(She Speaks of Death ) Mab Sometime she driveth o’er a soldier’s neck, And then dreams he of cutting foreign throats, Of breaches, ambuscadoes, Spanish blades, Of healths five-fathom deep; and then anon Drums in his ear, at which he starts and wakes, And being thus frighted swears a prayer or two And sleeps again This is that very Mab That plaits the manes of horses in the night, And bakes the elflocks in foul sluttish hairs, Which once untangled, much misfortune bodes —William Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet (I iv.) The great powers of the fey kingdoms sometimes take the form of shining courtiers and glorious lords, resplendent in cloaks of leaves and shining armor, their white bows as deadly as any lance or spear Others, no less powerful, never show themselves in a procession or revelry in the deep woods, though everyone knows their names Likely, these darker fey owe their fealty to Queen Mab h I saw Mab’s Book of Judgment— Its clasps were iron and stone, Its leaves were mammoth ivory, Its boards were mammoth bone,— Hid in her seaside mountains, Forgotten or unkept, Beneath its mighty covers Her wrath against me slept —Nicholas Vachel Lindsay, “Queen Mab in the Village” Mab’s name is an ancient one, and her voice is well known at the fey courts She speaks always of death, gloom, and the slow passing away of the fey worlds Since parting from Manitou (famed for his many halffey prodigy), she has inveighed against the dangers of breeding half-witted half-breeds Her lost throne gnaws at her spirit, and she alternately rages and broods over what she has lost Unlike most fey, Mab is consumed by regret and burdened by time, which makes her unwelcome company at the courts of the bright and shining fey lords Nonetheless, she is one of the great among the fey, and few dare tell her Queen Mab has existed so long as the night sky has frightened the creatures of the daytime, and hers was honored as the foremost of the fey courts for long