The mysteries and secrets of magic / by C.J.S. Thompson.

  • Charles Thompson
Date:
1928
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: The mysteries and secrets of magic / by C.J.S. Thompson. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    the spirits of evil are mentioned as presiding over the country. “ Proserpine and all her fayrie.” Allusion is also made to “ Pluto, that is king of fayrie.” Oberon is first mentioned in a play written in 1594 entitled “ The Scottishe Story of James the Fourth slain at Flodden, intermixed with a pleasant Comedie pre¬ sented by Oberon, King of the Fairies.” According to Reginald Scot: “ Fairies do principally inhabit the mountains and caverns of the earth, whose nature is to make Strange apparitions on the earth, in meadows and in mountains, being like men and women, souldiers, kings and ladyes, children and horsemen, cloathed in green, to which purpose, they do in the night Steal hempen Stalks from the fields where they grow, to convert them into horses as the Story goes. “ Such jocund and facetious spirits are sayd to sport themselves in the night, by tumbling and fooling with servants and shepherds in country houses, pinching them black and blue and leaving bread, butter, and cheese sometimes with them, which if they refuse to eat, some mischief shall undoubtedly befall them by means of the fairies.” John Webster, another early writer, says : “ In a few ages paSt, when Popish ignorance did abound, there were in discourse nothing more common (which is yet continued among the common people) than of the apparition of certain creatures which they call fayries ; that were of little Stature and when seen would soon vanish and disappear.”
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