[415] [Jonson meant the Dame to represent Ate or the goddess of Mischief.]
XXIV.
ROBIN GOOD-FELLOW,
Alias Pucke, alias Hobgoblin, in the creed of ancient superstition, was a kind of merry sprite, whose character and atchievements are recorded in this ballad, and in those well-known lines of Milton's L'Allegro, which the antiquarian Peck supposes to be owing to it:
"Tells how the drudging Goblin swet
To earn his creame-bowle duly set;
When in one night ere glimpse of morne,
His shadowy flail hath thresh'd the corn
That ten day-labourers could not end;
Then lies him down the lubber fiend,
And stretch'd out all the chimneys length,
Basks at the fire his hairy strength,
And crop-full out of doors he flings,
Ere the first cock his matins rings."
The reader will observe that our simple ancestors had reduced all these whimsies to a kind of system, as regular, and perhaps more consistent, than many parts of classic mythology: a proof of the extensive influence and vast antiquity of these superstitions. Mankind, and especially the common people, could not every where have been so unanimously agreed concerning these arbitrary notions, if they had not prevailed among them for many ages. Indeed, a learned friend in Wales assures the Editor, that the existence of Fairies and Goblins is alluded to by the most ancient British Bards, who mention them under various names, one of the most common of which signifies, The spirits of the mountains. See also Preface to Song XXV.
This song, which Peck attributes to Ben Jonson, (tho' it is not found among his works) is chiefly printed from an ancient black-letter copy in the British Museum. It seems to have been originally intended for some Masque.
It is intitled, in the old black-letter copies, The mad merry Prankes of Robin Goodfellow. To the tune of Dulcina, &c. (See No. XIII. above.)
To one, if not more of the old copies, are prefixed two wooden cuts, said to be taken from Bulwer's Artificial Changeling, &c., which, as they seem to correspond with the notions then entertained of the whimsical appearances of this fantastic spirit, and perhaps were copied in the dresses in which he was formerly exhibited on the stage, are, to gratify the curious, engraven below.