UNIVERSI1Y OF 
 CALIFORNIA 
 
b * 
 
THREE NOTELETS ON SHAKESPEARE. 
 
THREE NOTELETS ON 
 SHAKESPEARE. 
 
 I. SHAKESPEARE IN GERMANY. 
 
 II. THE FOLK-LORE OF SHAKESPEARE. 
 
 III. WAS SHAKESPEARE EVER A SOLDIER ? 
 
 BY WILLIAM J. THOMS, F.S.A. 
 
 LONDON : 
 
 JOHN RUSSELL SMITH, 
 
 SOHO-SQUABE. 
 
 1865. 
 
732 
 
 tk 
 
 TO 
 
 HER 
 
 WHO IN HERSELF REALIZES MANY OF SHAKESPEARE^ 
 
 TYPES OF WOMANLY EXCELLENCE, 
 AND TO WHOSE AFFECTIONATE COMPANIONSHIP 
 
 AND WISE COUNSELS 
 
 THE AUTHOR OWES ALL THE HAPPINESS HE HAS ENJOYED 
 
 FOR THE LAST SIX- AND -THIRTY YEARS, 
 
 THIS VOLUME 
 
 IS 
 DEDICATED. 
 
 723 
 
PREFACE. 
 
 HE following Illustrations of the Life 
 and Writings of Shakespeare are re- 
 printed as they were originally published 
 in 1840, 1847, and 1859, without addi- 
 tion and without alteration. 
 
 It would have been easy to have enlarged them, 
 but for many reasons, I have not thought it ex- 
 pedient to do so. I have seen with pleasure that 
 they have been found useful. With reference to 
 several of the points which were first raised in them, 
 subsequent writers have pursued the same line of 
 inquiry* with excellent but as yet incomplete re- 
 sults, f I have thought that it might facilitate further 
 investigation if they were gathered together out of 
 the Journals in which they were first printed, and 
 were published in a form in which they might be 
 more easily accessible. 
 
 * In some cases with very little acknowledgment, and though 
 my thunder may be as gentle as Bottom's roar, like Dennis, 
 I claim my own. 
 
 t I am glad to learn that Mr. Albert Cohn, a gentleman 
 who has enjoyed peculiar facilities for investigating the history 
 of the early English Comedians in Germany, is about to pub- 
 lish a volume upon that interesting subject. 
 
viii Preface. 
 
 The desire to add my name in however humble a 
 character to that band of brothers like some other 
 brothers occasionally not on the best terms with one 
 another, but who all unite in the endeavour to illus- 
 trate the Life and Writings of our great Dramatist, 
 has also operated in some slight degree to induce 
 me to bring these papers together in the present 
 volume. Many of Shakespeare's admirers look upon 
 such comments with distaste, and liken the writers 
 to the thoughtless and giddy who scratch their names 
 on every spot they visit, from a bench in Greenwich 
 Park to the Pyramids of Egypt. 
 
 But all names are not so inscribed from foolish or 
 unworthy motives. On the monument of Isaac 
 Casaubon, in Poets' Corner, may be seen the well- 
 known monogram of good old Isaac Walton, graven, 
 there can be no doubt, by his own hand, in love and 
 admiration of that departed worthy. 
 
 In that same spirit, 
 
 " On the vast monument of Shakespeare's fame 
 With reverent hand, I write my humble name." 
 
 WILLIAM J. THOMS. 
 
 40, St. George's Square, 
 16th Nov. 1864. 
 
I. 
 SHAKESPEARE IN GERMANY. 
 
 (1840.) 
 
THE following Letter was written at the request of the kind 
 friend to whom it was addressed, for the purpose of being com- 
 municated to the Society of Antiquaries on the 21st May, 1840, 
 when the late Prince Consort attended and signed the List of 
 Fellows. But His Royal Highness having promised to attend 
 the Royal Society after leaving the Antiquaries, there was not 
 time for the reading of any papers, and this communication was 
 consequently made to the Society on the following Thursday. 
 
 Mr. Theodore Hooke, who was present at the reading, having 
 expressed a wish to publish it in the "New Monthly Magazine," 
 which was then under his editorship, it was printed in the 
 July 1840 Number of that Journal. 
 
ON THE 
 
 CONNECTION BETWEEN THE EARLY ENGLISH 
 
 AND EARLY GERMAN DRAMA, 
 
 AND ON THE PROBABLE ORIGIN OF 
 
 SHAKESPEARE'S "TEMPEST." 
 
 In a Letter to Thomas Amyot, Esq., F.R.S., Treas. S.A. 
 
