves, but in the againward (=opposite) way to that of the Germans.  Also under the sway of those dull minds who held that a seldom seen thing, if it had any being at all, had to be small so as to blend into its background and be so often overlooked.

Now before we go any further it is well to know that under the heading of “elf-king” two seemingly unalike godheads are to be understood. The other (=second) must abide a later post, but the first is one and the same with the Northern god Freyur who, as a child was made the lord of “eluenlond” or Alfheimur as they call it, (see Grímnismál 5).  He is to be linked to the Romans' Pluto only in so much as Pluto was a god of earthly wealth: hence his name stemmeth from the Greek ὁ πλούτων meaning “the richman”.  Thus Snorri Sturlusson  in his Edda, Skáldskaparmál, chapitle (=chapter) 14 Freyskenningar nameth the Freyur  “fégjafi” “fee giver” “wealth giver”.  And in Gylfaginning 24 he writeth “Hann ræðr ok fésælu manna. ” “He wieldeth also the wealth-luck of men”.  I further mark here “skírum Frey” (see Grímnismál 43) “skír Freyur” “sheer Freyur”  “bright Freyur” which should be weighed with Gylfaginning 24 “Hann ræðr fyrir ... skini sólar...” “He wieldeth over ... the shinining of the sun...”.  Freyur's elves are therefore likely to be Snorri's light-elves ljósálfar of whom he doth write that they are “as fair as the seen sun” (“ljósálfar eru fegri en Sól sýnum” Gylfaginning 17).  They are also likely to be those elves who are sometimes found among the gods, and share in their woe or weal (see Völuspá 48, Þrymskviða 7, Lokasenna 30); and also those elves who are sprung from Álfur or Finn-Álfur and Svanhildur Gullfjöður “Gold-feather” the daughter of Dagur “Day” and Sól “Sun” (see Hversu Noregr byggðist in the Flateyjarbók).  And if the “elf-queen” is linked to the Romans' Diana, must not the  “elf-king” we are here writing about be evened with Diana's brother, Apollo?  Indeed I believe that the Romans' Apollo and Diana are the Northerners' Freyur and Freyja (see Hélène Adeline Guerber (1859–1929)  Myths of Northern Lands, American Book Co., New York, Cincinatti, Chicago, (1895), chap XXVIII, lf.284 who marketh the likeness of Apollo to Freyur).  Plutarch On Isis and Osiris (awending F. C. Babbitt):

“ … οὐχ ἑτέρους παρ᾽ ἑτέροις οὐδὲ βαρβάρους καὶ Ἕλληνας οὐδὲ νοτίους καὶ βορείους: ἀλλ᾽ ὥσπερ ἥλιος καὶ σελήνη καὶ οὐρανὸς καὶ γῆ καὶ θάλασσα κοινὰ πᾶσιν, ὀνομάζεται δ᾽ ἄλλως ὑπ᾽ ἄλλων, οὕτως ἑνὸς λόγου τοῦ ταῦτα κοσμοῦντος καὶ μιᾶς προνοίας ἐπιτροπευούσης καὶ δυνάμεων ὑπουργῶν ἐπὶ πάντα τεταγμένων, ἕτεραι παρ᾽ ἑτέροις κατὰ νόμους γεγόνασι τιμαὶ καὶ προσηγορίαι: ...”

“Nor do we think of the gods as different gods among different peoples, nor as barbarian gods and Greek gods, nor as southern and northern gods; but, just as the sun and the moon and the heavens and the earth and the sea are common to all, but are called by different names by different peoples, so for that one rationality which keeps all these things in order and the one Providence which watches over them and the ancillary powers that are set over all, there have arisen among different peoples, in accordance with their customs, different honours and appellations.”

With all this in mind then, what Oberon sayeth in A Midsummer Night's Dream Act III, scene ii is well worth marking:

PUCK.  My fairy lord, this must be done with haste,
For night's swift dragons cut the clouds full fast,
And yonder shines Aurora's harbinger;
At whose approach, ghosts, wandering here and there,
Troop home to churchyards: damned spirits all,
That in crossways and floods have burial,
Already to their wormy beds are gone;
For fear lest day should look their shames upon,
They willfully themselves exile from light
And must for aye consort with black-brow'd night.

