Elfin music: an anthology of English fairy poetry

...derived, as I have stated, through the fairy imaginings of the French metrical romancers. By these writers, the supreme monarch of Elfland—who, despite the supposed succession of Huon Huon of Bordeaux, a hero of French romance who succeeded Oberon as King of Fairyland and his own departure to Paradise, continued to spread his golden rule as widely as in the days before the Provençal influence—is represented as a child of four to five years old. He is described as possessing indescribable beauty, a siren-like voice and manner, and is clothed in a robe that sparkled with all kinds of precious stones, being carried through the air in a superb, swan-drawn chariot. His palace, with its golden roof and diamond spires, seems to have followed him in his travels; thus, the Land of Fairyland was essentially located wherever the Grand Master of the Elfin World happened to be staying.

Side by side with the fairies of poetry and chivalrous history, there persisted—in spite of the general spread of Christianity—the old spiritual traditions of the Gothic and Celtic nations. These concerned the Elves, Trolls, Brownies, malicious or benevolent dwarfs, gnomes, and generally small beings gifted with supernatural powers and an origin other than mortal. These two hierarchies of supernatural beings were confused in the popular imagination. The magical abilities that could only be painfully acquired by humans were identified with the magical prerogatives inherent in the natures of the Kelpie, Elf, and Ghoul. This mystical combination produced that new, glorious, and beautiful hierarchy of semi-spiritual beings who were governed by the elfin King Oberon.

The discrepancies in fairy traditions, as preserved in English poetry, may be partly accounted for by this confusion. We find the most eminent fairy authorities in distinct disagreement on several important points. Spenser, the poet of the elfin world par excellence above all others, in his account of the "Rolls of Elfin Emperors," traces all of Fairyland back to a man-monster created by Prometheus. Shakespeare, on the other hand, suggests they have an Indian origin. In accordance with this idea, dictionaries of Fairy Mythology fix Oberon's home in India, representing him crossing the intervening seas every night with inconceivable speed to dance in the western moonlight. The oriental origin of magic was generally recognized very early in European gramary magic or enchantment; the original fairies of romance received their wisdom from Persia and India. After the transformation of the elfin world through the blending of the several spiritual concepts already mentioned, it is easy to see how an eastern source was attributed to the later fairy lineage.