Elf Queens and Holy Friars. Richard Firth Green
in the early modern period.86 That Guichard’s accusers were able to ignore this theological caveat suggests the power of its popular appeal, though of course even a Thomist construction would still have made the poor bishop illegitimate and therefore in theory unfit for holy office.
Devils, of course, cannot die, so another difficulty faced by those who wished to demonize fairies was the fact that although popular tradition certainly regarded them as long lived, it did not regard them as immortal.87 Martianus Capella calls pans, fauns, satyrs, silvans, and nymphs the ‘longaevi’ and reports that after long ages they die just like men (“hi omnes post prolixum aeuum moriuntur ut homines”); and Bernardus Silvestris writes of such creatures that “sero tamen obeunt in tempore dissolvendi” [at length they pass away when the time comes for their dissolution].88 Matthew Paris reports that in 1249 a Welsh incuba died giving birth to a son,89 and romance presents us with a number of mortal fairies. Thus the father of Yonec in Marie de France’s lai dies at the hands of a jealous husband, and in an early version of the Naissance du Chevalier au Cygne, the hero’s mother, the fée Elioxe, dies in childbed: “Morte est bele Elioxe, l’espris s’en est alés” (line 1272).90 In Huon of Bordeaux, Oberon (to English ears, the archetypal fairy king) foretells his own death: “‘Huon,’ quod Oberon, ‘know for trouth I shal not abyde longe in this worlde, for so is the pleasure of god. it behoueth me to go in to paradyce, wher as my place is apparelled; in ye fayrye I shal byde no lenger.”91 The contrary position is taken by William of Auvergne, who disputes a report “that in the time of the Emperor Anastasius a certain faun was killed by arrows in a certain battle, since he might not be conquered otherwise” [quia tempore Anastasii Imperatoris faunus quidam in proelio quodam interfectus fuit sagittis, cum aliter non possit vinci]; this creature cannot really have been a faun, says William, since all spirits of this kind are indubitably immortal (“cum omnes huiusmodi spiritus indubitanter immortales sint”). Interestingly, one of his alternative explanations is that the faun might have been “one of those warriors who are commonly said to be ‘fairied’” [unus ex militibus qui vulgo fatati dicuntur],92 though what precisely he means by this is unclear.93 In a later discussion he argues that any fairy who appears to engage in human activities such as warfare, jousting, or feasting can only be a demonic illusion since immortal spirits cannot be harmed by weapons and have no need of food.94 In the same vein, John Trevisa uses Merlin’s mortality as proof that he could not have had a fairy (demonic) father:
There myȝte childe non suche deye.
Clergie makeþ mynde
Deeþ sleeþ nouȝt fendes kynde;
But deth slowe Merlyn,
Merlyn was ergo no gobelyn.95
Oberon (like Merlin and indeed Melusine), a fairy half caste, is particularly interesting from this viewpoint, for the English translation of Huon of Bordeaux, based on a fifteenth-century prose version, feels compelled to have him explain that his mortality derives from his human father (Julius Caesar) even though other fairies (his own mother for example) are immortal: “ye knowe that euery mortall thynge cannot alwayes endure / I speke it for my owne selfe who am sone to a mortall man, and was engendered on the ladye of the preuye Ile who can neuer dye, bycause she is one of the fairy engendered of a man of the fayrey and doughter to a woman of the fayrey.”96 There is nothing of this in the thirteenthcentury verse original, however,97 and though Harf-Lancner takes such romance references to fairy immortality at face value,98 I suspect they are really concessions to the theological objections of men such as William of Auvergne.
A final popular attribute of fairies that caused difficulties for theologians was their association with arcane knowledge, particularly the knowledge of future events. The little tradition seems often to have associated exceptional psychic powers with fairies and those who consorted with them: the non-cyclic prose Lancelot explains that Niniene was said to be a fairy because “in those days anyone who knew about magic and charms was called a fairy” [a celuitens estoient apelees fees totes iceles qui savioent d’anchantement et de chaies].99 We have seen that Du Guesclin’s wife was rumored to be a fairy because of her cleverness, and even John of Salisbury reports that some people thought that Aristotle was the son of an incubus demon because of “the clarity of his mind.”100 From here it is only a short step to associating fairies with prescience.
