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The ignisfatuus, will-of he-wisp, or Jack & lantern was doubtless at the bottom of such a story as this, and in Milton's "Paradise Lost " we find the following power-full illustrative passage, referring both to the natural phenomenon and the myth built upon it
' Lead, then,' said Eve. He, leading, swiftly rolled In tangles, and made intricate seem straight, To mischief swift. Hope elevates, and Joy Brightens his crest ; as when a wandering fire, Compact of unctuous vapour, which the night Condenses, and the cold environs round, Kindled through agitation to a flame, Which oft, they say, some evil spirit tends, Hovering and blazing with delusive light, Misleads the amazed night wanderer from his way, To bogs and mires, and oft through ponds or pool ; There swallowed up and lost, from succour far, So glistered the dire snake." In the same author's poem of "L'Allegro" we find the .will-of-the-wisp again referred to, this time under the title of " Friar's lantern ;" while Sir Walter Scott in his " Marmion " writes " Better we had through mire and bush Been lantern-led by Friar Rush." Shakespeare in r " Henry IV." calls it a " ball of wildfire," and also used the Latin name, ignis fatuus. - This bewilderment of the rustics by false fires does not always seem to have been the result of diabolical malice on the part of the fairies, but sometimes assumed the form of a practical joke. Like most practical jokes, it was probably much more amusing to the joker than the joked, and the benighted wanderer had little cause to thank him of whom it could be said- " Whene'er such wanderers I meete As from their night-sports they trudge home ; With counterfeiting voice I grete And call them on, with me to roam Thro' woods, thro' lakes, Thro'bogs, thro' brakes ; Or else, unseene, with them T go All in the nicke To play some tricke, And frolic it, with ho, ho, ho l" An old legend tells us how on the advent of Christianity great Pan and all the woodland deities deserted their old haunts and were never seen of men again; and in the same way the march of science and the spread of education must ere now have killed off all the fairies, except in the most out-of-the-way districts. Once coaxed and propitiated, or shudderingly dreaded, they now but serve to make a pleasant fancy for a Christmas-card, or aid in the grand spectacular effects of the Christmas pantomime. Those, then, who would see these denizens of elf-land and all the grace and beauty that even the very name of fairy-land suggests, will seek them no longer in the ferny glades of some fair woodland or beneath the silvery beams of the moon, but reduce the matter to a prosaic visit to some great theatre, and endeavour to find in the great array of " supers " and the glowing of coloured fires the realisation of their fair ideal. The fairies are, in fact, as dead, as hopelessly defunct, as the proverbial. door-nail, which seems to have been accepted by the wisdom of our ancestors as the most expressive symbol of mortality and the stern decrees of irreversible Fate. |