32
ON FAIRIES.
But, if so they chance to feast her,In a shoe she drops a tester. This is she that empties cradles,Takes out children, puts in ladles;Trains forth midwives in their slumber,With a sieve the holes to number;And thus leads them from her boroughs,Home through ponds and water-furrows. She can start our franklin's daughters,In their' sleep, with shrieks and laughters,And on sweet St. Agnes' night,Feed them with a promis'd sight,
Milton, likewise, gives her the same name:
"With stories told of many a feat,How faery Mab the junkets eat."
So, too, Jonson, in the above entertainment:
"Fairies, pinch him black and blue,Now you have him, make him true."
"She was pincht, and pull'd she sed."
Again, in the same play:
"Where's Pead?—Go you, and where you find a maid,That, ere she sleep, has thrice her prayers say'd,Raise up the organs of her fantasySleep she as sound as careless infancy;But those as sleep, and think not on their sins,Pinch them, arms, legs, backs, shoulders, sides, and shins."
