In the song printed by Peck, he concludes every stanza with Ho, ho, ho!
“If that the bowle of curds and creame were not duly set out for Robin Goodfellow, the frier, and Sisse the dairymaid, why, then, either the pottage was so burnt to next day in the pot, or the cheeses would not curdle, or the butter would not come, or the ale in the fat never would have good head. But if a Peter-penny, or an housle-egge were behind, or a patch of tythe unpaid, then ’ware of bull-beggars, spirits,” etc.
This frolicsome spirit thus describes himself in Jonson’s masque of Love Restored: “Robin Goodfellow, he that sweeps the hearth and the house clean, riddles for the country maids, and does all their other drudgery, while they are at hot-cockles; one that has conversed with your court spirits ere now.” Having recounted several ineffectual attempts he had made to gain admittance, he adds: “In this despair, when all invention and translation too failed me, I e’en went back and stuck to this shape you see me in of mine own, with my broom and my canles, and came on confidently.” The mention of his broom reminds us of a passage in another play, Midsummer Night’s Dream, where he tells the audience—
“I am sent with broom before,
To sweep the dust behind the door.”
He is likewise one of the dramatis personæ in the old play of Wily Beguiled, in which he says—
“Tush! fear not the dodge. I’ll rather put on my flashing red nose, and my flaming face, and come wrap’d in a calf-skin, and cry Bo, bo! I’ll pay the scholar, I warrant thee.”—(Harsnet’s Declaration, London, 1604, 4to.) His character, however, in this piece, is so diabolical, and so different from anything one could expect in Robin Good-fellow, that it is unworthy of further quotation.
He appears, likewise, in another, entitled Grim, the Collier of Croydon, in which he enters “in a suit of leather close to his body; his face and hands coloured russet colour, with a flail.”
He is here, too, in most respects, the same strange and diabolical personage that he is represented in Wily Beguiled, only there is a single passage which reminds us of his old habits:—
“When as I list in this transform’d disguise
I’ll fright the country people as I pass;
And sometimes turn me to some other form,
And so delude them with fantastic shows,
But woe betide the silly dairymaids,
For I shall fleet their cream-bowls night by night.”
In another scene he enters while some of the other characters are at a bowl of cream, upon which he says—