[18] The Faerie Queene was published some years before the Midsummer Night's Dream. Warton (Obs. on the Faerie Queene) observes: "It appears from Marston's Satires, printed 1598, that the Faerie Queene occasioned many publications in which Fairies were the principal actors.
Go buy some ballad of the FAERY KING.--_Ad Lectorem._
Out steps some Faery with quick motion, And tells him wonders of some flowerie vale-- Awakes, straight rubs his eyes, and prints his tale. B. III. Sat. 6."
[19] It is in this century that we first meet with _Fairy_ as a dissyllable, and with a plural. It is then used in its fourth and last sense.
[20] The Fata Morgana of the Straits of Messina is an example; for the name of Morgana, whencesoever derived, was probably brought into Italy by the poets.
[21] Dobenek, des deutschen Mittelalters und Volksglauben. Berlin, 1816.
All human beings must in beauty yield To you; a PERI I have ne'er beheld.
The pure and simple religion of ancient Persia, originating, it is said, with a pastoral and hunting race among the lofty hills of Aderbijân, or, as others think, in the elevated plains of Bactria, in a region where light appears in all its splendour, took as its fundamental principle the opposition between light and darkness, and viewed that opposition as a conflict. Light was happiness; and the people of Irân, the land of light, were the favourites of Heaven; while those of Turân, the gloomy region beyond the mountains to the north, were its enemies. In the realms of supernal light sits enthroned Ormuzd, the first-born of beings; around him are the six Amshaspands, the twenty-eight Izeds, and the countless myriads of Ferohers.[23] In the opposite kingdom of darkness Aherman is supreme, and his throne is encompassed by the six Arch-Deevs, and the numerous hosts of inferior Deevs. Between these rival powers ceaseless warfare prevails; but at the end the prince of darkness will be subdued, and peace and happiness prevail beneath the righteous sway of Ormuzd.
From this sublime system of religion probably arose the Peri-[24] or Fairy-system of modern Persia; and thus what was once taught by sages, and believed by monarchs, has shared the fate of everything human, and has sunk from its pristine rank to become the material and the machinery of poets and romancers. The wars waged by the fanatical successors of the Prophet, in which literature was confounded with idolatry, have deprived us of the means of judging of this system in its perfect form; and in what has been written respecting the Peries and their country since Persia has received the law of Mohammed, the admixture of the tenets and ideas of Islam is evidently perceptible. If, however, Orientalists be right in their interpretation of the name of Artaxerxes' queen, Parisatis, as Pari-zadeh[25] (_Peri-born_), the Peri must be coeval with the religion of Zoroaster.