LD BY ALL THE BOOKSELLERS IN THE UNITED KINGDOM.

PRINTED BY BALLANTYNE AND HUGHES, EDINBURGH.

BLACKWOOD'S EDINBURGH MAGAZINE.

No CCCXLIV. JUNE, 1844. VOL. LV.

TRADITIONS AND TALES OF UPPER LUSATIA.

No. I.

THE FAIRIES' SABBATH.

WHAT is a fairy?

READ!

["_A Wood near Athens.--Enter a Fairy on one side, and Puck on the
other._{A}]

"_Puck._ How now, Spirit! whither wander you?

_Fairy._ Over hill, over dale,
Thorough bush, thorough brier,
Over park, over pale,
Thorough flood, thorough fire,
I do wander ever where,
Swifter than the moones sphere;
And I serve the Fairy Queen,
To dew her orbs upon the green:
The cowslips tall her pensioners be;
In their gold coats spots you see;
Those be rubies, fairy favours,
In those freckles live their savours:
I must go seek some dewdrops here,
And hang a pearl in every cowslip's ear.
Farewell, thou lob of spirits, I'll begone;
Our queen and all our elves come here anon.

_Puck._ The King doth keep his revels here to-night;
Take heed, the queen come not within his sight.
For Oberon is passing fell and wrath,
Because that she, as her attendant, hath
A lovely boy, stolen from an Indian king;
She never had so sweet a changeling.
And jealous Oberon would have the child
Knight of his train, to trace the forests wild:
But she, perforce, withholds the loved boy:
Crowns him with flowers, and makes him all her joy:
And now they never meet in grove, or green,
By fountain clear, or spangled starlight sheen,
But they do square; that all their elves, for fear,
Creep into acorn cups, and hide them there."

And there, then, they are!--The blithe and lithe, bright and fine
darlings of your early-bewitched and for ever-enamoured fancy! There
they are! The King and the Queen, and the Two royal Courts of shadowy,
gorgeous, remote, and cloud-walled Elf-land: The fairies of the vision
once wafted, "by moon or star light," upon the "creeping murmur" of the
Avon!--THE FAIRIES IN ENGLAND! YOUR fairies!

Nevertheless you, from of old, are discreet. And you mistrust
information which discountenances itself, by borrowing the magical robe
of verse! Or you misdoubt this medley of our English blood, which in the
lapse of ages must, as you deem, have confounded, upon the soil, the
confluent streams of prim