were þat for hom somdel . in misþoȝt were
Ac naþeles hi hulde bet mid God . ac vnneþe hi forbere
Þulke wende out of heuene ek . and aboue þe oþere beoþ
Anhei vnder þe firmament . and Godes wille iseoþ
And so ssolleþ be[o] somdel in pine . forte þe worles ende
Ac hi ssolleþ a Domesday . aȝen to heuene wende (lines 201–6)
[There were others who, because their thoughts strayed somewhat (even though they were more inclined to God, they barely held themselves back) also departed from heaven, and they are above the others, raised up below the heavens, and recognize God’s will; and so they must be punished somewhat until the end of the world, but they shall return again to heaven at Doomsday]
and again, “Þat beoþ of þe wrecche gostes . þat of heuene were inome / And mony of hom a Domesday . ssolleþ ȝute to reste come” (lines 257–58) [They are the wretched spirits who were taken from heaven, and many of them shall yet find peace at Doomsday]. This idea turns up elsewhere and may even be responsible for Dante locating his neutral angels in the vestibule of hell (Inferno 3:37–39). The fairy Melusine, for example, tells her husband that her natural lot is to remain in “greuouse and obscure penytence … vnto the day of domme,”61 and that this view had penetrated vernacular consciousness is proved by the testimony of a suspected Cathar dragged before the inquisition in the early fourteenth century: “but all the spirits who did not expressly consent or believe in the devil, but were only swept up in the disturbance created by the devil and sinned, as it were, unknowingly, spirits of this kind are human [?mortal] and all shall at length be saved on the Day of Judgment” [set omnes spiritus qui non expresse consenserunt vel crediderunt dyabolo, set solum accesserunt ad turbationem quam dyabolys fecit, et quasi inscii peccaverunt, cuiusmodi sunt spiritus humani, omnes finaliter in die iudicii salvarentur].62
This attempt to offer an acceptably anodyne version of the demon/fairy conjunction ultimately satisfied no one. Scholastic theology could not accept the idea that there were degrees of guilt among the followers of Satan,63 while the notion that some devils were actually redeemable lay even further beyond the pale. Walter Map tells two Faust-like tales of men who put themselves in the power of demons, and both are lulled into a sense of false security when their Mephistopheles figures (in one case a female called, significantly, Meridiana) claim to be harmless fairies. “You fear perhaps an illusion,” says Meridiana, “and are meaning to evade the subtlety of a succubus in my person. You are mistaken”;64 and the other tells his victim, a young knight called Eudo, “We can do anything that makes for laughter and nothing that makes for tears. Now I am one of those exiles from heaven who, without abetting or consenting to the crime of Lucifer, were foolishly and unthinkingly carried away in the train of his accomplices” (p. 321). “Deceived by these and similar stories,” says Map, “Eudo cheerfully assented to the pact” (p. 329). Clearly some clerics felt that the fable of the neutral angels was fraught with spiritual danger, while the notion of redeemable demons was, if anything, even worse. “That some demons are good, others well-intentioned, others omniscient, others neither saved nor damned. Error!” [quod aliqui demones boni sint, alii benigni, alii omniscientes, alii nec salvi nec damnati. Error] was the unequivocal pronouncement of the Paris theological faculty in 1398.65
Vernacular tradition too seems to have balked at the idea of fairies as neutral angels. For instance, the French romance of Esclarmonde (a continuation of Huon of Bourdeaux) is careful to distinguish neutral angels from genuine fairies. Having narrowly escaped from a shipwreck as he is hastening to arrive at the deathbed of his fairy mentor, Oberon, Huon comes upon a monastery, where he attends a strangely truncated form of the mass; by producing a holy object (a stole) he forces one of the monks to reveal his true nature to him, and he and his fellows turn out to be neutral angels.66 The whole point of this episode seems to be to differentiate these neutral angels from the actual fairies (whose chief is Oberon). Though the Middle English translation draws no clear distinction between neutral and fallen angels (“al we that be here were chasyd out of paradyse with lucyfer”),67 it portrays these spirits as holding out a hope of salvation: “but we that be here yet we hope to come to saluacyon” (p. 593). The French original, though, makes it quite plain that they do in fact belong to the third party of angels, those who sided with neither God nor Lucifer: “La tierce pars ne se sot v tenir / Ou a celui [Lucifer] ou au vrai Jesuscrist” (lines 2717–18). The Middle English translation does distinguish these beings from both humans and fairies—“[we] be conuersant amonge the people, & as well as they of the fayery” (p. 593)—but implies that they exercise some power over the fairies: “we be tho that hathe the conducte of al the fayery of the world” (p. 594). The French original by contrast makes the storm in which Huon is almost drowned the work of these demon monks but attributes his delivery to fairy power:
“Sire,” dist il, “jou t’ai dit verité:
De faerie oïs onques parler.”
“Oïl,” dist Hües, “j’en ai oï assés;
Si m’a ëu grant mestier en la mer
Il m’ont aidié ma vie a respiter.”
“Hües,” dist il, “vous dites verité.” (lines 2740–45)
[“Sir,” he said, “I have told you the truth: have you never heard tell of fairy magic.” “Yes,” said Huon, “I have heard enough about it: when I was in great need in the sea, they helped me to save my life.” “Huon,” he said, “you speak the truth.”]
Harf-Lancner suggests that we are dealing here with an amalgam of two conceptions of fairyland, one learned and the other folkloric,68 but I think rather that the author is drawing a deliberate distinction between the real world of the fairies (that represented by Oberon and his followers) and a demonic substitute (the monkish neutral angels), devised by learned culture as a way of rendering vernacular beliefs less dangerous. This point is illustrated even more clearly in the Scottish romance of Thomas of Erceldoune. When Thomas first encounters the fairy queen, he mistakes her for the Virgin Mary,69 but he is quickly disabused:
Qwene of heuen ne am I noghte,
ffor I tuke neuer so heghe degre.
But I ame of ane oþer countree (lines 91–93).70
It is made equally clear, however, that this country is not the devil’s, for as she rides with Thomas to fairyland, she warns him against picking the fruit that borders their path: “Thomas, þou late þame stande, / Or ells þe fende the will atteynt” (lines 197–98). Even more significant is the reason she gives a reluctant Thomas, after his seven-year sojourn in fairyland, for his return to the world:
Bot langere here þou may noghte duelle,
The skylle I sall þe telle whare fore:
To Morne, of helle þe foulle fende
Amange this folke will feche his fee;
And þou art mekill mane and hende,—
I trowe full wele he wole chese the. (lines 287–92)
If the fiend of hell regularly takes an inhabitant of fairyland as his “fee,” clearly the fairies are to be distinguished from devils, even lesser devils. This point is reiterated in two unique passages in one of the five manuscripts of the poem, B.L., MS Lansdowne 762. In the first section of the poem Thomas sexually assaults the fairy