Merlin, the most celebrated of medieval seers, was the son of a fairy/incubus, and Geoffrey of Monmouth’s attribution of prophetic powers to him was a particular source of irritation for William of Newburgh: “They [demonic incubi] are often deceived and deceive by their guesses, though they are quite sophisticated, but by means of trickery in their predictions they lay claim amongst naive people to a foreknowledge of the future which they do not at all possess.”101 Merlin’s Scottish counterpart, Thomas of Erceldoune, acquired the gift of prophesy on his return from a visit to fairyland: “Thomas, þou sall neuer lesynges lye, / Whare euer þou fare by frythe or felle.”102 It is sometimes forgotten that the narrative portion of Thomas of Erceldoune (the visit to fairyland) is merely a prologue to an extended set of actual prophesies. Similarly, the account of a strange fairy encounter (“ay litel man y mette withalle”) that is appended to an early fourteenth-century manuscript of Langtoft’s Chronicle serves to introduce a rival set of political prophesies.103 We have seen that when the French courtier Antoine de la Sale visited the reputed cave of the prophetic Sybil in the Italian province of Marche in 1420, he naturally conceived of it in terms of a visit to fairyland.104 A fifteenth-century recension of the Second Lucidaire (itself an early fourteenth-century version of the popular theological handbook the Elucidarium) proves that the association between fairies and fortune-telling was commonplace:
Þe sayd feyryes sayd þat þe people were destenyed þe one vnto good þat other to yll after þe course of heuen and of nature, as a chylde borne in suche an houre & at suche a course he was destenyed to be hanged or drowned, or þat he sholde be ryche or poore, or þat he sholde wedde suche a woman, þe whiche thynges ben false. For the man hath in hymselfe lyberall arbytre and fre wyll to do good or ylle in suche wyse þat yf he wyll, he shall do nothynge wherfore he sholde be hanged, ne yet put hym in þe daunger to be drowned; nor also he shall not marye a woman, but yf he wyll, and so [hir] destynacyons shall be false. By these reasons a man sholde put to no fayth.105
One might have thought that such official condemnation would have been universal, but in an age that took astrology particularly seriously, an appetite for prophesy must have been difficult to stamp out, and even a pious churchman like John of Bridlington might be credited with prophetic powers.106 If we add to this the fact that no less an authority than Augustine allowed that demons might enjoy a certain limited degree of foresight,107 we may come to understand how even William of Auvergne could attribute prescience to “someone from Great Britain [evidently Merlin] who was reputed to be the son of an incubus demon” [qui in majori Britannia filius dæmonis incubi fuisse dicitur]: “Now this man was held to be a seer in that land, in that he seemed to have prophetically foretold many future things; not without merit might it be believed that he received this from his upbringing or paternal instruction, for it is certain that demons know many things about the future and other hidden matters, and sometimes reveal them to others, especially their sons” [autem propheta in eadem regione habitus est, eo quod multa de futuris vaticinatus fuisse visus est prophetice; ex instructione, vel doctrina paterna hoc accepisse non immerito credi potest, multa enim de futuris, et aliis absconditis, certum est nosse dæmones, et interdum aliis, nedum filiis, revelare].108
Such points of tension between the clerical and the popular views of fairies had some important consequences for the way fairies came to be portrayed in romance. A few authors take the bull by the horns and assert unflinchingly that the fairy realm is fully compatible with Christianity. For instance, in a description of the death of Oberon (based on an early continuation of Huon of Bordeaux) we might almost imagine that we are reading the apotheosis of a Christian martyr rather than the last moments of a fairy king: “king Oberon drewe faste to his laste end, who lay in a ryche cowche in the myddes