The first very small traditional fairies that we know are the portunes recorded by Gervase of Tilbury. They were probably carried on in the stream of tradition by the fairies' connection with the dead, for the soul is often thought of as a tiny creature which comes out of a sleeping man and wanders about. Its adventures are the sleeper's dreams.

By this means or others the tradition continued, and came up into literature in the 16th century. The first poet to introduce these small fairies into drama was John Lyly in Endimion. They are brought in for a short time, to do justice on the villain by the pinching traditional to the fairies. They punish not only the wrong done to Endimion, but the infringement of fairy privacy. Corsites has been trying to move the sleeping Endimion when the fairies enter, and pinch him so that he falls asleep. They dance, sing and kiss Endimion:

Pinch him, pinch him, blacke and blue,

Sawcie mortalls must not view

What the Queene of Stars is doing,

Nor pry into our Fairy woing.

The Maides Metamorphosis, published the same year as A midsummer Night's Dream, has a scene reminiscent of Bottom's introduction to Titania's elves, and their song makes their tiny size apparent:

1 fay: ‘I do come about the coppes

Leaping upon flowers toppes;

Then I get upon a Flie,

Shee carries me abouve the skie,

And trip and goe’.

2 fay: ‘When a deaw drop falleth downe

And doth light upon my crowne,

Then I shake my head and skip

And about I trip’.

Drayton's Nimphidia is quite a long narrative poem, a parody of a courtly intrigue in miniature. The fairies in it are among the tiniest in the poetry of the period, but not strictly to scale. The Queen, Pigwiggen and all her ladies of honour take refuge in a cowslip bell, but the ladies ride a cricket, about ten times the size of their room, and the Queen's coach is a snail's shell. Neither the King nor the Queen has the powers that belong to Shakespeare's Oberon and Titania, not even the power of swift motion; the witch-fairy Nimphidia is the only potent one among them, and she relies on herbs and charms which might be used by mortal witches. The chief charm of the poem is in the littleness of the actors, the stampede of tiny ladies-in-waiting, the preparation of Pigwiggen for the tourney:

When like an uprore in a Towne,

Before them every thing went downe,

Some tore a Ruffe, and some a Gowne,

   Gainst one another justling:

They flewe about like Chaff i’ th’ winde,

For hast some left their Maskes behinde;

Some could not stay their Gloves to finde,

   There never was such bustling...

...And quickly Armes him for the Field,

A little Cockle-shell his Shield,

Which he could very bravely wield:

   Yet could it not be pierced:

His Speare a Bent both stiffle and strong,

And well-neere of two Inches long;

The Pyle was of a Horse-flyes tongue,

   Whose sharpnesse naught reversed.

With Puck we get back on to the plain road of folklore, hobgoblin with his shape-shifting tricks:

This Puck seemes but a dreaming dolt,

Still walking like a ragged Colt,

And oft out of a Bush doth bolt,

   Of purpose to deceive us.

And leading us makes us to stray,

Long Winters nights out of the way,

And when we stick in mire and clay,

   Hob doth with laughter leave us.

William Browne of Tavistock belonged to the same set as Drayton and was one of the group who called themselves the 'Sons of Ben Jonson'. He and Drayton were both lovers of antiquities and both wrote long poems on the beauties of England, Drayton Polyolbion and Browne the delightful, unfinished Britannia's Pastorals, which incorporates a rambling narrative in his topography. The fairies play an important part in it. They are a little larger than Drayton's fairies, riding mice instead of insects, and a little more of folk fairies, having their fairy palace underground and to be seen through a self-bored stone as the Selkirkshire lassie saw Habetrot and her spinners. Like Habetrot, they too were great spinners and weavers, but do not seem to have been deformed by it:

   ...And with that he led

(With such a pace as lovers use to tread

By sleeping parents) by the hand the swain

Unto a pretty seat, near which these twain

By a round little hole had soon descried

A trim feat room, about a fathom wide,

As much in height, and twice as much in length,

Out of the main rock cut by artful strength.

The two-leav’d door was of the mother pearl,

Hinged and nail’d with gold. Full many a girl

Of the sweet fairy ligne, wrought in the loom

That fitted those rich hangings clad the room.

The two types of Robert Herrick's fairy writings may be sampled in an extract from Oberotis Feast and in The Fairies. The first is full of fanciful turns:

His kitling eyes begin to runne

Quite through the table, where he spies

The hornes of paperie Butterflies,

Of which he eates, and tastes a little

Of that we call the Cuckoes spittle.

A little Fuz-ball-pudding stands

By, yet not blessed by his hands,

That was to coorse; but then forthwith

He ventuers boldly on the pith

Of sugred Rush, and eates the sagge

And well bestrutted Bees sweet bagge:

Gladding his pallat with some store

Of Emits eggs; what wo’d he more?

The second little poem is straightforward folklore:

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.

Simon Steward was another of the fellowship, but only one poem of his was published, and that in a small pamphlet called A Description of the King and Queene of Fayries (1635). There are one or two pleasant touches in this piece, which commemorates a New Year's custom used in the human court as well as among the fairies, for it is called 'Oberon's Apparell: Description of the King of Fairies Clothes, brought to him on New Yeares Day in the morning, 1626, by his Queens chambermaids'. It is one of the most attractive of these little fairy poems:

His belt was made of Mirtle leaves

Pleyted in small Curious theaves

Besett with Amber Cowslip studdes

And fring’d a bout with daysie budds

In which his Bugle horne was hunge

Made of the Babling Echos tungue

Which sett unto his moone-burnt lippes

Hee windes, and then his fayries skipps.

Att that the lazie Duoane gan sounde

And each did trip a fayrie Rounde.

The eccentric but engaging Duchess of Newcastle pursued the theme of the littleness of fairies with her usual enthusiasm. Her theory was that the fairies were natural phenomena, much less spiritual than witches or ghosts. By the time she has finished with them they have no more spiritual qualities than microbes:

Who knowes, but in the Braine may dwell

Little small Fairies; who can tell?

And by their severall actions they may make

Those formes and figures, we for fancy take.

And when we sleep, those Visions, dreames we call,

By their industry may be raised all;

And all the objects, which through senses get,

Within the Braine they may in order set.

And some pack up, as Merchants do each thing,

Which out sometimes may to the Memory bring.

Thus, besides our owne imaginations,

Fairies in our braine beget inventions.

If so, the eye’s the sea they traffick in,

And on salt watry teares their ship doth swim.

But if a teare doth breake, as it doth fall,

Or wip’d away, they may a shipwrach call.

The diminishers have done their worst; no numinosity is left to these fairies any more.