“Out of the poukes pondfold
No maynprise may us fecche.”
The Icelandic puki is the same word, and in Friesland and Jutland the domestic spirit is called Puk by the peasantry. In Devonshire, Piskey is the name for a fairy, with which we may compare the Cornish Pixey. In Worcestershire, too, we read how the peasantry are occasionally “poake-ledden,” that is, misled by a mischievous spirit called poake. And, according to Grose’s “Provincial Glossary,” in Hampshire they give the name of Colt-pixey to a supposed spirit or fairy, which, in the shape of a horse, neighs, and misleads horses into bogs. The Irish, again, have their Pooka,[8] and the Welsh their Pwcca—both words derived from Pouke or Puck. Mr. Keightley[9] thinks, also, that the Scottish pawkey, sly, knowing, may belong to the same list of words. It is evident, then, that the term Puck was in bygone years extensively applied to the fairy race, an appellation still found in the west of England. Referring to its use in Wales, “there is a Welsh tradition to the effect that Shakespeare received his knowledge of the Cambrian fairies from his friend Richard Price, son of Sir John Price, of the Priory of Brecon.” It is even claimed that Cwm Pwcca, or Puck Valley, a part of the romantic glen of the Clydach, in Breconshire, is the original scene of the “Midsummer-Night’s Dream.”[10]
Another of Puck’s names was Robin Goodfellow, and one of the most valuable illustrations we have of the “Midsummer-Night’s Dream” is a black-letter tract published in London, 1628, under the title of “Robin Goodfellow: His Mad Pranks, and Merry Jests, full of honest mirth, and is a fit medicine for melancholy.”[11] Mr. Halliwell-Phillipps,[12] speaking of Robin Goodfellow, says, “there can be no doubt that in the time of Shakespeare the fairies held a more prominent position in our popular literature than can be now concluded from the pieces on the subject that have descended to us.” The author of “Tarlton’s News out of Purgatory,” printed in 1590, assures us that Robin Goodfellow was “famosed in every old wives chronicle for his mad merry pranks;” and we learn from “Henslowe’s Diary” that Chettle was the writer of a drama on the adventures of that “merry wanderer of the night.” These have disappeared; and time has dealt so harshly with the memory of poor Robin that we might almost imagine his spirit was still leading us astray over massive volumes of antiquity, in a delusive search after documents forever lost; or, rather, perhaps, it is his punishment for the useless journeys he has given our ancestors, misleading night-wanderers, “and laughing at their harm.”[13] He is mentioned by Drayton in his “Nymphidia:”
“He meeteth Puck, which most men call
Hob-goblin, and on him doth fall,” etc.,
“hob being the familiar or diminutive form of Robert and Robin, so that Hobgoblin is equivalent to Robin the Goblin. i. e., Robin Goodfellow.”[14] Burton, in his “Anatomy of Melancholy,” alludes to him thus: “A bigger kinde there is of them, called with us hobgoblins and Robin Goodfellows, that would, in superstitious times, grinde corne for a mess of milk, cut wood, or do any manner of drudgery work.” Under his name of Robin Goodfellow, Puck is well characterized in Jonson’s masque of “Love Restored.”[15]
Another epithet applied to Puck is “Lob,” as in the “Midsummer-Night’s Dream” (ii. 1), where he is addressed by the fairy as
“Thou lob of spirits.”[16]
With this we may compare the “lubber-fiend” of Milton, and the following in Beaumont and Fletcher’s “Knight of the Burning Pestle” (iii. 4): “There is a pretty tale of a witch that had the devil’s mark about her, that had a giant to be her son, that was called Lob-lye-by-the-Fire.” Grimm[17] mentions a spirit, named the “Good Lubber,” to whom the bones of animals used to be offered at Manseld, in Germany. Once more, the phrase of “being in,” or “getting into Lob’s pound,” is easy of explanation, presuming Lob to be a fairy epithet—the term being equivalent to Poake-ledden or Pixy-led.[18] In “Hudibras” this term is employed as a name for the stocks in which the knight puts Crowdero:
“Crowdero, whom in irons bound,
Thou basely threw’st into Lob’s pound.”
It occurs, also, in Massinger’s “Duke of Milan” (iii. 2), where it means “behind the arras:”