190 c ha pt er   5 This wonderful gallimaufry of questing knights and imprisoned princesses, of impregnable castles and paradisal gardens, of secret holes and underground passages, of burning rivers and sword bridges (not to mention talking foxes) demonstrates how thoroughly the discourses of fairyland and purgatory had interpenetrated one another by the middle of the thirteenth century. Ed. 45. The play takes for granted a mutual antipathy between clerks and fairies, and it is hardly surprising that Orderic Vitalis’s portrait of the familia Herlequini should be so lurid. ———. Nichols, 2:186. Sometime between 1432 and 1443 a man called Henry Hoiges brought a suit in Chancery accusing a local priest of employing “the sotill craft of enchauntement wycchecraft and socerye” against him (Calendars of the Proceedings in Chancery, in the Reign of Queen Elizabeth, ed. 57. See further, Latham, Elizabethan Fairies, pp. 52. Polychronicon Ranulphi Higden monachi Cestrensis: Together with the English Translations of John Trevisa. Elves in Anglo- Saxon England: Matters of Belief, Health, Gender and Identity. Christ the Changeling 110 Chapter 5. See Wade, Fairies in Medieval Romance, pp. John Nichols, 3 vols. Stories of Arthur’s survival and future return were clearly circulating orally even before Geoffrey of Monmouth’s time. 33. See what mark carney (mark_czarnecki) has discovered on Pinterest, the world's biggest collection of ideas. Finally, the shape-shifting ability of these ‘demons’ (evident in Thomas of Erceldoune, among others) is also a fairy commonplace. On the origins of the Fasciculus Morum, see Siegfried Wenzel, Verses in Sermons (Cambridge, Mass. G. V. Smithers, 2 vols., EETS OS 227, 237 (London: Oxford University Press, 1952, 1957), p. 97 (B-text, lines 1708–18). Wright, p. cxiv. An icon used to represent a menu that can be toggled by interacting with this icon. The York Plays: A Critical Edition of the York Corpus Christi Play as Recorded in British Library Additional MS 35290. See also Marie de France Brewer, Derek S., 71 Brideling, sadling and ryding, of a rich churle, 203 Briggs, Katharine, 4, 228n29, 233n130, 234n7 Brittany, 32, 34, 37, 67–68, 89, 100–101, 149, 153–54, 158, 160, 241n9 Brocéliande, forest of, 7, 32–37, 39, 45, 238n97 Bromyard, John, 22, 73, 81, 138–39, 234n9 278 index Brown, Arthur, 33 Brut, 92–93, 95 Buin, Michel, 29 Bullein, William, Bulleins Bulwarke, 196 Burchard of Worms, The Corrector, 15, 49, 100, 243n69 Burke, Peter, 42–43 Burrow, John, 198 Byrne, Aisling, 74 Byzantium (Constantinople), 67, 105 Cade, Jack, 22 Caesarius of Heisterbach, Dialogus Miraculorum, 23, 48–49, 55, 85, 179–80, 193, 248n159 Cambrai, 6 Cambridge, 44, 83 Cambridgeshire, 141 Camlann, Battle of, 147, 154 Campion, Thomas, 202 canon, Episcopi, 166 Canterbury, 20, 159, 191 Capgrave, John: Chronicle, 53; Life of Saint Katherine, 20, 135–36 Carmarthen, 86, 98 Carter, Angela, 50 Cartlidge, Neil, 168–69 Cassian, Saint John, 89 Castleford, Thomas, Chronicle, 93 Charles V, King of France, 30, 45 Charles VI, King of France, bal des sauvages, 43, 218n9 Chaucer, Geoff rey, 9, 73, 194, 198–201, 203; apocrypha, The Plowman’s Tale, 201; apocrypha, The Romaunt of the Rose, 56; The Canon’s Yeoman’s Tale, 197; The Canterbury Tales, 197–98; The Franklin’s Tale, 105; The Friar’s Tale, 52; The House of Fame, 38; The Knight’s Tale, 101, 106, 198, 201–2, 204; The Man of Law’s Tale, 113, 197–98; The Merchant’s Tale, 36, 67, 159, 198, 201–2; The Miller’s Tale, 54; The Monk’s Tale, 32; The Nun’s Priest’s Tale, 197; The Pardoner’s Tale, 141; The Reeve’s Tale, 200; Second Nun’s Tale, 102; The Squire’s Tale, 157, 197; The Tale of Sir Thopas, 67, 74, 103–4, 197–99, 201–2, 205; The Wife of Bath’s Tale, 50–52, 67, 74, 100, 105, 197, 201 Chevalier qui fist parler les cons, 67, 103 Cheyne, Thomas, 22 Chrétien de Troyes, 105; Chevalier de la