― 53 ―The Fairy Poetry of Robert Herrick:Concerning his Miniaturistic Technique*
Mikiko FURUKAWA（平成27年11月30日受理）
In this paper, I will examine the fairy poetry of Robert Herrick（1591-1674）. A
characteristic of these poems is a satirical miniaturization of seventeenth-century society into aworld of fairies. It is necessary to realize that those poems are not simply lyrical songs whichwere written in a traditional style. The folkloric factors, which are one of the charms of hiswork, prove Herrick to be a propagator or scholar of folk belief and legends. However, studyof supernatural beings such as fairies, as a matter of fact, helped to keep folk beliefs and legends
alive. The fairy poetry genre demonstrates Herrick's characteristics.

1.

Introduction

From the sixteenth to the middle of theseventeenth century, interest in fairies was bothintensive and extensive. In the Elizabethan
era, fairy poetry reached its golden era. Thissituation came about because of the success offairy imagery in the works of William Shakespeare（1564-1616）which led to the popularity of fairies
among seventeenth-century England poets. Robert
Herrick was among those who resisted the fairy
world. Compared with poets of the Elizabethan
era, his fairy poetry presented a complicatedstyle combining a simplicity pleasing to the
curiosity and imaginative, detailed expression of
fairy imagery with an emphasis on minuteness.
However, his satirical literary style aroused
interest and reﬂected microcosms of the English
society of the time. This folkloric character, oneof the allures of Herrick's poetry, gives us a viewof Herrick as a kind of propagator or investigatorof folk belief and legend. As a matter of fact,
elements of supernatural existence such as fairies
had helped to propagate folk belief and legend inliterature since the Middle Ages and it is therefore
no wonder that this characteristic fairy imagery isfound here and there in his collection of poems.
The major change in Herrick's versification
occurred when he was sent to Devonshire in
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southeastern England, to become the vicar of aparish after living in the brilliance of London court
life. At first he was in despair but graduallycame to appreciate the virtues of country living.
The provincial beauty and widespread customs
and practices of the people must have looked
fresh to his worldly London eyes. William
Shakespeare had brought provincial folktales to
London, while Herrick must have been inﬂuenced
by the superstition and pagan beliefs which heencountered when he took up his pastorage in
Devonshire. Herrick created a world of sparkling
literary gems polished by his own hands andbased on the beauty of the rural district, dairy
maids and inherited superstitions.
This is an examination of matters related
to fairies which are a particular theme of the
prologue to the collection,‘The Argument of His
Book,’referring to the works in his Hesperides（1648）.
I write of Groves, of Twilights, and I sing
The Court of Mab, and of the Fairie-King.
（5, 11-12）1）
2. Fairy Poetry
Michael Drayton（1563-1631）and Robert
Herrick are said to be the representative writers

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Mikiko FURUKAWA

who described fairies in their own work in theseventeenth century, after fairy themes had
reached their peak during the Elizabethan era
through the works of Shakespeare. In the
Elizabethan era, created a small and beautiful
world of friendly fairies, showing them to ordinary
people who still believed in the activities of fairies
and other superstitions. He recreated fairy
imagery from age old legends or from those whichappeared in Greek and Roman mythology and in
the French romantic stories of the Middle Ages,
however, compared with Shakespeare's works, it
is diﬃcult to say that the fairy world created by
Herrick is beautiful. Herrick wrote about the worldof fairies in a matter-of-fact way which seemed tobring the fairy world out into daylight to makeit visible in some sense and it is diﬃcult to denythat the fairies thereby lost the fantastic beauty
which they had known for ages. For example,
in the poems‘Oberons Palace’and‘Oberons
Feast,’it is diﬃcult to ignore an impression of thegrotesque. The close examination of each morsel
on the tiny mushroom table in‘Oberons Feast,’
such as "The hornes of paeprie Butterﬂies"（119,26）, "that we call the Cuckoes spittle"（119, 28）,
"A little Fuz-ball-pudding"（119, 29）, "sugredRush"（119, 33）, "the sagge / And well bestrutted
Bees sweet bagge"（119, 33-34）, "Emits eggs"（119,36）must remind us of the evil brew simmeringin the cauldron of the witches in Macbeth.2） The
dishes for the fairy king continue to discourage
the reader's appetite.
But Beards of Mice, a Newt's stew'd thigh,A bloated Earewig, and a Flie;
With the Red-capt worme, that's shut
Within the concave of a Nut,
Browne as his Tooth. A little Moth,
Late fatned in a piece of cloth:
With withered cherries; Mandrakes eares;
Moles eyes; to these, the slain-Stags tears:
The unctuous dewlaps of a Snaile;
The broke-heart of a Nightingale
Ore-come in musicke;（119-20, 37-47）
This enumeration of peculiar food materials
is not based on the world-of-mouth tradition

