The Fairy Mythology Illustrative of the Romance and...

A widow and her son, a little boy, lived together in a cottage in or near the village of Rothley, Northumberland. One winter's evening the child refused to go to bed with his mother, as he wished to sit up for a while longer, "for," said he, "I am not sleepy." The mother finding remonstrance in vain, at last told him that if he sat up by himself the faries would most certainly come and take him away. The boy laughed as his mother went to bed, leaving him sitting by the fire; he had not been there long, watching the fire and enjoying its cheerful warmth, till a beautiful little figure, about the size of a child's doll, descended the chimney and alighted on the hearth! The little fellow was somewhat startled at first, but its prepossessing smile as it paced to and fro before him soon overcame his fears, and he inquired familiarly, "What do they ca' thou?" "Ainsel," answered the little thing haughtily, at the same time retorting the question, "And what do they ca' thou?" "My ainsel'," answered the boy; and they commenced playing together like two children newly acquainted. Their gambols continued quite innocently until the fire began to grow dim; the boy then took up the poker to stir it, when a hot cinder accidently fell upon the foot of his playmate; her tiny voice was instantly raised to a most terrific roar, and the boy had scarcely time to crouch into the bed behind his mother, before the voice of the old fary-mother was heard shouting, "Who's done it?

Such is the sum of what we have been able to collect respecting the popular fairy-lore of England, the largest and most complete collection that, to our knowledge, has ever been made. We might venture to add that little more is ever likely to be collected, for the sounds of the cotton-mill, the steam-engine, and, more than all, the whistle of the railway train, more powerful than any exorcists, have banished, or soon will banish, the fairy tribes from all their accustomed haunts, and their name and their exploits will in future be found in works like the present rather than in village tradition.

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.'

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.

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.

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 ule-i, Wolf's-fist, is rendered in the dictionaries toadstool, mushroom, and we cannot help suspecting that as wolf and elf were sometimes confounded, and wolf and fist are, in fact, incompatible terms, this was originally Æle-i Elf's-fist, and that the mushrooms meant were not the thick ugly toadstools, the "grislie todestooles," of Spenser, but those delicate fungi called in Ireland fairy-mushrooms, and which perhaps in England also were ascribed to the fairies.[370]

Robin Goodfellow, of whom we have given above a full account, is evidently a domestic spirit, answering in name and character to the Nisse God-dreng of Scandinavia, the Knecht Ruprecht, i.e., Robin of Germany. He seems to unite in his person the Boggart and Barguest of Yorkshire.

Hob-goblin is, as we have seen, another name of the same spirit. Goblin is the French gobelin, German Kobold; Hob is Rob, Robin, Bob; just as Hodge is Roger. We still have the proper names Hobbs, Hobson, like Dix, Dixon, Wills, Wilson; by the way, Hick, i. e. Dick, from Richard, still remains in Hicks, Hickson.

Robin Hood, though we can produce no instance of it, must, we think, also have been an appellation of this spirit, and been given to the famed outlaw of merry Sherwood, from his sportive character and his abiding in the recesses of the greenwood. The hood is a usual appendage of the domestic spirit.