Elfin music: an anthology of English fairy poetry

Of limiters friars licensed to beg within certain limits and other holy friars,
Who search every land and every stream,
As thick as motes in a sunbeam,
Blessing halls, chambers, kitchens, and bowers,
Cities and boroughs, high castles, and towers,
Shops and barns, stables and dairies,
This is why there are no fairies:
For where an elf was accustomed to walk,
There walks now the limiter himself,
In the afternoons and in the mornings,
And says his matins and his holy things,
As he goes on his rounds.
Women may now go safely up and down,
In every bush, and under every tree;
There is no other incubus but he,
And he will not do them any dishonor.

But Bishop Corbet, writing in the days of the Restoration, testified that the fairies "were of the old religion" Catholicism, and that since the advent of Protestantism and the glories of the Elizabethan era, they had departed. Herrick, however, adopts a middle course.

Now, this the fairies would have known,
Theirs is a mixed religion:
And some have heard the elves call it
Part Pagan, part Papistical.

Intimately associated with the reigning Potentate of Fairyland, the monarch Oberon—and a person of, in some respects, even greater importance—was the moonlight queen of elves. She is more or less identified by Chaucer, Shakespeare, and the romance of Orfeo and Heurodis with the queen of the classical underworld, Proserpine; however, she is distinguished from that goddess by Drayton in his poetic romance Nymphidia. In actual fact, she is a combination of several mythological elements.

In the most ancient traditions, we have glimpses of a time when this fair and glorious lady alone occupied the fairy throne and, as in the case of Sir Thopas, was occasionally sought by human lovers. Shakespeare gives her the classical name of Titania, who is commonly identified with Mab, but their characters are sufficiently distinct. The latter, according to the folklorist Keightley, has completely dethroned Titania, a statement which is scarcely supported by the facts. Mab was a person of general celebrity long before the appearance of A Midsummer Night’s Dream, which contains the first mention of the rival sovereign Titania. The herald and messenger of the royal pair was the mischievous sprite indifferently known as Puck, Hobgoblin, and Robin Goodfellow. He must also perhaps be identified with "the illusory candle-holder," Jack o' Lantern, or Will o' the Wisp, whose fatal phosphorescent light is described in Paradise Lost as:

A wandering fire,
Composed of oily vapor, which the night
Condenses, and the cold surrounds,