but would rather be the product of Herrick's
imagination, designed to please the dilettanteThomas Shapcotte who was his friend and patron.
As a matter of fact, in the dedication to Shapcotte,
Herrick said that he dedicated these poem to
Shapcotte because "Thou prizest things that are /Curious, and un-familiar". In‘Oberons Palace,’
which was dedicated to Shapcotte, grotesquethings continue to crop up one after the other.
Herrick wrote these works by imposing his own
imagination on the fairy tales of those days. As
mentioned, the common theme of fairy poems
is the peculiar and minute and when we read
Herrick's fairy poetry, we must be aware of words
written from the fairy's point of view rather thanthe human's, otherwise we lose the substance of
his work.
Another distinctive feature of Herrick's fairy
poetry is their satirical side.‘Oberons Palace’
could be a concentrated and satirical story ofcourtly love between Oberon, the king of thefairies, and Mab, the queen of the fairies. On theother hand, in‘The FairieTemple: or Oberons
Chappell,’the indirect description seems toconcern the antagonism between the religious
groups of those days and this poet's religious
standpoint. This means that Herrick's poems
satirize seventeenth-century society by putting
it into a miniaturized fairy world. Therefore itis necessary to realize that these poems are notsimply lyrical songs. In this chapter, the mostsignificant aspect of the society of fairies for
Herrick is a distinct diﬀerence in description as aninherited tradition because there is room to sneakin political propaganda.
3.

The relationship with fairy poems and theirimportance in Hesperides

Among Herrick's poetry, there are threeprominent long poems and several short ones
concerning fairies such as‘The Faerie Temple: or
Oberons Chappell,’‘Oberons Feast,’‘Oberon's
Palace,’‘The Fairies,’‘The Night-piece to Julie,’‘The Hagg,’and‘The Beggar to Mab, the Faerie
Queen’. There are also several poems in which
fairy words are found here and there, such as
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― 55 ―The Fairy Poetry of Robert Herrick: Concerning his Miniaturistic Technique"Ignis Fatuus（the wondering spirit）," "Will o'
the Wisp," "Bells," "Bread," "Salt," "Holy Water,""Horseshoes" and "Iron" which are about fairies
and warding oﬀ evil spirits, and there are poems
about fairy trees related to witchcraft, such as"Oak," "Hawthorn" and "Yew". An example of apoem is as follows:
Bring the holy crust of Bread,
Lay it underneath the head;'Tis a certain Charm to keep
3）
Hags away, while Children sleep.（284）
In the three long poems about the fairy
kingdom and the subjects of Oberon, the kingof the fairies, a serial connection can be foundbetween ‘The Faerie Temple: or Oberons
Chappell,’‘Oberons Feast’and‘Oberons Palace’according to the actual contents. However, there
are pages between these poems in the collection
for some unclear reason and‘Oberons Feast’and‘Oberons Palace’are dedicated to Herrick's friend
Thomas Shapcotte while‘The Fairie Temple: or
Oberons Chappell’is dedicated to another friend,John Merrifield. It is obviously the intention of
the writer to skip pages among the arrangementof poems that have a connection of similar content.
It could have been intentional to that thecollection was thus presented due to the control
of expression required by society in those days.
There is a suspicion that Herrick separated thesethree originally connected poems as a form of
rearrangement. In fact, in 1640, Herrick left
Devonshire for London, without the Bishop's
permission, to explore the possibility of publishing
the manuscript which he had created. However,presumably he gave up this plan for some reason.4）
There is no existing collection of Herrick's poemsin or around that year. The collection of poems
was, after all, published eight years later, in 1648.
However, considering the outbreak of civil war
in 1642, he might have planned to publish thecollection in 1640 which shows his political supportof the Tories and awareness of the approachingpressure of republicanism. Therefore, he tried to
criticize the deplorable state of society, using his
pen as a weapon, by making it the world of fairies,
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however, he had been obliged to change someparts due to censorship in 1640. It is possible
to assume that one of the changes was thedisposition of the arrangement of the poems. In
Hesperides, diﬀerent styles and meters are mixed
up and thrown together in this one collection.
This could be recognized as the "Sweet Disorder"5）of which poets are fond, however, if we readthoroughly and analyze the work as a history ofseventeenth-century English literature and thehistory of English society, a new and distinctive
feature of Herrick's poetry becomes apparent.
4. Herrick's religious philosophy and the factorsof the Apocripha
In‘The Faerie Temple: or Oberons Chappell,’
Oberon's chapel of the king of the fairies is
described as follows:
A way enchac't with glasse & beads
There is, that to the Chappel leads:
Whose structure（for his holy rest）
Is here the Halcion's curious nest:
Into the which who looks shall see
His Temple of Idolatry:
Where he of God-heads has such store,
As Rome's Pantheon had not more.
His house of Rimmon, this he calls,
Girt with small bones, instead of walls.
（90, 1-10）
Now this the Fairies Wo'd have known,
Theirs is a mixt Religion.
And some have heard the Elves it callPart Pagan, part Papisticall.
（91, 22-25）
It is thought that this religion, which has
aspects of both heathenism and papism, in thepoems was meant to be, indirectly, the Churchof England, to which Herrick belonged, and to be
the place where the ﬁctional world of fairies andthe actual world meet. Another characteristic ofHerrick's poems is that they step slightly outsideof Christianity. Since Herrick yearned for ancient
Rome and was always aware of the Roman
poets, it is possible that he yearned also for the― 56 ―
Mikiko FURUKAWA

