* * * * *

To William Churne of Staffordshire
Give laud and praises due,
Who every meal can mend your cheer
With tales both old and true: 
To William all give audience,
And pray ye for his noddle: 
For all the fairies evidence
Were lost, if it were addle.

      RICHARD CORBET (1582-1625),
        from Poetica Stromata (1648)

* * * * *

THE FAIRY QUEEN

      Come, follow, follow me,
      You fairy elves that be,
      Which circle on the green,
      Come follow me your queen;
  Hand in hand let’s dance around,
  For this place is fairy ground.

      When mortals are at rest,
      And snorting in their nest,
      Unheard and unespied
      Through keyholes we do glide: 
  Over tables, stools, and shelves. 
  We trip it with our fairy elves.

      And if the house be foul,
      Or platter, dish, or bowl,
      Upstairs we nimbly creep
      And find the sluts asleep;
  There we pinch their arms and thighs;
  None escapes nor none espies.

      But if the house be swept,
      And from uncleanness kept,
      We praise the household maid
      And surely she is paid;
  For we do use, before we go,
  To drop a tester in her shoe.

      Upon a mushroom’s head
      Our table we do spread;
      A corn of rye or wheat
      Is manchet which we eat,
  Pearly drops of dew we drink
  In acorn cups filled to the brink.

      The brains of nightingales
      With unctuous dew of snails
      Between two nutshells stewed
      Is meat that’s easily chewed;
  And the beards of little mice
  Do make a feast of wondrous price.

      On tops of dewy grass
      So nimbly do we pass,
      The young and tender stalk
      Ne’er bends when we do walk;
  Yet in the morning may be seen
  Where we the night before have been.

The grasshopper and fly
Serve for our minstrelsy. 
Grace said, we dance awhile,
And so the time beguile;
And when the moon doth hide her head,
The glow-worm lights us home to bed.

From The Mysteries of Love and
Eloquence (1658); with a preface
signed E[dward] P[hillips].

* * * * *

NYMPHIDIA: 

THE COURT OF FAIRY

Old Chaucer doth of Topas tell,
Mad Rab’lais of Pantagruel,
A later third of Dowsabel,
With such poor trifles playing;
Others the like have laboured at,
Some of this thing and some of that,
And many of they know not what,
But that they must be saying.