THE FOLK-LORE OF DRAYTON.
PART I.—Drayton's attitude with regard to Folk-Lore Romances—Ballads—Plants—Springs, &c.
OF all the geniuses of the golden Elizabethan age, who had the gift of seeing fairy-folk, and of entering into the humours of fairy-land, none, Shakespeare alone excepted, has left more delightful record of his experience than Shakespeare's fellow-shireman, Michael Drayton. It was a happy influence that gave two such sons to Warwickshire within something like a twelvemonth of each other. One is apt to wonder, if, in the days when they were nurtured, the Heart of England[1] was supremely true to all traditions of the elders, and passing rich in store of old wives' tales of
"Goblins, fairies, bugs, night-mares,
Urchins and elves:"
it is certain that the Pierian spring at which both poets drank deep, though with differing capacity, had a virtue which could clear the eyes of mortals so as to make them perceptive of the elfin world. Never is Drayton more at home than when he is among the fairies. Shakespeare, with his unique power of assimilation, made all the knowledge that came to him his own, and used it as though it were innate; but Drayton was too often the bloated bookworm. His wort-cunning, his unnatural history, his mythical mineralogy, smell of the midnight oil; but his fairy-lore, wheresoever he picked it up, is well-nigh as pure, free, and unartificial as the very moonbeams themselves. It was not, however, until nearly the end of his career
- ↑ Polyolbion, xiii. [iii. 913]. Here and hereafter the figures within brackets refer to volume and page of the edition of The Works of Michael Drayton, Esq. published in 4 vols, in 1753.