atmosphere of heathensim in some way. The
enumeration of grotesque foods for the king of thefairies in‘Oberons Feast’insinuates that he wasinﬂuenced by Tobit in the Apocrypha.6） This also
leads into the description of the king of the fairies'"His house of Rimmon," of which the external wallis said to be made of small bones.
The inside of "His house of Rimmon" isdescribed as if the viewfinder of a camera
captures its targets through movements whichchange little by little. However, the decorationsof the niche, the egg shaped hollow and arch are
all weird things which the king worships, suchas "Idol-Cricket"（90, 12）, "Idol-Beetle-flie"（90,14）, "Idol-Canker"（90, 16）and "His golden god,
Cantharieds"（90, 18）. In addition, the saints who
appear in the poems, such as St Frip, St. Trip, St.
Fill and St. Fillie, do not appear in Christianity andcould be references to the Apocrapha. Or, thismight be "a mixt Religion" which Herrick referred
to. According to Herrick, there are innumerable
saints like these and their names are written ina queer calendar. These names must appear in
their church calendar because of the world of "amixt Religion". The "mixt Religion" is emphasized
as follows:
The Altar is not here foure-square,
Nor in a forme Triangular;
Nor made of glasse, or wood, or stone,
But of a little Transverce bone;（91, 54-57）
Roman Catholicism required retention of astrict social standing which Puritans opposed.
Arguments about the shapes and materialsof altars developed. The Church of England,
although still leaning toward Catholicism, showed
consideration of the Puritan idea of simpliﬁcationof the traditional Catholic gold and polish.
However, the puritans strongly opposed Catholic
thinking. The altar which is mentioned in thispoem could be a reflection of Herrick's original
religious philosophy which is based on the Churchof England and is neither Catholic nor Puritan
because the altar is not square nor triangular andthe material is bone.

5.

