"fairy," OED 4a

[Jonathan Lighter]

OED offers this as its primary citation of _fairy_, a kind of elf-like supernatural being :

  1393 J. Gower _Confessio Amantis_ II. 371 And as he were a fairie.

  J. R. R. Tolkien challenged this as an exemplification of the sense so long ago as 1938. In his well-known essay "Tree and Leaf," Tolkien wrote,

  "But this Gower did not say. He wrote _as he were of faerie_, 'as if he were come from Faerie.'"  Tolkien then quotes the passage at length in Middle English.

  The online OED hasn't corrected this error, if error it be.

  Question: Be this an error ?  Or be Tolkien in error ?

  JL


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