"Do you take these for fabulous stories?" says Balbus. "Is not the temple built by Posthumius in honour of Castor and Pollux, to be seen in the Forum? Is not the decree of the senate concerning Vatienus still subsisting?... Ought not such authorities to move you?"
"You oppose me," replies Cotta, "with stories, but I ask reasons of you."[29]
It would seem then that the parallelism is perfect, even to the building of temples, and the official recognition of the truth of the event.
Of the individual personages of ancient mythology very few traces remain in England, and these principally belong to the fairy belief. This superstition, of which the analogue is found in the Nymphs, Oreads, Dryads, Naiads, Lemoniads, and Nerieds, of ancient Greece and Rome, is still prevalent in certain districts of this country; and the extinction of the general belief, among the lower orders, of one of the most noted of the personages which are met with in fairy lore, the hobgoblin, is comparatively of recent date. The name is, however, still familiar, and in use for certain vague manifestations of the supernatural, although the actual signification of the term is, to a great extent, lost sight of.
The hobgoblin is worthy of notice not only for its intrinsic interest, but also for the illustration which it affords of the intimate relationship which is often found to exist between the superstitions of different and even far distant nations.
This spirit, in his palmy days, was that fairy which attached itself to houses, and the neighbourhood of dwellings and churches (for even sacred edifices were not exempted from its influence). In disposition it was mischievous and sportive, although it often deigned, during the night, to perform many menial offices, and whatsoever building it attached itself to prospered. It was apt to take offence, particularly if, as a reward, money or clothes were placed for it in that part of the house it most frequented; but it was partial to cream, or some delicately prepared eatable, and any housewife who was careful to conciliate the spirit by administering to this taste, was certain to be well rewarded. As might be anticipated, it was a favourite character with poets, and descriptions of its propensities and actions abound. Thus, in the "Midsummer Night's Dream" (Act II, Sc. 1), one of the Fairies is represented as addressing this spirit, and saying:—
"Either I mistake your shape and making quite,
Or else you are that shrewd and knavish sprite
Called Robin Goodfellow. Are you not he
That frights the maidens of the villagery,
Skims milk, and labours in the quern,
And bootless makes the breathless housewife churn;
And sometimes makes the drink to bear no barm;
Misleads night-wanderers, laughing at their harm?
Those that Hobgoblin call you and sweet Puck,
You do their work and they shall have good luck,
Are not you he?
Puck. Thou speakest aright,
I am that merry wanderer of the night.
I jest to Oberon, and make him smile,
When I a fat and bean-fed horse beguile,
Neighing in likeness of a filly-foal;
And sometimes lurk I in a gossip's bowl,
In very likeness of a roasted crab,
And when she drinks against her lips I bob,
And on her withered dewlap pour the ale.
The wisest aunt telling the saddest tale,
Sometime for three-foot stool mistaketh me;
Then slip I from her bum, down topples she,
And tailor cries, and falls into a cough;
And then the whole quire hold their hips and loffe,
And waxen in their mirth, and reeze, and swear
A merrier hour was never wasted there."
Milton, in the "L'Allegro," writes of him in a different office, and—