The spirit of play and Herrick: Politics inrecreation

It is easy to imagine that Herrick's way ofwriting, that is, expanding a story with actual
customs, practices and legends of the day within aﬁctional world of fairies combined with his literarystyle of description of detailed minutae and his
love of small things, expresses his intellectual
curiosity. The following‘The Fairies’is a shortpoem about the legends of those days.
If ye will with Mab ﬁnd grace,
Set each Platter in his place:
Rake the Fier up, and get
Water in, ere Sun be set.
Wash your Pailes, and clense your Dairies;
Sluts are loathsome to the Fairies:
Sweep your house: Who doth not so,
Mab will pinch her by the toe.（201）
Herrick enjoyed life as a vicar in the countryside.
The kind of life he lived as a clergyman may havebeen abhorred by the Puritans. Judging by his
natural epicurean endowments, the reason he was
moved to treat with superstition and legends inseventeenth-century England, upon which the
Puritans frowned, by daring to create a world of
fairies, might have been not only his standpoint as
a Royalist poet but also his spirit of play. In thethird line of‘The Argument of his book,’Herrick
refers to the "May-poles", the Festival of May,
which James I encouraged as an amusement in The
Book of Sports. The "Wakes" were also encouragedby Charles I in The Book of Sports.7）Even though
this was entirely forbidden among the Puritans, it
was one of the subjects in each poetry collection
and it is demonstrable that Herrick establishedthe poetry collection as an assistance to or inaccordance with the proclamations of The Book
of Sports. These had been promulgated by both
James I and his son Charles I in 1618 and 1633
due to strong antipathy to the Puritans who had
severe views about "sports". Herrick's ideology,
with his fondness for Anacreontic "carpe diem,"
and his natural tendency toward recreationmust have forced confrontation with orthodox
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― 57 ―The Fairy Poetry of Robert Herrick: Concerning his Miniaturistic TechniquePuritanism which rejected beauty and joy anddenied natural human emotions. It is possible
to consider Herrick's Hesperides a book whichindirectly criticizes "sabbatarianism" and throughits discussion of traditional recreations. It was
written as an answer to the proposals of The Book
of Sports, which was an attempt to restrain theinfluence of Puritanism. Issues of the right andwrong of recreation in manners and customs was
one of the significant political problems in thosedays.8） I assume that Herrick's Hesperides presents
the political intentions of the Royalists.
However, Floris Dellattre（1880-1950）said
that the fashion of writing fairy poetry would
end in the seventeenth century, meaning 1650
after the Elizabethan era passed away.9） Thisis two years after Robert Herrick publishedHesperides. Analyzing the facts that, in 1649, ayear after publication of the collection, Charles I
was executed and republicanism was establishedby the Puritans, creates a feeling that the worldof fairies depicted by Herrick was fated to ruin inliterature as well as in the real world after all.
Notes＊

This paper is based on“Oberon and Mab: The
intellectual background of Robert Herrick's
Fairy Poetry”Discourse of the man and woman:from Shakespeare to Dryden. Ed. Keiichiro Uetsuki.
Tokyo. Kinseido, 1998, 41-66.

1） All references to Herrick's poems are to The
Poetical Works of Robert Herrick, ed. L.C.Martin（Oxford: Clarendon P, 1956）and quoted bypage number（s）and line（s）in parentheses.
2） In Act 4, Scene 1. Hecate and the three witches
were dancing around a simmering cauldron
throwing in slices of snake and eye of newt.
It is difficult to deny that Shakespeare tried
to create a scene full of spectacle so as to
ﬂatter James I who was strongly interested inwitches and demonology, or Herrick himself
was conscious of the eyes of the King behind
Chapcotte.
3） This poem which is quoted from Hesperides isabout "The usefulness of bread which deters
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fairies" as was believed in those days. Breadwas widely employed as a talisman against
fairies. It was customary to carry a piece ofdried bread in one's pocket when one wasgoing to an area haunted by fairies（Briggs
42）. The "hags" which appear in this poem
are devils which give people nightmaresby sitting on their stomachs while they are
sleeping（Briggs 216）. Herrick mentions
several other anti-fairy incantations in thepoem.
4） According to the records of the London
publishing association, on April 29, 1640, areport of the plans to publish "Poems writtenby Master Robert Herrick" by Andrew
Crooke, the publisher, was accepted（Chute
221）.
5） In ‘Delight in Disorder,’Herrick praises"disorder". Herrick finds beauty in thedisorder of Julia's clothes and mentions that a
casual style of dress is more attractive to thehuman heart than perfect beauty.
6） See Tobit 6:7, 6:15-16（The Shorter Books of the
Apocrypha 37, 38）.
7） In 1618, there was a judge of public peaceand order in Lancashire who tried to forbid
people to play on Sunday. An influential
Catholic landowner incited public opposition.
"The Book of Sports" was published by JamesI in connection with this argument after
his tour of Lancashire. The book forbade
obstruction of publicly sanctioned events
such as recreation and dancing after Church
worship on Sundays. According to the book,people had the freedom to maintain traditionalcustoms and practices such as "May-game,"
erecting the "May pole" and decorating the
Church with rushes.（"The Declaration on
Sports" 565-67）.
8） In chapter 1, which is about public amusementin the seventeenth century, Malcomson
discusses the case of The Book of Sports
as amusement involving political issues（Malcomson 75-88）. See Marcus,“Herrick's
Hesperides and the‘Proclamation made forMay’”49.
9） Delattre 191.

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Mikiko FURUKAWA

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Delattre, Floris. English Fairy Poetry: From theOrigins to the Seventeenth Century. London: Henry
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