charette, 66, 161–62, 187, 189; Yvain, 35–37, 39, 66 Cistercians, 178–79, 181 Clancy, Susan, 77 Clark, Stuart, 196–97, 243n71 Cleary, Michael, 43 Clerk, Marion, 19, 112, 141, 191, 195 Clonfert, 52 Cohen, Jeff rey Jerome, 12 Colin, Jean, 54 Collingwood, R. G., 70–71 Comper, 39, 46 Conrad of Höxter, 16, 212n26 Conrad of Marburg, 16–18, 212n25, 213n33 Constable, Giles, 156 Cooper, Bishop Thomas, Thesaurus linguae Romanae & Britannicae, 194 Cooper, Helen, 12, 33, 64, 70–71 Cooper, Thomas, The mystery of witch- craft, 197 Corbet, Richard, bishop of Norwich, 125 Cornwall, 3, 149, 241n9 Coudrette, Melusine, 29, 31, 215n89 Court of Love, 65 Coutumier of Brocéliande, 39 Crane, T. F., 118 Crehan, Kate, 8 Cresswell, John, 31–32, 44–45 cunning men and women, 4, 20, 22, 80, 112, 117, 158, 195–96, 203 Cyprus, 32, 85 d’Albornoz, Gil, 119 Dante Alighieri: Inferno, 24, 182, Purgatorio, 182–83 d’Aulnoy, Countess, 50 David I, King of Scotland, 40 de Beaujeu, Renaut, 64 Dégh, Linda, 72–73 de la Sale, Antoine, 40, 45–46, 61, 143 Derbyshire, 22 Devon, 4 Disputation between a Christian and a Jew, 19, 157, 185 Dives and Pauper, 80, 84 Dolopathos, 143. Philip had exiled his wife after her infidelity had become public, and this scandal is clearly what Darius is referring to in his letter to the young king in Kyng Alisaunder: Darrye, kyng of all kynges . Adam le Bossu. See especially Roger Sherman Loomis, Arthurian Tradition and Chrétien de Troyes (New York: Columbia University Press, 1949). Et sachiéz que la pierre sur quoy elle passa a la fenestre y est encores, et y est la fourme du pié toute escripte].”84 Predictably, Coudrette omits this detail, but even he felt the need to reassure his audience at this point: “Which I writte is trouth, therof ly no thyng [Fr. Benedictus autem altissimus virilem speciem in hominibus a flagitiis eorum usque hodie sic servavit, ut nullus virorum ista nefaria libidine pollutus adhuc auditus sit” [Should they rage with such a fervor of lust, how might they be immune from homosexual lust, so that they might rage with desire either for our own men or amongst their own males? The explosion of the marvelous: twelfth and thirteenth centuries. Karl Warnke. 81. 60 vols. 83. See Jacques Le Goff and Emmanuel Le Roy Ladurie, “Mélusine maternelle et défricheuse,” Annales: Économies, Sociétés, Civilisations 26 (1971):594–95. Stanislas Bormans and Adolfe Borgnet, 7 vols. “The Evidence for Maran, the Anglo-Saxon ‘Nightmares.’ ” Neophilologus 91 (2007): 299–317. 7 vols. Paris: Gallimard, 1977. Roy J. Deferrari (New York: Fathers of the Church, 1955), p. 426. Rolls Series. Vulgaria. 148, 160 (lines 1521, 1771). E.g., R. W. Southern, “Between Heaven and Hell: Review of Jacques le Goff, La Naissance du Purgatoire,” Times Literary Supplement, 18 June 1982, pp. Chambers, Arthur of Britain, p. 265. 29–46. Gardiner, Harold C. Mysteries’ End: An Investigation of the Last Days of the Medieval Religious Stage. Giraldi Cambrensis Opera. Joseph Stephenson, Rolls Series (London and Edinburgh: Longman, 1875), pp. Resting at the edge of a wood, the impoverished Launfal is approached by two maidens who invite him to come and speak with their mistress, Dame Triamour, in her pavilion.114 There, in a luxurious setting, he finds the daughter of the “kyng of Fayrye” ready to place herself entirely at his disposal: Jn þe pauyloun he fond a bed of prys Jheled wyth purpur bys, Þat semylé was of syϞte: Þerjnne lay þat lady gent (Þat after Syr Launfal hedde ysent), Þat lefsom lemede bryϞt. See REED: Cheshire, Including Chester, ed. This story, frequently repeated in the early modern period (e.g., Malleus Maleficarum, ed. A. J. Holden. Bennett, Michael J. Veenstra, Jan R. Magic and Divination at the Courts of Burgundy and France. London: Berthelet, 1565 (STC [2nd ed.]:5686). In addition to white, black, and green (green is sometimes mentioned—as with the green children of Woolpit—but it is by no means universal), we also have gray (in The Merry Wives of Windsor), red (in an account from Thomas Walsingham),13 and polychrome (as with Tristram’s fairy dog Petitcriu). Margaret O. Bender, Romance Monographs, 7 (Jackson: University of Mississippi Press, 1976), lines 1076–79 (pp. See also Briggs, “Some Seventeenth- Century Books of Magic,” p. 455. Donald, p. 105. 