ESSAYS

ON THE

LITERATURE, ETC. OF ENGLAND

DURING

THE MIDDLE AGES.

ESSAY X.

ON FRIAR RUSH AND THE FROLICSOME ELVES.

HE character and form of the unpremeditated creations of man's imagination depend as much upon external circumstances, and upon impressions from without, as upon the variation of character in man himself. The ferocity of Scandinavian or Gothic heroes could admit into their mystic creed no beings but those which inspired awe and terror, because it was unaccustomed to the quiet enjoyments of peace, to pleasant meadows or laughing glens; it contemplated only steel, and wounds, and blood. The wild hunter, who tracked his prey over the barren mountains which were as much his home as that of the beasts he pursued, to whom nature presented herself in her most gigantic and awful forms, himself acquainted only with danger, must have a creed which partook of the character of everything around him -the supernatural world was to him peopled with fierce

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and malignant demons. Just so the solitary hermit, who in the earlier ages of western Christianity fixed his abode in the deserts and the fens, rude and inhospitable tracts, could conceive them to be peopled by nothing but devils. But to the peaceful peasant, on whom nature ever smiled in her most joyous mood, she was peopled by gay and harmless spirits, who like himself loved to play and laugh— the beings he feared were restricted to the mountains whose heads rose in the dim distance, or their visits were confined within the darkness of night.

Thus, the only beings with whom a Beowulf would claim acquaintance were those against whom he might signalize his valour, the nickers who set upon him in the sea amidst the fury of the tempest, the grendel, the nightly devourer of royal thanes, and the fire-drake whose vengeance carried destruction amongst his subjects. The literature which these remote ages have left us is not of that kind which would indicate to us the lighter superstitions of our forefathers. The impressions of fear are deeper and more permanent than those of mirth, and are more speedily communicated. The monks, whose greatest error was not that of scepticism, partook in all the superstitions of the vulgar—they disbelieved none of the fables of paganism, but they looked upon them in a new light. To them all spirits were either angels or devils, and as their canons assured them that the beings of the vulgar creed, which were in fact the remains of paganism, were not to be admitted into the former class, they threw them indiscriminately into the latter. The creed of the monks could naturally admit of no harmless devils, of none who played for the sake of play alone, and the pranks and gambols and mischievous tricks of a puck or a hobgoblin were only so many modes by which the evil

one sought to allure the simple countryman into his power, to lead him to temptation and sin. But the playful freaks of Satan were not so often performed before the monks themselves, and therefore seldom found a place in their legends. The fears of the peasantry, on the other hand, were soon imparted to their spiritual teachers, and the latter were, or believed themselves to be, constantly persecuted by the malignity of the demons. It is our impression, indeed, that the monkish superstitions were entirely founded upon the older popular superstitions: instead of fighting against the errors of paganism, they soon fell themselves into that of supposing that they were engaged in a more substantial war against the spirits who belonged to the older creed, and whose interest it would be to support it. Thus, in their eagerness for the battle, they created their opponents. As the monks were generally successful in these encounters, they became bolder, and resolved to attack the enemy in his stronghold, seeking solitary residences among the fens and wilds. Hence, perhaps, arose in some degree the passion for becoming hermits. From all these circumstances it arises that, in the legends of the monks, although it is the creed of the peasantry which is presented to us, yet that creed is there so distorted and so partially represented as to be with difficulty recognized.

We have thus but little knowledge of the mirthful beings, the Pucks and Robin Goodfellows, of the peasantry, during the earlier ages of our history. That the popular mythology included such beings we have abundant proofs in the numerous allusions to them at a somewhat later period, namely, the twelfth century, after which the traces of them again nearly disappear, until the period when the invention of printing, and the consequent facility of making books,

created a literature for the vulgar, and when the stories of their popular belief which had hitherto been preserved orally were collected for their diversion. Then we find that, as in earlier ages separate ballads had been woven together into epic cycles, so these popular stories were strung together, and a certain character of reality given to them in the person of a single hero, a Robin Goodfellow, a Hudekin, or, as in the curious tract of which we are going to speak, a Friar Rush. The sudden appearance of these stories and collections of stories gives rise to problems relating to their formation, which the want of a sufficient acquaintance with the stories in their earlier form renders it sometimes difficult to resolve; and it is only by an historical comparison of our scanty data that we can arrive at any satisfactory knowledge of the nature and sources of the materials of which they are composed.

In this research, we must not reject even the legends of the monks, for they sometimes illustrate the lighter superstitions of our peasantry, as we may easily enough suppose, because, so long as the monks believed the imaginary pranks of the hobgoblins to be so many temptations of the evil one, there was no reason why, though they were generally subjected to severer trials, he should not at times practise upon them the same jokes, by way of diversifying his attacks. When the great Luther could believe a girl

* See Michelet's interesting work, the Mémoires de Luther, 1836, tom. 3, p. 170. The alchemists and the rosicrucians even in the seventeenth century reproduced the superstitions of the monks and peasantry of an earlier period. In the MS. Harl. 6482 (17th century), a most extensive collection of the doctrines of these people, we have the following account of the hobgoblins. "Of spirits called Hobgoblins or Robin Goodfellowes. These kinde of spirits are more familiar and