[43] _The Faerie Queene,_ chiefly in Book II, where in Canto X, stanzas 70-76, he gives a fictitious list of the generations of fairies; the first "Elfe" was the image made by Prometheus, to animate which he stole fire from heaven; the list ends with Oberon, and Tanaquil the Faerie Queen. [44] Reprinted in this book, pp. 81-121. [45] Mr. Chambers, in his edition of the play, Appendix A, Sec. l8, gives (i) _Tarlton's News out of Purgatory_ (1590) (see p. 63), (ii) Churchyard's _Handfull of Gladsome Verses_ (1592) (see p. 141), (iii) Nashe's _Terrors of the Night_ (1594). [46] The word _folk-lore_ has only been in existence sixty years, and the science is very little older; it was vaguely referred to as "popular antiquities" before that time. [47] Alfred Nutt, _The Fairy Mythology of Shakespeare_ (1900), p. 24. This little book is instructive and valuable. [48] Nashe's Works, ed. R.B. McKerrow, i. 347. [49] Gower, however, does so, as early as the fourteenth century; _Confessio Amantis_, ii. 371. [50] The opening of the beautiful _Helgi and Sigrun Lay_ as translated by Vigfusson and York Powell in _Corpus Poeticum Boreale_ (1883), i. 131; see also the editors' Introduction, i. lxi, lxiv. [51] _Danish History_, iii. 70, 77; vi. 181; cf. O. Elton's translation (1894), pp. 84, 93, 223, and York Powell's introduction thereto, lxiv. [52] "It is worth noting that the Romance of Olger the Dane contains several late echoes of the old Helgi myth. _a._ The visit of the fairies by night to the new-born child ... _e._ His return to earth after death or disappearance ... Mark that Holgi is the true old form ... The old hero Holgi and the Carling peer Otgeir (Eadgar) are distinct persons confused by later tradition."--_Corpus Poeticum Boreale_, i. cxxx. "The _Fates_ ... bestow endowments on the new-born child, as in the beautiful Helge Lay ... a point of the story which survives in the Ogier of the Chansons de Geste, wherein Eadgar (Otkerus or Otgerus) gets what belonged to Holger (Holge), the Helga til of Beowulf's Lay."--Saxo, _Danish History_, lxiv. [53] Cf. Child's _Ballads_, i. 319. [54] In _Huon of Bordeaux_ Merlin comes with King Arthur to Oberon's death-bed; Arthur introduces him as his nephew, the son of Ogier the Dane and "my sister Morgan."