“That Orfeo hight, as men well wote; Good is the lay, sweet is the
    note!”

The ballad which represents the debris of this romance has only been recovered in a single text, from the memory of an old man in Unst, Shetland, and it is incomplete in verse-form, though the reciter remembered the gist of the story.  This version of the ballad is further complicated by the fact that the old man sang it to a refrain which appears to be Unst pronunciation of Danish—­a startling instance of phonetic tradition.

It is not, however, to be understood from this that it was impossible for Shakespeare to have heard this ballad; English versions may have been current in his time.  But even so, the ballad would add nothing to the knowledge he might gain elsewhere; it is simply a short form of the romance altered by tradition.[67]

There are half-a-dozen other English and Scottish ballads concerning fairies, none of much importance touching our present theme.  They may be best studied in Child’s collection, Nos. 35-41, where under Tam Lin he has put together the main features of fairy-lore revealed in traditional ballads.[68] One or two such points may be noted here.

We have seen that Ogier saw the supernatural lady after plucking and eating an apple from a tree.  Thomas of Erceldoune, Launfal, and Meroudys, are sleeping or lying beneath a tree when they see their various visitors.  Tam Lin in the ballad was taken by the fairies while sleeping under an apple tree.  Malory[69] tells us that Lancelot went to sleep about noon (traditionally the dangerous hour) beneath an apple tree, and was bewitched by Morgan le Fay.  In modern Greek folk-lore, certain trees are said to be dangerous to lie under at noon, as the sleeper may be taken by the nereids, who correspond to our fairies.

At certain intervals—­every seven years, the ballads say—­the fiend of hell takes a tithe from the fairies, usually preferring one who is fair and of good flesh and blood.  Hence in Thomas of Erceldoune,[70] the elf queen is anxious that he should leave her realm, because she thinks the foul fiend would choose him (ll. 219-224).

The notion of the fairies’ demand of a tithe of produce, agricultural or domestic, is parallel to this sacrifice.[71]

A third point on which fairy-lore usually insists is that the steeds of the fairies shall be white; here Thomas of Erceldoune is at variance with the other poems, the elf-queen’s palfrey being a dapple-grey.  It is curious to learn that this superstition still survives.  “At that time there was a gentleman who had been taken by the fairies, and made an officer among them, and it was often people would see him and her riding on a white horse at dawn and in the evening."[72]