Elf (plural, Elves, Anglo-Saxon, œlf)
.Properly, a mountain fay, but more loosely applied to those airy creatures that dance on the grass or sit in the leaves of trees and delight in the full moon. They have fair golden hair, sweet musical voices, and magic harps. They have a king and queen, marry and are given in marriage. They impersonate the shimmering of the air, the felt but indefinable melody of Nature, and all the little prettinesses which a lover of the country sees, or thinks he sees, in hill and dale, copse and meadow, grass and tree, river and moonlight. Spenser says that Promeʹtheus called the man he made “Elfe,” who found a maid in the garden of Adoʹnis, whom he called “Fay,” of “whom all Fayres spring.”
“Of these a mighty people shortly grew,
And puissant kings, which all the world warrayd,
And to themselves all nations did subdue.”
1