OBERON.  But we are spirits of another sort:
I with the morning's love have oft made sport,
And, like a forester, the groves may tread,
Even till the eastern gate, all fiery-red,
Opening on Neptune with fair blessed beams,
Turns into yellow gold his salt green streams.
But, notwithstanding, haste; make no delay:
We may effect this business yet ere day.

Likewise, understanding Freyur as Adam of Bremen's “Fricco” from his Descriptio insularum aquilonis, his wardship there of weddings (see chapitle 27 “si nuptiae celebrandae sunt, Fricconi [lybatur]” “if a wedding is frellsed (=celebrated) they yeet (=pour) a drink-offering to Fricco”) maketh what Oberon sayeth in A Midsummer Night's Dream Act V, scene I most fyrwit:

OBERON Now, until the break of day,
Through this house each fairy stray.
To the best bride-bed will we,
Which by us shall blessed be;
And the issue there create
Ever shall be fortunate.
So shall all the couples three
Ever true in loving be;
And the blots of Nature's hand
Shall not in their issue stand;
Never mole, hare lip, nor scar,
Nor mark prodigious, such as are
Despised in nativity,
Shall upon their children be.
With this field-dew consecrate,
Every fairy take his gait;
And each several chamber bless,
Through this palace, with sweet peace;
And the owner of it blest
Ever shall in safety rest.
Trip away; make no stay;
Meet me all by break of day.

In the 1601 outlaying of Boke of Duke Huon of Burdeux, Chap. XXI Oberon is araught (=described) thus:

“Then they alighted vnder a great Oake, to the entent to search for some fruit to eate, they glad thereof let their horses goe to pasture. When they were thus alighted, the Dwarfe of the Fayry Kinge Oberon came ryding by, and had on a Gowne so rich, that it were maruaile to recount the riches and fashion thereof, & it was so garnished with precious stones, that the clearnesse of them shined like the Sonne.”
 

I also mark Gerames' words in the same work (chapitle XX) about Oberon:

“... he hath an Angell-like visage, so that there is no mortal man that séeth him, but that taketh great pleasure to behold his face, ”

And this bringeth us to Androw Man's “Devill”:

“ The said Androw confessis that Crystsunday cum to hym in liknes of ane fair angell, and clad in quhyt claythis, and said that he was ane angell, and that he suld put his trust in hym, and call hym his lord and kyng, and markit hym on the thrid fynger, quhilk mark he beris as yitt.”

“... that Crystsunday rydis all the tyme that he is in thair cumpanie...”.

“... the Devill, thy maister, quhom thow termes Christsonday, and supponis to be ane angell, and Goddis godsone, albeit he hes a thraw by God, and swyis to the Quene of Elphen, ...”

And some of what Marioun Grant had to say is worth etching (=adding) here:

“... the Devill thy maister, com to the, quhom thow calis Christsonday, in the scheap of a man, and baid the call him lord, and becom his servand, and thow suld nocht want, and callit the dame; and at that tyme, had carnall deall with the, and thow becom than his servand...” (lvs.170 to 171)

“Thow confessit that ance everie moneth sensyn, the Devill apperit to the, sumtyme in a hous, and sumtyme in the fieldis, in dyvers scheappis and liknes; sumtyme in the scheap of a beist, and sumtyme in the scheap of a man, and causit the kis him in dyvers pairtis, and worship him on thy kneis as thy lord.

... Thow confessit that the Devill thy maister, quhome thow termes Christsonday, causit the dans sindrie tymes with him and with Our Ladye, quha, as thow sayes, was a fine woman, clad in a quhyt walicot, and sindrie vtheris of Christsondayes servands with the, quhais names thow knawis not, ...”. (lf.171).

Farewell.