of a mischievous nature, but all of them might very properly be invoked to assist mankind. Some of the northern nations regarded them as the souls of men who in this world had given themselves up to corporeal pleasures, and trespasses against human laws. It was conceived therefore that they were doomed to wander for a certain time about the earth and to be bound in a kind of servitude to mortals. One of their occupations was that of protecting horses in the stable. See Olaus Magnus de gentibus septentrionalibus, lib. iii. cap. xi. It is probable that our fairy system is originally derived from the Fates, Fauns, Nymphs, Dryads, Dex matres, &c. of the ancients, in like manner as other Pagan superstitions were corruptedly retained after the promulgation of Christianity. The general stock might have been augmented and improved by means of the crusades and other causes of intercourse with the nations of the East.

PRO.

Sc. 1. p. 141.

you demy-puppets, that
By moonshine do the green-sour ringlets make,

Whereof the ewe not bites

Green sour, if the genuine reading, should be

given, as in the first folio, without a hyphen;

for such a compound epithet will not elsewhere be easily discovered. Though a real or supposed acidity in this kind of grass will certainly warrant the use of sour, it is not improbable that Shakspeare might have written greensward, i. e. the green surface of the ground, from the Saxon rpeano, skin.

Sc. 1. p. 158.

PRO. His mother was a witch; and one so strong
That could control the moon.

So in a former scene, Gonzalo had said “You are gentlemen of brave mettle; you would lift the moon out of her sphere, &c." In Adlington's translation of Apuleius 1596. 4to, a book well known to Shakspeare, a marginal note says "Witches in old time were supposed to be of such power that they could pul downe the moone by their inchauntment." In Fleminge's Virgil's Bucolics is this line "Charms able are from heaven high to fetch the moone adowne;" and see Scot's Discoverie of witchcraft 1584. 4to, pp. 174. 226. 227. 250.

But all the above authorities are from the ancients, the system of modern witchcraft not affording any similar instances of its power. The

Jesuit Delrio is willing to put up with any notice of this superstition among heathen writers, but is extremely indignant to find it mentioned by a Christian; contending that it exclusively belongs to the ancients. Disquis. magic. lib. ii. quæst. xi. The following classical references may not be unacceptable. The earliest on the list will be that in Aristophanes's Clouds, where Strepsiades proposes the hiring of a Thessalian witch to bring down the moon and shut her in a box that he might thus evade paying his debts by the month.

"Quæ sidera excantata voce Thessalâ

"

Lunamque coelo deripit."

"Deripere lunam vocibus possum meis."

"Et jam luna negat toties descendere cœlo."

"Cantus et é curru lunam deducere tentat Et faceret, si non ære repulsa sonent."

Horat. epod. v.

Horat. epod. xvii.

Propert. II. el. 28.

Tibull. I. el. 8. and see el. 2.

Phœbeque serena

Non aliter diris verborum obsessa venenis

Palluit, et nigris, terrenisque ignibus arsit,
Et patitur tantos cantu depressa labores

Donec suppositas propior despumet in herbas."* Lucan vi.

* The last line is a good comment on the "lunam despumari" of Apuleius speaking of the effects of magical mutterings,

"Mater erat Mycale; quam deduxisse canendo

Sæpe reluctanti constabat cornua luna."Ovid. Metam. 1. xii.

"Illa reluctantem curru deducere lunam

Nititur"

Ovid. epist. vi.

"Sic te regentem frena nocturni ætheris Detrahere nunquam Thessali cantus queant."

Senec. Hippolyt. Act. 2.

"Mulieres etiam lunam deducunt." Petron. Hadrianid. 468.

In the same author the witch Enothea, describing her power, says "Luna descendit imago, carminibus deducta meis." p. 489.

It is said that Menander wrote a play called the Thessalian, in which were contained the several incantations used by witches to draw the moon from the heavens.

So when the moon was eclipsed, the Romans supposed it was from the influence of magical charms; to counteract which, as well as those already enumerated, they had recourse to the sound of brazen implements of all kinds. Juvenal alludes to this practice when he describes his talkative woman.

Jam nemo tubas, nemo æra fatiget,

Una laboranti poterit succurrere lunæ." Sat. vi. 441.

And see particularly Macrob. Saturnal. 1. v.

It is not improbable that the rattling of the sistrum by the priests of Isis, or the moon, may be in some way or other connected with this practice, or have even been its origin.

In proportion to the advance of science it will, no doubt, be found that the Greeks and Romans borrowed more than is commonly imagined from the nations of the East, where the present practice seems to have been universal. Thus the Chinese believe that during eclipses of the sun and moon these celestial bodies are attacked by a great serpent, to drive away which they strike their gongs or brazen drums; the Turks and even some of the American Indians entertain the the same opinion. This is perhaps a solution of the common subject on Chinese porcelain of a dragon pursuing a ball of fire, the symbol of the sun. The Hindoos suppose that a serpent, born from the head of a giant slain by Vishnu, is permitted by that deity to attack the sun. Krishna the Hindoo sun is sometimes represented combating this monster, whence the Greek story of Apollo and the serpent Python may have been derived.