As the merry spirit, Puck, is so prominent an actor in the scenes forming our next division, this may be deemed no unfitting place for the consideration of his various appellations; such as Puck, Robin Good-fellow, Robin Hood, Hobgoblin.
Puck is evidently the same with the old word Pouke,[361] the original meaning of which would seem to be devil, demon, or evil spirit. We first meet with it in the Vision of Piers Ploughman, where it undoubtedly signifies 'the grand adversary of God and man.'
When, in this poem,[362] the Seer beholds Abraham, the personification of Faith, with his "wide clothes," within which lay a Lazar,
Amonges patriarkes and prophetes,
Pleying togideres,
and asks him what was there,
| Loo! quod he, and leet me see. | Ne no buyrn be oure borgh, |
| Lord mercy! I seide; | Ne bringe us from his daunger; |
| This is a present of muche pris, | Out of the poukes pondfold |
| What prynce shal it have? | No maynprise may us fecche, |
| It is a precious present, quod he, | Til he come that I carpe of, |
| Ac the pouke it hath attached, | Crist is his name, |
| And me theremyde, quod that man, | That shall delivere us som day |
| May no wed us quyte, | Out of the develes power. |
Golding also must have understood Pooke in the sense of devil, when in the ninth book of his translation of Ovid, unauthorised however by the original, he applies it to the Chimæra,
The country where Chymæra, that same pooke
Hath goatish body, lion's head and brist, and dragon's tayle.
Spenser employs the word, and he clearly distinguishes it from hob-goblin:
Ne let housefires nor lightnings helpless harms,
Ne let the pouke[363] nor other evil sprites,
Ne let mischievous witches with their charms,
Ne let hob-goblins, names whose sense we see not,
Fray us with things that be not.—Epithalamion, v. 340.