18 (2009):67–112. Clark, Stuart. Douai: Balthazar Beller, 1596. 2 vols. Whatever the name, I shall treat as fairies all creatures who behave in the way I have just described. lines 6400–6453). A Royal Historie of the Excellent Knight Generides, ed. At its heart lies a battle between Antechriste and the two patriarchs Enock and Helyas for the hearts and minds of four kings. Thomas of Cantimpré, for instance, tries to categorize fairies in the final section of his mid-thirteenth-century book of moral instruction, De bonum universale de apibus [On the Universal Good of Bees], but the enterprise quickly falls apart.7 Turning from his admirable bees, he sets out, under the headings of ‘wasps,’ ‘cockroaches,’ ‘hornets,’ and ‘beetles’ [vespae, blattae, crabrones, and buprestes], to describe the depredations of various kinds of demon. Florio’s Worlde of Wordes, the first Italian/English dictionary (1598), for instance, glosses Fata as “a fairie, a witch, an enchantres, an elfe” and Strega as “a witch, a sorceresse, a charmer, a hag or fairie,” and a year later Richard Percival’s Dictionarie in Spanish and English glosses Estantígua as “a hag, a hobgoblin.”5 Nor is this conflation restricted to the dictionaries: William Barlow, in a translation of three sermons by Ludwig Lavater (1596), for instance, raises “a question often discussed and muche debated, both by learned men and Idiottes: Whether Sorserers or Witches, Faries or Spirites (call them by what name you will) can raise anie tempests, or bring downe such Hayle as wee oft see.”6 The basis of such a conflation is not far to seek: if witches were the efficient cause of magical activity, fairy potency must sometimes have appeared to constitute its material cause. 38–39 (lines 756–79). 2 vols. 115–31. 284–99. 228 n ot es to pag es 8 1 – 8 5 24. From our perspective Thomas of Cantimpré’s response seems out of all proportion to the seriousness of the threat, but there is no mistaking its antagonism. Hanover: Foerster, 1710. Aucassin et Nicolette, chantefable du XIIIe siècle, ed. Ed. Ed. Whigs and Hunters: The Origin of the Black Act. The Late Middle English Lucydarye, ed. 59–60. 108. Neil Cartlidge, “Sir Orfeo in the Otherworld: Courting Chaos?” Studies in the Age of Chaucer 26 (2004):225. “Women are yet alive who tell they were taken away when in Child-bed to nurse Fairie Children, a lingering voracious Image of their [these] being left in their place, (like their Reflexion in a Mirrour,) which (as if it were some insatiable Spirit in ane assumed Bodie) made first semblance to devour the Meats that it cunningly carried by, and then left the Carcase as if it expired and departed thence by a naturall and common Death”; see Robert Kirk, The Secret Commonwealth of Elves, Fauns, and Fairies, 1691, ed. 7 vols. . not es to pag es 1 9 5– 19 7 249 5. 139. “Bref commentaire de la Prophetia Merlini du ms 3524 de la Bibliothèque de la Cathédrale d’Exeter.” Hommages à Joseph Bidez et à Franz Cumont. Curiously ‘elf-shot’ does not seem to be recorded in Middle English, despite occurring in both the Anglo-Saxon and in the early modern period; however, a possible Latin calque, a charm offering protection a morsu alphorum, appears in John Bromyard’s Summa Predicantium (ed. And fulle softely þen sho sayde: “Allas!” And her legges sho gan to knytte, And wyth hys knees he gan hem on-shote. What they do require is a recognition on the part of readers and audiences that the