To fright me with your sprites: you're powerful at it.
Mam. There was a man,——
Her. Nay, come, sit down; then on.
Mam. Dwelt by a church-yard;—I will tell it softly;
Yon crickets shall not hear it.
Her. Come on then,
And give't in mine ear."[316:A]
For the particulars forming the subject-matter of these tales, and for their effect on the hearers, we must have recourse to writers contemporary with the bard, whose object it was to censure or detail these legendary wonders. Thus Lavaterus, who wrote a book De Spectris, in 1570, which was translated into English in 1572, remarks that "if when men sit at the table, mention be made of spirits and elves, many times wemen and children are so afrayde that they dare scarce go out of dores alone, least they should meete wyth some evyl thing: and if they chaunce to heare any kinde of noise, by and by they thinke there are some spirits behynde them:" and again in a subsequent page, "simple foolish men—imagine that there be certayne elves or fairies of the earth, and tell many straunge and marvellous tales of them, which they have heard of their grandmothers and mothers, howe they have appeared unto those of the
house, have done service, have rocked the cradell, and (which is a signe of good luck) do continually tary in the house."[317:A] He has the good sense, however, to reprobate the then general custom, a practice which has more or less prevailed even to our own times, of frightening children by stories and assumed appearances of this kind. "It is a common custome," he observes, "in many places, that at a certaine of time the yeare, one with a nette or visarde on his face maketh Children afrayde, to the ende that ever after they should laboure and be obediente to their Parentes: afterward they tel them that those which they saw, were Bugs, Witches, and Hagges, which thing they verily believe, and are commonly miserablie afrayde. How be it, it is not expedient so to terrifie Children. For sometimes through great feare they fall into dangerous diseases, and in the nyght crye out, when they are fast asleep. Salomon teacheth us to chasten children with the rod, and so to make them stand in awe: he doth not say, we must beare them in hande they shall be devoured of Bugges, Hags of the night, and such lyke monsters."[317:B] But it is to Reginald Scot that we are indebted for the most curious and extensive enumeration of these fables which haunted our progenitors from the cradle to the grave. "In our childhood," says he, "our mother's maids have so terrified us with an ouglie divell having hornes on his head, fier in his mouth, and a taile in his breech, eies like a bason, fanges like a dog, clawes like a beare, a skin like a Niger, and a voice roaring like a lion, whereby we start and are afraid when we heare one crie Bough: and they have so fraid us with bull-beggers, spirits, witches, urchens, elves, hags, fairies, satyrs, pans, faunes, syrens, kit with the can'sticke, tritons, centaurs, dwarfes, giants, imps, calcars, conjurors, nymphes, changlings, Incubus, Robin good-fellowe, the spoorne,
the mare, the man in the oke, the hell-waine, the fierdrake, the puckle Tom thombe, hob gobblin, Tom tumbler, boneless, and such other bugs, that we are afraid of our own shadowes: in so much as some never feare the divell, but in a darke night; and then a polled sheepe is a perillous beast, and manie times is taken for our father's soule, speciallie in a churchyard, where a right hardie man heretofore scant durst passe by night, but his haire would stand upright."[318:A]