Of paines and harmes of ev’rie other sort
We tast, onelie no death we nature ow.”
Beaumont and Fletcher, in The Faithful Shepherdess, describe—
“A virtuous well, about whose flow’ry banks
The nimble-footed fairies dance their rounds,
By the pale moonshine, dipping oftentimes
Their stolen children, so to make ’em free
From dying flesh, and dull mortality.”
Puck, alias Robin Goodfellow, is the most active and extraordinary fellow of a fairy that we anywhere meet with, and it is believed we find him nowhere but in our own country, and, peradventure also, only in the South. Spenser, it would seem, is the first that alludes to his name of Puck:—
“Ne let the Pouke, nor other evill spright,
Ne let Hob-goblins, names whose sense we see not,
Fray us with things that be not.”
“In our childhood,” says Reginald Scot, “our mothers’ maids have so terrified us with an oughe divell having hornes on his head, fier in his mouth, and a taile, eies like a bason, fanges like a dog, clawes like a beare, a skin like a niger, and a voice roaring like a lion, whereby we start and are afraid when we heare one crie Bough! and they have so fraied us with bull-beggers, spirits, witches, urchens, elves, hags, fairies, satyrs, pans, sylens, Kit with the cansticke, tritons, centaurs, dwarfes, giants, imps, calcars, conjurors, nymphes, changling, Incubus, Robin Goodfellow, the spoorne, the mare, the man in the oke, the hell wain, the fier drake, the puckle, Tom Thombe, Hob gobblin, Tom Tumbler, boneles, and such other bugs, that we are afraid of our owne shadowes.”—(Discoverie of Witchcraft, London, 1584, 4to, p. 153.) “And know you this by the waie,” he says, “that heretofore Robin Goodfellow and Hob goblin were as terrible, and also as credible, to the people as hags and witches be now.... And in truth, they that mainteine walking spirits have no reason to denie Robin Goodfellow, upon whom there hath gone as manie and as credible tales as upon witches, saving that it hath not pleased the translators of the Bible to call spirits by the name of Robin Goodfellow.”—(P. 131.)
“Your grandams’ maides,” says he, “were woont to set a boll of milke before Incubus and his cousine Robin Goodfellow for grinding of malt or mustard, and sweeping the house at midnight; and you have also heard that he would chafe exceedingly if the maid or good-wife of the house, having compassion of his naked state, laid anie clothes for him, besides his messe of white bread and milke, which was his standing fee. For in that case he saith, What have we here?
“Hemton, hamton,
Here will I never more tread nor stampen.”
(Discoverie of Witchcraft, p. 85.)