“No wither’d witch shall here be seen,
No goblin lead their nightly crew;
The female fays shall haunt the green,
And dress thy grave with pearly dew.”
It seems, however, that they were also supposed to be malignant; but this, “it may be,” says Mr. Ritson, “was merely calumny, as being utterly inconsistent with their general character, which was singularly innocent and amiable.” Thus, when Imogen, in “Cymbeline” (ii. 2), prays on going to sleep,
“From fairies and the tempters of the night,
Guard me, beseech ye,”[42]
it must have been, says Mr. Ritson,[43] the incubus she was so afraid of.
Hamlet, too, notices this imputed malignity of the fairies (i. 1):
“Then no planet strikes,
Nor fairy takes, nor witch hath power to charm.”[44]
That the fairies, however, were fond of indulging in mischievous sport at the expense of mortals is beyond all doubt, the merry pranks of Puck or Robin Goodfellow fully illustrating this item of our fairy-lore. Thus, in “A Midsummer-Night’s Dream” (ii. 1) this playful fairy says:
“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 sometime 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 wither’d 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.”
A fairy, in another passage, asks Robin:
“Are you not he
That frights the maidens of the villagery,
*****
Mislead night-wanderers, laughing at their harm?”