In Normandy it is considered sufficient to make the compact binding for the acceptance to be simply a verbal one; but in Lancashire the formal parchment deed, with its signatures in blood, is indispensable.
3.
Old Isaac, it would seem, was not disappointed when he came to make use of his handful of money, and probably, therefore, he had spent it before he told the story, for in all instances where the fairies are recorded as rewarding mortals with money, any revelation as to its source is invariably followed by the gift being turned to bits of paper or leaves.
4.
Although there appears to have been some little confusion in the mind of the old farmer as to the rank in the world of faerie held by his little benefactor, he seems to have designated him correctly, for although the general idea of Puck is that of a mere mischief-loving and mischief-working sprite, such as is painted by Drayton, Shakspere credits Puck not only with wanton playfulness, but also with industry, for in the second act of the 'Midsummer Night's Dream,' the fairy, addressing the sprite, says:
'Those that hobgoblin call you, and sweet Puck,
You do their work.'
Shakspere and Ben Jonson, however, agree in making Oberon King of the Fairies—a king, too, with a stately presence, and far above showing an interest in a farmer's fields. Under any circumstances one is not prepared to find Puck of royal estate, and doubtless the labouring spirit of our story was simply one of those goblins who, according to the author of the Anatomy of Melancholy, would 'grind corn for a mess of milk, cut wood, or do any manner of nursery work'—a Robin Goodfellow merely, the 'lubber fiend' of Milton, the Bwbach or household fairy of Wales. Lancashire had many such. Stories of beings rejoicing in the name of Hobthrust or Throbthrush, but in all other respects closely resembling the fairy king of the foregoing tradition, still are told by the farm-house fires in Furness, in South-East Lancashire, and in the Fylde country. Rewarded night after night with a supply of oatmeal porridge—strange relic, probably, of the old libations to the gods—they toiled at the churn till daybreak. A Furness legend chronicles how a farmer, whose house was the favourite resting-place of one of these visitors, one evening, when threatening clouds were gathering, wished that he had the harvest carted. Next morning the work was found done, but a horse was found dead in the stable, Hob having been unsparing. As the day was a beautiful one, the farmer did not appreciate the housing as he ought to have done, and testily wished that Hob was in the mill-dam. A few hours afterwards, not Hob, but the grain was found there.
'Crawshaws in Berwickshire,' says the author of the Popular Rhymes of Berwickshire, 'was once the abode of an industrious Brownie, who both saved the corn and thrashed it for several seasons. At length, after one harvest, some person thoughtlessly remarked that the corn was not well mowed or piled up in the barn. The sprite took offence at this, and the next night threw the whole of the corn over the Raven Crag, a precipice about two miles off, muttering—
"It's no weel mowed! It's no weel mowed!
Then it's ne'er be mowed by me again.
I'll scatter it o'er the Raven stone,
And they'll hae some wark ere it's mowed again."'
The North Lancashire Hobthrusts, however, do not seem to have been made to disappear by man's ingratitude, but, like the Irish Cluricaun and the Scotch Brownie, were to be driven away by kindness. In one instance, a tailor, for whom a Hobthrust had done some work, gratefully made him a coat and hood for winter wear, and in the night the workman was heard bidding farewell to his old quarters—