Popular superstitions, the witch,
metamorphosis, the returning ghost, the fairy, all of them
survivals of the earliest thought, naturally play a great part.
The Historical ballad, on the other hand, has a basis of resounding
fact, murder, battle, or fire-raising, but the facts, being derived
from popular rumour, are immediately corrupted and distorted,
sometimes out of all knowledge. Good examples are the ballads on
Darnley's murder and the youth of James VI.
In the romantic class, we may take Tamlane. Here the idea of
fairies stealing children is thoroughly popular; they also steal
young men as lovers, and again, men may win fairy brides, by
clinging to them through all transformations. A classical example
is the seizure of Thetis by Peleus, and Child quotes a modern
Cretan example. The dipping in milk and water, I may add, has
precedent in ancient Egypt (in The Two Brothers), and in modern
Senegambia. The fairy tax, tithe, or teind, paid to Hell, is
illustrated by old trials for witchcraft, in Scotland. {1} Now, in
literary forms and romance, as in Ogier le Danois, persons are
carried away by the Fairy King or Queen. But here the literary
romance borrows from popular superstition; the ballad has no need
to borrow a familiar fact from literary romance. On the whole
subject the curious may consult "The Secret Commonwealth of Elves,
Fauns, and Fairies," by the Reverend Robert Kirk of Aberfoyle,
himself, according to tradition, a victim of the fairies.
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