* * * * *

  Than he gan biholde about al,

And seighe ful liggeand with in the wal,
Of folk that wer thidder y-brought,
And thought dede and nere nought;
Sum stode with outen hadde;
And some none armes nade;
And sum thurch the bodi hadde wounde;
And sum lay wode y-bounde;
And sum armed on hors sete;
And sum astrangled as thai ete;
And sum war in water adreynt;
And sum with fire al for schreynt;
Wives ther lay on childe bedde;
Sum dede, and sum awedde;
And wonder fere ther lay besides,
Right as thai slepe her undertides;
Eche was thus in this warld y-nome,
With fairi thider y-come.[A]
There he seize his owhen wiif,
Dame Heurodis, his liif liif,
Slepe under an ympe tree: 
Bi her clothes he knewe that it was he,

    And when he had bihold this mervalis alle,

He went into the kinges halle;
Then seigh he there a semly sight,
A tabernacle blisseful and bright;
Ther in her maister king sete,
And her quen fair and swete;
Her crounes, her clothes schine so bright,
That unnethe bihold he hem might.

        Orfeo and Heurodis, MS.

[Footnote A:  It was perhaps from such a description that Ariosto adopted his idea of the Lunar Paradise, containing every thing that on earth was stolen or lost.]

Orfeo, as a minstrel, so charms the Fairy King with the music of his harp, that he promises to grant him whatever he should ask.  He immediately demands his lost Heurodis; and, returning safely with her to Winchester, resumes his authority; a catastrophe, less pathetic indeed, but more pleasing, than that of the classical story.  The circumstances, mentioned in this romantic legend, correspond very exactly with popular tradition.  Almost all the writers on daemonology mention, as a received opinion that the power of the daemons is most predominant at noon and midnight.  The entrance to the Land of Faery is placed in the wilderness; a circumstance, which coincides with a passage in Lindsay’s Complaint of the Papingo:

  Bot sen my spreit mon from my bodye go,
  I recommend it to the queue of Fary,
  Eternally into her court to tarry
  In wilderness amang the holtis hair. 
      LINDSAY’S Works, 1592, p. 222.

Chaucer also agrees, in this particular, with our romancer: 

  In his sadel he clombe anon,
  And priked over stile and ston,
   An elf quene for to espie;
  Til he so long had riden and gone
  That he fond in a privie wone
   The countree of Faerie.

  Wherein he soughte north and south,
  And often spired with his mouth,
   In many a foreste wilde;
  For in that countree nas ther non,
  That to him dorst ride or gon,
   Neither wif ne childe.
      Rime of Sir Thopas.