ABSTRACT
The comic tale of the rivers Fanchin and Molanna in the Cantos of Mutabilitie (FQ VII vi 38-55) is inserted by the narrator to explain why Arlo Hill changed from being ‘the best and fairest Hill’ in the range of hills near Spenser’s Kilcolman Castle in Ireland to ‘the most unpleasant, and most ill.’ In some ways similar to the etiological tale of Bregog and Mulla in Colin Clout (104-55), this tells how the wood god Faunus manages to spy on Diana by bribing her nymph Molanna by an offer of union with her beloved Fanchin. Faunus sees the naked goddess, but reveals himself by his sudden, gross laughter at the sight of her ‘some-what’ For his indiscretion, he is punished and pursued by the angry goddess and her nymphs; Diana, ‘full of indignation,’ decides to abandon the ‘delicious brooke’ and surrounding woods, leaving the area to ‘Wolves and Thieves.’ The tale foreshadows Nature’s judgment of Mutabilitie, who attacks the moon goddess Cynthia. Both violate the cosmic order: Mutabilitie desires ‘To see that [what] mortall eyes have never seene’ (vi 32); Faunus forbiddenly gazes on Diana’s ‘lovely limbes’ (45).
