54
ON FAIRIES.
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 Shakspeare, already quoted, asks Robin,
"Are you not heThat fright the maidens of the villagery,Mislead night-wanderers laughing at their harm?"
Milton alludes to this deceptive gleam in the following lines:
"A wandering fire,Compact of unctuous vapour, which the nightCondenses, and the cold environs round,Kindled through agitation to a flame,Which oft, they say, some evil spirit attends,Hovering and blazing with delusive light,Misleads th' amaz'd night-wanderer from his wayTo bogs, and mires, and oft through pond and pool."[1]
He elsewhere calls him "the friers lantern."[2]
- ↑ Paradise lost, B. 9. This great poet is frequently content to pilfer a happy expression from Shakspeare—On this occasion "night-wanderer," on a former "the easterngate."
- ↑ L'allegro:
"And by the friers lantern led."