real world cannot be reduced to the rational.”146 But, we might counter, when belief in fairies could offer a reasonable explanation for many things that would other wise have seemed inexplicable, rationality, in this sense, must be viewed as every bit as historically contingent as belief.147 Setting aside the question of whether rationality/irrationality might not be a misleading binary to evoke in such contexts, implying as it does some version of Lévy-Bruhl’s prelogical society,148 we would do well to remember that all metaphysical beliefs, our own included, must be in some sense non-empiricist and thus open to a charge of irrationality. Aliquando etiam daemones in siluis apparent esse homines vel feminae, vt decipiant incautores” [Sometimes they are Pigmies, which, according to Albertus Magnus in De Animalibus, is a kind of animal much like a man, because it walks upright, uses its hands for certain tasks, and employs language; and yet it is clearly more beast than man, although more noble than the other animals below man. Carl Sigmund Barach and Johann Wrobel (Frankfurt: Unveränderter Nachdruck, 1964), p. 50 (7:116). Furthermore, in Bernadette Filotas’s words, “Pastoral literature does not support the view that popular culture was a matter of class. Andrew D. Lipscomb. Ed. That night in the throes of passion he opens his eyes only to discover that he is embracing an old withered tree and that his penis is trapped in a fissure in its trunk (“uirilem ipsius uirgam in quodam foramine facto in illo Living in Fairyland 183 trunco coartam”).129 One of the king’s servants hammers away at it with a spike, tightening the tree’s grip and causing him excruciating pain, but when the king offers him the relief of a soothing warm bath, he promptly finds himself being boiled alive; predictably the subsequent offer of a cool bath to refresh him leads to his being plunged into freezing water and being lacerated with shards of ice. He then contrasts these with “another sort . We will probably never know at what point these ‘neutral’ or ‘craven’ angels came to be associated with the fairies of vernacular belief,58 but clearly the idea was generally current from at least the beginning of the thirteenth century. Esclarmonde, ed. Lecoy de la Marche, p. 321. Incubi Fairies 99 Incubus hatte be ryϞt; And gileþ men oþer while, Succubus is þat wight.99 Romance has no difficulty with this brand of fairy/mortal interbreeding—not only the Lusignans, but also the English house of Plantagenet owed their origins to it—but it presented the great tradition with an obvious problem. De Naturis rerum. Swann, Marjorie. Nam ut Apulegius de deo Socratis perhibet, inter lunam et terram habitant spiritus quos incubos demones appellamus. David  N. Dumville. Boke of Duke Huon of Burdeux, ed. W. Howells, Cambrian Superstitions, Ghosts, Omens, Witchcraft, Traditions, &c. (Tipton: Danks, 1831), pp. In the end he simply gives up and launches into a recital of miscellaneous marvels, some of which he claims to have experienced personally. ———. (lines 7448–50) [They cannot do great wickedness; they cannot cause much harm, except to deceive and deride.] 59. Ti presentiamo i più comuni. “sortilegium”]). London: Longman, 1999, pp. [Matthew Paris], Matthæi Parisiensis, monachi Sancti Albani, Chronica Maiora, ed. Ed. [London: Methuen, 1962], p. 178); while Peter Heylyn’s description reads, “These two travelling together through a forrest were mette by three Fairies, or Witches (Weirds the Scots call them)” (Mikrokosmos a little description of the great world [Oxford: Lichfield & Turmer, 1625], p. 509 [STC (2nd ed.):13277]). The fairy Melusine, for example, tells her husband that her natural lot is to remain in “greuouse and obscure penytence . 85. Marie-Anne Polo de Beaulieu. Interestingly, among the butts of Huon de Méri’s satire are the Albigensians (lines 878–96 and 22767–95)—a further sign that fairy beliefs hovered at the edge of heresy. and trans. 