Immediate Effect of Christianity on Articles of Popular Superstition—­Chaucer’s Account of the Roman Catholic Priests banishing the Fairies—­Bishop Corbett imputes the same Effect to the Reformation—­His Verses on that Subject—­His Iter Septentrionale—­Robin Goodfellow and other Superstitions mentioned by Reginald Scot—­Character of the English Fairies—­The Tradition had become obsolete in that Author’s Time—­That of Witches remained in vigour—­But impugned by various Authors after the Reformation, as Wierus, Naudaeus, Scot, and others—­Demonology defended by Bodinus, Remigius, &c.—­Their mutual Abuse of each other—­Imperfection of Physical Science at this Period, and the Predominance of Mysticism in that Department.

Although the influence of the Christian religion was not introduced to the nations of Europe with such radiance as to dispel at once those clouds of superstition which continued to obscure the understanding of hasty and ill-instructed converts, there can be no doubt that its immediate operation went to modify the erroneous and extravagant articles of credulity which lingered behind the old pagan faith, and which gave way before it, in proportion as its light became more pure and refined from the devices of men.

The poet Chaucer, indeed, pays the Church of Rome, with its monks and preaching friars, the compliment of having, at an early period, expelled from the land all spirits of an inferior and less holy character.  The verses are curious as well as picturesque, and may go some length to establish the existence of doubts concerning the general belief in fairies among the well-instructed in the time of Edward III.

The fairies of whom the bard of Woodstock talks are, it will be observed, the ancient Celtic breed, and he seems to refer for the authorities of his tale to Bretagne, or Armorica, a genuine Celtic colony:—­

“In old time of the King Artour,
Of which that Bretons speken great honour,
All was this land fulfilled of faerie;
The Elf queen, with her joly company,
Danced full oft in many a grene mead. 
This was the old opinion, as I rede—­
I speake of many hundred years ago,
But now can no man see no elves mo. 
For now the great charity and prayers
Of limitours,[39] and other holy freres,
That searchen every land and every stream,
As thick as motes in the sunne-beam,
Blessing halls, chambers, kitchenes, and boures,
Cities and burghes, castles high and towers,
Thropes and barnes, sheep-pens and dairies,
This maketh that there ben no fairies. 
For there as wont to walken was an elf,
There walketh now the limitour himself,
In under nichtes and in morwenings,
And saith his mattins and his holy things,
As he goeth in his limitation. 
Women may now go safely up and doun;
In every bush, and under every tree,
There is no other incubus than he,
And he ne will don them no dishonour."[40]