[130] See Brand’s “Pop. Antiq.,” 1849, vol. iii. p. 400.
[131] Purchas, “His Pilgrimes” (1625, pt. i. lib. iii. p. 133), quoted by Mr. Aldis Wright in his “Notes to The Tempest,” 1875, p. 86.
[132] See [Puck as Will-o’-the-Wisp]; chapter on “Fairy-Lore.”
[133] See “Notes and Queries,” 5th series, vol. x. p. 499; Brand’s “Pop. Antiq.,” 1849, vol. iii. p. 410; Nares’s “Glossary,” vol. i. p. 309.
[134] A “fire-drake” appears to have been also an artificial firework, perhaps what is now called a serpent. Thus, in Middleton’s “Your Five Gallants” (1607):
“But, like fire-drakes,
Mounted a little, gave a crack and fell.”
[135] “New Illustrations of the Life, Studies, and Writings of Shakespeare,” vol. ii. p. 272.
[136] See Thoms’s “Notelets on Shakespeare,” p. 59.
[137] “Fairy Mythology,” edited by Hazlitt, 1875, p. 40.
[138] Among the many other names given to this appearance may be mentioned the following: “Will-a-wisp,” “Joan-in-the-wad,” “Jacket-a-wad,” “Peg-a-lantern,” “Elf-fire,” etc. A correspondent of “Notes and Queries” (5th series, vol. x. p. 499) says: “The wandering meteor of the moss or fell appears to have been personified as Jack, Gill, Joan, Will, or Robin, indifferently, according as the supposed spirit of the lamp seemed to the particular rustic mind to be a male or female apparition.” In Worcestershire it is called “Hob-and-his-lanthorn,” and “Hobany’s” or “Hobnedy’s Lanthorn.”