170–71 (no. Valdimar Hafstein, for instance, compares a thousand-year-old vision in the Þáttr Þiðranda ok Þórhalls of “many a hill . Since Leversedge sees his own abiding sin as personal vanity, he projects this onto his assailants, but nonetheless they resemble the elegant denizens of the fairy world far more than they do the grotesque fiends of Owayne Miles. Be þou afered of none wihϞte; Iich am comen here a fairi knyϞte. New York: Columbia University Press, 1949. Admittedly such readings are unprovable, particularly with a writer whose “uneasiness with folkloric beings” is as patent as Chrétien’s,131 but the campaign of cultural repression I have been trying to sketch offers at the very least a plausible context for them. Fye on swyche feyth!” (4:1067–70) Like William Langland before him (“ ‘Crucifige!’ quod a Cachepol, ‘[he kan of wicchecraft]!’ ”),88 John Capgrave was clearly writing with the authority of the orthodox expositor. Ceri Sullivan and Barbara White. Ed. ; The Church of the Holy Spirit, written by Russian priest and scholar Nicholas Afanasiev (1893–1966), is one of the most, Using both semiotics and historiography, this demonstrates how contemporary filmmakers have attempted to recreate the pa, Table of contents : CoverContentsIntroductionChapter 1. . Douglas Gray and  E.  G. Stanley(Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1983), pp. Though described as a king and shown to be in some sense the leader of a fairy troupe, Hellekin does not appear to be an actual fairy. ϣonynge wel uaste Þe deuelen walde led & bras . 215–34. Let us briefly consider three of them here—all English, though there is no dearth of such stories from the Continent.23 The first comes from the canonization proceedings (1291–92) of Thomas of Cantilupe, Bishop of Hereford: A certain girl, the daughter of Nicholas Nevenon, of Inglethorp in Norfolk, in the diocese of Norwich, had for five years been solicited and greatly wearied by a certain incubus-demon, as was believed. Royster, p. 4. Ed. Whatever we make of it, however, it shows that Chrétien was no less aware than Wace of the contested nature of fairy belief. Services and solutions for structured finance | Zenith Service è un intermediario finanziario indipendente iscritto all'Albo Unico ex art. 34.112 When Degarré’s father encounters his mother-to-be deep in the woods, his first speech to her, according to the Auchinleck Manuscript, is, Damaisele, welcome mote þou be! In the Chester Slaughter of the Innocents, Herod again refers to Christ as a ‘vile conjoun’; urging his soldiers on to the massacre, he shouts, Dryve downe the dyrtie-arses all bedeene, and soone that there were slayne! 156, 158. Reginald Scot, a great debunker of all things numinous, writing of necromancers or conjurers in 1584, explains that “these are no small fooles, they go not to worke with a baggage [nasty] tode, or a cat, as witches doo; but with a kind of majestie, and with authoritie they call vp by name . Not that all authorities were uncritical of it. The motif of a recovery from fairyland, typically suppressed and rationalized by Chrétien de Troyes, is employed transparently in the romance of 162 c ha pt er   5 Reinbrun, a coda to Guy of Warwick: the episode in which Reinbrun delivers his father’s friend Amis from the castle of the fairy knight called Sir Gayere is related with almost no interference from the great tradition. Arthur C. L. Brown, “A Note on the Nugae of G. H. Gerould’s ‘King Arthur and Politics,’ ” Speculum 2 (1927):449. At the end of the Chester Innkeepers’ play of The Harrowing of Hell (Play 17), for instance, after Christ has led the saved souls out of hell, a female brewer is left onstage to boast of how she has adulterated her ale and wine and cheated her customers.