“Ho, ho, ho! my masters! No good fellowship!
Is Robin Goodfellow a bugbear grown,
That he is not worthy to be bid sit down?”
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—
“I love a mess of cream as well as they;
I think it were best I stept in and made one:
Ho, ho, ho! my masters! No good fellowship!
Is Robin Goodfellow a bugbear grown
That he is not worthy to be bid sit down?”
There is, indeed, something characteristic in this passage, but all the
rest is totally foreign.
Doctor Percy, Bishop of Dromore, has reprinted in his _Reliques of
Ancient English Poetry_ a very curious and excellent old ballad
originally published by Peck, who attributes it, but with no
similitude, to Ben Jonson, in which Robin Good–fellow relates his
exploits with singular humour. To one of these copies, he says, “were
prefixed two wooden cuts, which seem to represent the dresses in which
this whimsical character was formerly exhibited upon the stage.” In
this conjecture, however, the learned and ingenious editor was most
egregiously mistaken, these cuts being manifestly printed from the
identical blocks made use of by Bulwer in his “Artificial Changeling,”
printed in 1615, the first being intended for one of the black and
white gallants of Seale–bay adorned with the moon, stars, etc., the
other a hairy savage.
Burton, speaking of fairies, says that “a bigger kind there is of them,
called with Hob–goblins, and Robin Goodfellowes, that would in those
superstitious times, grinde corne for a messe of milke, cut wood, or
do any kind of drudgery worke.” Afterward, of the dæmons that mislead
men in the night, he says, “We commonly call them Pucks.”—(_Anatomy of
Melancholie._)
Cartwright, in _The Ordinary_, introduces _Moth_, repeating this
curious charm:—
“Saint Frances and Saint Benedight
Blesse this house from wicked wight,
From the nightmare, and the goblin
That is hight Goodfellow Robin;
Keep it from all evil spirits,
Fairies, weezels, rats, and ferrets;
From curfew time
To the next prime.”
(Act III. Sc. I.)
This Puck, or Robin Good–fellow, seems, likewise, to be the illusory
candle–holder, so fatal to travellers, and who is more usually called
_Jack–a–lantern_, or _Will–with–a–wisp_; and, as it would seem from
a passage elsewhere cited from Scot, _Kit with the canstick_. Thus a
fairy, in a passage of Shakespeare already quoted, asks Robin—
“... Are you not he
That frights the maidens of the villagery,
Misleads night–wanderers laughing at their harm?”