These terms are also distinguished in the poem named The Scourge of Venus:
And that they may perceive the heavens frown,
The poukes and goblins pull the coverings down.
In Ben Jonson's play of The Devil is an Ass, the unlucky fiend who gives origin to its name is called Pug, and in the same author's Sad Shepherd the personage named Puck-hairy is, as Gifford justly observes, "not the Fairy or Oriental Puck, though often confounded with him."[364] In truth, it is first in Shakespeare that we find Puck confounded with the House-spirit, and having those traits of character which are now regarded as his very essence, and have caused his name Pug to be given to the agile mischievous monkey, and to a kind of little dog.
We will now discuss the origin of this far-famed appellation and its derivation.
In the Slavonic tongues, which are akin to the Teutonic, Bôg is God, and there are sleights of etymology which would identify the two terms; the Icelandic Puki is an evil spirit, and such we have seen was the English Pouke, which easily became Puck, Pug, and Bug; finally, in Friesland the Kobold is called Puk, and in old German we meet with Putz or Butz as the name of a being not unlike the original English Puck.[365] The Devonshire fairies are called Pixies, and the Irish have their Pooka, and the Welsh their Pwcca, both derived from Pouke or Puck. From Bug comes the Scottish Bogle, (which Gawin Douglas expressly distinguishes from the Brownie) and the Yorkshire Boggart.[366] The Swedish language has the terms spöka, spöke; the Danish spöge, spögelse, the German, spuken, spuk, all used of spirits or ghosts, and their apparitions. Perhaps the Scottish pawkey, sly, knowing, may belong to the same family of words. Akin to Bogle was the old English term Puckle, noticed above, which is still retained in the sense of mischievous, as in Peregrine Pickle and Little Pickle. It has been conjectured[367] that Picklehäring, the German term for zany or merry-andrew, may have been properly Picklehärin, i.e. the hairy sprite, answering to Jonson's Puck-hairy, and that he may have worn a vesture of hair or leaves to be rough like the Brownie and kindred beings.
From Bug also come Bugbear, and Bugleboo, or Bugaboo. They owe their origin probably to the Ho! Ho! Ho! given to Puck or Robin Goodfellow, as it was to the Devil (i.e., Pouke) in the Mysteries. Bull-beggar may be only a corruption of Bugbear.[368]
The following passage from a writer of the present day proves that in some places the idea of Puck as a spirit haunting the woods and fields is still retained. "The peasantry," says Mr. Allies,[369] "of Alfrick and those parts of Worcestershire, say that they are sometimes what they call Poake-ledden, that is, that they are occasionally waylaid in the night by a mischievous sprite whom they call Poake, who leads them into ditches, bogs, pools, and other such scrapes, and then sets up a loud laugh and leaves them quite bewildered in the lurch." This is what in Devon is called being Pixy-led. We may observe the likeness here to the Puck of Shakspeare and Drayton, who were both natives of the adjoining county.
A further proof perhaps of Puck's rural and extern character is the following rather trifling circumstance. An old name of the fungus named puffball is puckfist, which is plainly Puck's-fist, and not puff-fist as Nares conjectured; for its Irish name is Cos-a-Phooka, or Pooka's-foot, i.e., Puck's-foot. We will add by the way, that the Anglo-Saxon
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