Mab
Also called Queen Mab, Mabb, Fairies' Midwife.
Mab is the diminutive fairy queen fixed by English Renaissance poetry and drama, a figure whose vivid literary career runs ahead of, and partly obscures, an older and much sparser folk tradition of a fairy queen bearing the name.
At a glance
- Tradition
- English folklore
- Region
- England (place of origin)
- Trait family
- The Water-Beckoners
Near this figure
Traits
Read from the figure's description, which a model wrote. Open "why" for the sentence a trait came from.
Utility powers
- Night flight
why
In her literary form Mab travels by night in a coach built from insect and plant materials — a hazelnut shell for the body, spider-web tracings, insect legs for spokes — drawn by a tiny team and driven by a gnat, passing over the faces of sleepers and shaping their dreams according to what each dreamer already wants or fears: courtship for lovers, fees for lawyers, favor for courtiers.
Curses
- Dream manipulation
why
In her literary form Mab travels by night in a coach built from insect and plant materials — a hazelnut shell for the body, spider-web tracings, insect legs for spokes — drawn by a tiny team and driven by a gnat, passing over the faces of sleepers and shaping their dreams according to what each dreamer already wants or fears: courtship for lovers, fees for lawyers, favor for courtiers.
- Mischief pranks
why
Popular chapbook and dialect use gave her a rougher job as well: blamed for knotting horses' manes into 'elf-locks' overnight and for pinching untidy servants black and blue, folding her into the older fairy habit of policing household cleanliness through nighttime punishment. The written record for Mab tilts almost entirely toward this literary cluster: a handful of Elizabethan and Jacobean poets and playwrights fixed her appearance, retinue, and vehicle in terms specific enough that later illustrators, chapbook writers, and folklorists working backward from those texts had little independent material to check against them.
Roles
Judged from the works' own entries, not from the description. Carries: the figure holds the role. Meets: the role is in its stories, held by something it meets.
- Queen carries both readings
5 citations
- Carol Rose, Spirits, Fairies, Leprechauns, and Goblins, s.v. "Mab."
- Katharine Briggs, An Encyclopedia of Fairies, s.v. "Mab."
- Patricia Monaghan, The Encyclopedia of Celtic Mythology and Folklore, p. 6.
- Thomas Keightley, The Fairy Mythology.
- Wirt Sikes, British Goblins.
- Trickster carries both readings
5 citations
- Carol Rose, Spirits, Fairies, Leprechauns, and Goblins, s.v. "Mab."
- Katharine Briggs, An Encyclopedia of Fairies, s.v. "Mab."
- Patricia Monaghan, The Encyclopedia of Celtic Mythology and Folklore, p. 6.
- Thomas Keightley, The Fairy Mythology.
- Wirt Sikes, British Goblins.