"From hag-bred Merlin's time have I
Thus nightly revelled to and fro;
And for my pranks men call me by
The name of Robin Goodfellow.
Fiends, ghosts, and sprites,
Who haunt the nightes,
The hags and goblins do me know;
And beldames old
My feates have told--
So _vale, vale_; ho, ho, ho!"
--BEN JONSON.
"In the northern parts of England," says Brand, speaking of the popular
superstitions, "ghost is pronounced _gheist_ and _guest_. Hence
_barguest_ or _bargheist_. Many streets are haunted by a _guest_, who
assumes many strange appearances, as a mastiff dog, &c. It is a
corruption of the Anglo-Saxon [Illustration: jart], _spiritus, anima_."
Drake, in his _Eboracum_, says (p. 7, Appendix), "I have been so
frightened with stories of the barguest when I was a child, that I
cannot help throwing away an etymology upon it. I suppose it comes from
A.S. [Illustration: bupp], a town, and [Illustration: jart], a ghost,
and so signifies a town sprite. N.B. [Illustration: jart] is in the
Belgic and Teutonic softened into gheist and geyst."
The boggart or bar-gaist of the following story resembles the German
_kobold,_ the Danish _nis_, and the Scotch _brownie_; but, above all,
the Spanish _duende_, which signifies a spirit or sprite, supposed by
the vulgar to haunt houses and highways, causing therein much terror and
confusion. "DUENDE. _Espiritu que el vulgo cree que infesta las casas y
travesea, causando en ellas ruidos y estruendos_"--LEMURES, LARVÆ. "To
appear like a _duende_," "to move like a _duende_" are modes of
speaking by which it is meant that persons appear in places where they
are least expected. "To have a _duende_" signifies that a person's
imagination is disturbed.
The following curious Spanish "Moral," the MS. of which has been kindly
lent to the author by Mr Crofton Croker may not be deemed uninteresting
as an illustration of the subject. We have accompanied each stanza with
a parallel translation of our own.