by we start, and are afraid when we heare one crie Bough! and they have so fraied us with bull-beggers, spirits, witches, urchens, elves, hags, fairies, satyrs, pans, sylens, Kit with the cansticke, tritons, centaurs, dwarfes, giants, imps, calcars, conjurors, nymphes, changling, Incubus, Robin Good-fellow, the spoorne, the mare, the man in the oke, the hell wain, the fier drake, the puckle,[1] Tom Thombe, Hob gobblin,[2] Tom Tumbler, boneles, and such other bugs, that we are afraid of our owne shadowes."[3] "And know you this by the waie," he says, "that heretofore Robin Good-fellow, and Hob goblin, were as terrible, and also as credible to the people, as hags and witches be now... And in truth, they that mainteine walking spirits have no reason to denie Robin Good-fellow, upon whom there hath gone as manie, and as credible, tales, as upon witches; saving that it hath not pleased the translators of the bible to call spirits by the name of Robin Good-fellow."[4]
"Your grandams maides," he says, "were woont
- ↑ Perhaps a typographical error for Pucke.
- ↑ Not, as mr. Tyrwhitt has supposed, Hop goblin, Hob being a well-known diminutive of Robin; and even this learned gentleman seems to have forgotten a still more notorious character of his own time,—Hob in the well.
- ↑ Discoverie of witchcraft, London, 1584, 4to. p. 153.
- ↑ P. 131.
