Drawn by the unctuous snail

The Dandelion Fairy, by Cicely Mary Barker

[Image source: https://flowerfairies.com/category/collections/spring/ .]

In such employments, as rearing the drooping flower, and arranging the disordered chamber, the Fairies of South Britain gradually lost the harsher character of the dwarfs, or elves. Their choral dances were enlivened by the introduction of the merry goblin Puck, for whose freakish pranks they exchanged their original mischievous propensities. The Fairies of Shakespeare, Drayton, and Mennis, therefore, at first exquisite fancy portraits, may be considered as having finally operated a change in the original which gave them birth.

(Scott, The Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border (1802))

Yes, I get it, and this was a line of winsome fairy evolution that proliferated wildly in the century after Scott wrote those words. It issued, for instance, in the Langs' Fairy Books and in Cicely Mary Barker's lovely Flower Fairies. In the century after Scott, those once-daemonic spirits completed their long journey to the nursery,  as C.S. Lewis probably remarked. 

The development in A Midsummer Night's Dream and in Drayton's Nymphidia was also a poetic escape of fancy crossed with nascent science, with huge influence on later poetry and across all the arts. 

But who's ever heard of  "Mennis"? The name meant nothing to me. 

So after an hour of café research, to which Al contributed nothing, I arrived at Vice-Admiral Sir John Mennes or Mennis (1599 - 1671), and the poem that Scott was probably thinking of, "King Oberon's Apparell", which appeared in Musarum Deliciae, or The Muses Recreation  (1656). It's somewhat unrepresentative of this crudely witty collection of drolleries by Mennis and his friend Dr James Smith, but it's a poem that, I hope you'll agree, was well worth copying out. 

KING OBERON'S APPARELL

When the monthly horned queen

Grew jealous, that the stars had seen

Her rising from Endimions armes,

In rage, she throws her misty charmes

Into the bosome of the night,

To dim their curious prying light. 

Then did the dwarfish faery elves 

(Having first attir'd themselves)

Prepare to dresse their Oberon king

In highest robes for revelling.

In a cobweb shirt, more thin

Then ever spider since could spin,

Bleach'd by the whitenesse of the snow,

As the stormy windes did blow

It in the vast and freezing aire;

No shirt halfe so fine, so faire.

    A rich wastcoat they did bring

Made of the trout-flies gilded wing,

At that his Elveship 'gan to fret,

Swearing it would make him sweat,

Even with its weight, and needs would wear

His wastcoat wove of downy haire,

New shaven from an Eunuch's chin;

That pleas'd him well, 'twas wondrous thin.

    The out-side of his doublet was

Made of the four-leav'd true-love grasse,

On which was set so fine a glosse,

By the oyle of crispy mosse;

That through a mist, and starry light,

It made a rainbow every night.

On every seam, there was a lace

Drawn by the unctuous snailes slow trace;

To it, the purest silver thread

Compar'd, did look like dull pale lead.

    Each button was a sparkling eye

Ta'ne from the speckled adders frye,

Which in a gloomy night, and dark,

Twinckled like a fiery spark: 

And, for coolnesse, next his skin,

'Twas with white poppy lin'd within.

    His breeches of that fleece were wrought,

Which from Colchos Jason brought;

Spun into so fine a yarne,

That mortals might it not discerne;

Wove by Arachne, in her loom,

Just before she had her doom;

Dy'd crimson with a maidens blush,

And lyn'd with dandelyon push.

    A rich mantle he did wear,

Made of tinsel gossamere,

Be-starred over with a few

Dyamond drops of morning dew.

    His cap was all of ladies love,

So passing light, that it did move,

If any humming gnat or fly

But buzz'd the ayre, in passing by;

About it was a wreath of pearle,

Drop'd from the eyes of some poor girle 

Pinch'd, because she had forgot

To leave faire water in the pot.

And for feather, he did weare 

Old Nisus fatall purple haire.

    The sword they girded on his thigh,

Was smallest blade of finest rye.

    A paire of buskins they did bring

Of the cow-ladyes corall wing;

Powder'd o're with spots of jet,

And lin'd with purple-violet.

    His belt was made of mirtle leaves,

Plaited in small curious threaves,

Beset with amber cowslip studds,

And fring'd about with daizy budds,

In which his bugle horne was hung,

Made of the babbling Ecchoes tongue;

Which set unto his moon-burn'd lip,

He windes, and then his faeries skip:

At that, the lazy dawn 'gan sound,

And each did trip a faery round.

.....

[Poem source: https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=uc1.b3539530&seq=89 .]

four-leaved true-love grasse: Herb-paris (Paris quadrifolia).

dandelyon push: a typo for "plush", I'm guessing.

Nisus: King Nisos of Megara, whose purple lock of hair kept him safe from harm, until cut off by his daughter Scylla (who has fallen in love with his enemy Minos). The story is in Book 8 of Ovid's Metamorphoses: https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Metamorphoses_(tr._Garth,_Dryden,_et_al.)/Book_VIII .

Sir John Mennis, portrait by Anthony van Dyck.

[Image source: Wikipedia .]