Keightley The Fairy Mythology

1. Auflage 2018
ISBN: 978-3-7481-4874-6
Verlag: BoD - Books on Demand
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: 6 - ePub Watermark

E-Book, Englisch, 753 Seiten

We find in most countries a popular belief in different classes of beings distinct from men, and from the higher orders of divinities. These beings are usually believed to inhabit, in the caverns of earth, or the depths of the waters, a region of their own. They generally excel mankind in power and in knowledge, and like them are subject to the inevitable laws of death, though after a more prolonged period of existence. How these classes were first called into existence it is not easy to say; but if, as some assert, all the ancient systems of heathen religion were devised by philosophers for the instruction of rude tribes by appeals to their senses, we might suppose that the minds which peopled the skies with their thousands and tens of thousands of divinities gave birth also to the inhabitants of the field and flood, and that the numerous tales of their exploits and adventures are the production of poetic fiction or rude invention. It may further be observed, that not unfrequently a change of religious faith has invested with dark and malignant attributes beings once the objects of love, confidence, and veneration. It is not our intention in the following pages to treat of the awful or lovely deities of Olympus, Valhalla, or Merû. Our subject is less aspiring; and we confine ourselves to those beings who are our fellow-inhabitants of earth, whose manners we aim to describe, and whose deeds we propose to record. We write of Fairies, Fays, Elves, aut alio quo nomine gaudent.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Keightley, Thomas

Leseproben

ORIGIN OF THE WORD FAIRY.

Like every other word in extensive use, whose derivation is not historically certain, the word Fairy has obtained various and opposite etymons. Meyric Casaubon, and those who like him deduce everything from a classic source, however unlikely, derive Fairy from F??, a Homeric name of the Centaurs; [6]or think that , whence Fairy, is the last syllable of . Sir W. Ouseley derives it from the Hebrew ??? ( ), ; Skinner, from the Anglo-Saxon old english f a old english r an, , ; others from Feres, companions, or think that Fairy-folk is Fair-folk. Finally, it has been queried if it be not Celtic. [7]
But no theory is so plausible, or is supported by such names, as that which deduces the English Fairy from the Persian Peri. It is said that the Paynim foe, whom the warriors of the Cross encountered in Palestine, spoke only Arabic; the alphabet of which language, it is well known, possesses no , and therefore organically substitutes an in such foreign words as contain the former letter; consequently Peri became, in the mouth of an Arab, Feri, whence the crusaders and pilgrims, who carried back to Europe the marvellous tales of Asia, introduced into the West the Arabo-Persian word . It is further added, that the Morgain or Morgana, so celebrated in old romance, is Merjan Peri, equally celebrated all over the East.
All that is wanting to this so very plausible theory is something like proof, and some slight agreement with the ordinary rules of etymology. Had Feërie, or Fairy, originally signified the individual in the French and English, the only languages in which the word occurs, we might feel disposed to acquiesce in it. But they do not: and even if they did, how should we deduce from them the Italian Fata, and the Spanish Fada or Hada, (words which unquestionably stand for the same imaginary being,) unless on the principle by which Menage must have deduced Lutin from Lemur—the first letter being the same in both? As to the fair Merjan Peri (D'Herbelot calls her Merjan Banou [8]), we fancy a little too much importance has been attached to her. Her name, as far as we can learn, only occurs in the Cahermân Nâmeh, a Turkish romance, though perhaps translated from the Persian.
The foregoing etymologies, it is to be observed, are all the conjectures of English scholars; for the English is the only language in which the name of the individual, Fairy, has the canine letter to afford any foundation for them.
Leaving, then, these sports of fancy, we will discuss the true origin of the words used in the Romanic languages to express the being which we name Fairy of Romance. These are , , French; , Provençal (whence , Spanish); and , Italian.
The root is evidently, we think, the Latin . In the fourth century of our æra we find this word made plural, and even feminine, and used as the equivalent of Parcæ. On the reverse of a gold medal of the Emperor Diocletian are three female figures, with the legend ; a , found at Valencia in Spain, has on one of its sides , and on the other, three female figures, with the attributes of the Mœræ or Parcæ. [9]In this last place the gender is uncertain, but the figures would lead us to suppose it feminine. On the other hand, Ausonius [10]has , ; and Procopius [11]names a building at the Roman Forum ta t??a fata, adding ??t? ?a? ??µa??? ta? µ???a? ?e??µ??as? ?a?e??. The Fatæ or Fata, then, being persons, and their name coinciding so exactly with the modern terms, and it being observed that the Mœræ were, at the birth of Meleager, just as the Fées were at that of Ogier le Danois, and other heroes of romance and tale, their identity has been at once asserted, and this is now, we believe, the most prevalent theory. To this it may be added, that in Gervase of Tilbury, and other writers of the thirteenth century, the Fada or Fée seems to be regarded as a being different from human kind. [12]
On the other hand, in a passage presently to be quoted from a celebrated old romance, we shall meet a definition of the word , which expressly asserts that such a being was nothing more than a woman skilled in magic; and such, on examination, we shall find to have been all the Fées of the romances of chivalry and of the popular tales; in effect, that is a participle, and the words or is to be understood.
In the middle ages there was in use a Latin verb, , [13]derived from or , and signifying to enchant. This verb was adopted by the Italian, Provençal [14]and Spanish languages; in French it became, according to the analogy of that tongue, , . Of this verb the past participle , ; hence in the romances we continually meet with , , , , , and such like. We have further, we think, demonstrated [15]that it was the practice of the Latin language to elide accented syllables, especially in the past participle of verbs of the first conjugation, and that this practice had been transmitted to the Italian, whence would form , and might thus become . Whether the same was the case in the Provençal we cannot affirm, as our knowledge of that dialect is very slight; but, judging from analogy, we would say it was, for in Spanish and are synonymous. In the Neapolitan Pentamerone and are the same, and a Fata sends the heroine of it to a sister of hers, .
Ariosto says of Medea—
E perchè per virtù d' erbe e d'incanti
Delle Fate una ed immortal fatta era.
, ii. 106.


The same poet, however, elsewhere says—
Queste che or Fate e dagli antichi foro
Già dette Ninfe e Dee con più bel nome.— i. 9.


and,
Nascemmo ad un punto che d'ogni altro male
Siamo capaci fuorchè della morte.— xliii. 48.


which last, however, is not decisive. Bojardo also calls the water-nymphs Fate; and our old translators of the Classics named them . From all this can only, we apprehend, be collected, that the ideas of the Italian poets, and others, were somewhat vague on the subject.
From the verb , , to enchant, illude, the French made a substantive , , [16]illusion, enchantment, the meaning of which was afterwards extended, particularly after it had been adopted into the English language.
We find the word Faerie, in fact, to be employed in four different senses, which we will now arrange and exemplify.
1. Illusion, enchantment.
Plusieurs parlent de Guenart,
Du Loup, de l'Asne, de Renart,
De et de songes,
De phantosmes et de mensonges.



Where we must observe, as Sir Walter Scott seems not to have been aware of it, that the four last substantives bear the same relation to each other as those in the two first verses do.
Me bifel a ferly
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