The French word contrecarrer has the same import.
II.i.36 (24,4)
[Skim milk; and sometimes labour in the quern,
And bootless make the breathless huswife churn]
The sense of these lines is confused. Are not you he, says the fairy, that fright the country girls. that skim milk, work in the hand-mill, and make the tired dairy-woman churn without effect? The mention of the mill seem out of place, for she is not now telling the good but the evil that he does. I would regulate the lines thus:
And sometimes make the breathless housewife churn Skim milk, and bootless labour in the quern.
Or by a simple transposition of the lines;
And bootless, make the breathless housewife churn Skim milk, and sometimes labour in the quern.
Yet there is no necessity of alteration. (see 1765, I,106,1)
II.i.40 (24,6) [Those that Hobgoblin call you, and sweet Puck, You do their work] To those traditionary opinions Milton has reference in L'Allegro,
Then to the spicy nut-brown ale,
With stories told of many a feat.
How Fairy Mab the junkets eat;
She was pinch'd and pull'd she said.
And he by Frier's lapthorp led;
Tells how the drudging goblin sweat
To earn his cream-bowl duly set,
When in one night ere glimpse of morn
His shadowy flail had thresh'd the corn
Which ten day-labourers could not end.
Then lies him down the lubber fiend.