references. As far as English literature is concerned, the facts and instances cited may be found in any good edition of the Midsummer Night's Dream (I have used Mr. E. K. Chambers' edition, London, 1897) or in Halliwell's Illustrations of Shakespeare's Fairy Mythology (London, 1845, ^^ reprinted with additions by Hazlitt, London, 1875). The Irish references will be found in the first volume of my Voyage of Bran (London, 1895), or mainly in the forthcoming second volume.]
Few things are more marvellous in our marvellous poetic literature of the last three centuries than the persistence of the fairy note throughout the whole of its evolution. As we pass on from Shakespeare and his immediate followers to Herrick and Milton, through the last ballad writers to Thomson and Gray, and then note in Percy and Chatterton the beginnings of the romantic revival which culminated in Keats and Coleridge, was continued by Tennyson, the Rossettis, and Mr. Swinburne, until in our own days it has received a fresh accession of life alike from Ireland and from Gaelic Scotland, we are never for long without hearing the horns of Elfland faintly winding, never for long are we denied access to those
"Charmed magic casements opening on the foam
Of perilous seas in faery lands forlorn."
We could not blot out from English poetry its visions of the fairyland without a sense of irreparable loss. No other literature save that of Greece alone can vie with ours in its pictures of the land of fantasy and glamour, or has brought back from that mysterious realm of unfading beauty treasures of more exquisite and enduring charm.
There is no phenomenon without a cause; but in the immense complexity of historical record it is not always easy to detect the true cause, and to trace its growth and working until the result delights us. Let us consider to-night if we may find out why the fairy note rings so