 MY DEAR SIR, 
 
 'E A SONS for addressing the present letter 
 to you, are as plenty as blackberries; and 
 I need no compulsion, nor is it necessary 
 that I should be at the strappado or all 
 the racks in the world, to give you two of them. The 
 first is, that you take an interest, and are well versed 
 in all matters connected with Shakespeare and his con- 
 temporaries, and have done good services to Shake- 
 spearian literature ; and the second, because it affords 
 me an opportunity of acknowledging and thanking you 
 for many acts of kindness, not the least of them being 
 your introduction of me to that Prospero, whose 
 library was dukedom large enough, but whose cell 
 is now untenanted, whose staff is broken, and with its 
 great master now 
 
 " Buried certain fathoms in the earth " 
 I mean of course our much regretted friend, the late 
 
4 Shakespeare in Germany. 
 
 Mr. Douce, who would, I am sure, had he been liv- 
 ing, have read with some interest the observations to 
 which I now beg to call your attention. 
 
 It is many years since I first " made a prief in my 
 note-book," that at the close of the sixteenth and 
 commencement of the seventeenth century, Germany 
 was visited by a company of English players ; but 
 never, until very recently, have I had an opportunity 
 of referring to the authority for this statement, and 
 ascertaining the more minute particulars which are 
 there recorded, relative to this curious and, hitherto, 
 unnoticed fact in the history of the early English 
 drama. 
 
 That the dramatists of England exercised a great 
 and beneficial influence in the direction which they 
 gave to the genius of their German brethren, has 
 never been questioned. The German critics have for 
 the most part agreed upon this point, which has been 
 more especially insisted upon by Tieck, distinguished 
 among his countrymen, not only as a poet, a novelist, 
 and a critic, but also for his deeper reverence and 
 profounder knowledge of our immortal bard to the 
 study of whose writings, and those of his contem- 
 poraries, many years of his life have been almost ex- 
 clusively devoted. He it was, moreover, who first 
 showed how actively and immediately this influence 
 was employed, by proving that about the year 1600, 
 many of the productions of the English dramatists 
 were translated into German, and performed before 
 the German public by a company of comedians, who 
 were known at that time as the English company. 
 
 This singular fact was first announced by Tieck in 
 the year 1817, when he commenced the publication 
 of his " German Theatre," a work which was intended 
 
Shakespeare in Germany. 5 
 
 to furnish his countrymen with a selection of the most 
 remarkable productions of the German stage, which, 
 from being scattered throughout a number of volumes, 
 many of them of the greatest rarity, were for the most 
 part inaccessible to the general reader. In short, 
 Tieck intended to do for the German drama what 
 Dodsley had so successfully accomplished for the 
 English. But though he proposed to extend his col- 
 lection to six volumes only, he met with so little 
 encouragement, that no more than the first and second 
 ever appeared. Each volume has a preface illustrative 
 of the works it contains, with an account of their 
 authors, and the state of the stage when they wrote 
 the plays themselves being arranged chronologically. 
 In the first volume there are two of the Shrovetide 
 plays by Hans Rosenplut, six pieces by Hans Sachs, 
 five by Jacob Ayrer, and one from the German collec- 
 tion of English plays, to which I shall presently have 
 occasion to direct your attention. It is in his remarks 
 upon the life and writings of Ayrer, that Tieck men- 
 tions the circumstance to which I have already al- 
 luded. 
 
 Jacob Ayrer, the successor of Hans Sachs as a 
 writer for the German stage, was a proctor and no- 
 tary at Nuremberg, where he lived probably till about 
 1618, in which year, and as it appears shortly after 
 his death, the goodly folio which contains his " Opus 
 Dramaticum," was first published in that city. No- 
 thing further indeed is known of him, nor even the 
 date of his birth, nor the period during which he 
 wrote his numerous dramas. Koch says he composed 
 his several works between 1570 and 1589, but adduces 
 no evidence in support of this statement. Gottsched 
 mentions his German version of Frischlin's " Julius 
 
6 Shakespeare in Germany. 
 
 Redivivus," as being published at Worms in 1585 ; 
 but from internal evidence it is obvious that it was 
 written in 1610; whilst, from a passage in his Whit- 
 sun play of " The Process against the Tyranny of 
 Queen Podagra," it is clear that that piece was written 
 in 1602. 
 
 Tieck, who was of opinion that, with the exception 
 perhaps of his Whitsun plays, few of Ayrer's pieces 
 were written before 1610, describes them as consist- 
 ing partly of imitations of English models, and partly 
 of original pieces written in the style of his prototype 
 Hans Sachs, with the addition of a professed jester or 
 merry-maker, whom he styles sometimes Jahn Posset, 
 sometimes the English fool, occasionally also Jahn 
 Clahm, from which it may be inferred, that when he 
 drew the character, he had the clown of the old Eng- 
 lish drama before his eyes. 
 
 It is when showing the means by which Ayrer 
 acquired a knowledge of the models from which he is 
 supposed to have copied, that Tieck brings forward 
 the fact, that, about the year 1600, a company of 
 comedians called the English Company traversed Ger- 
 many, performing German translations of English plays 
 at all the principal courts and chief cities of the empire. 
 "Such," said Tieck, "was the popularity which the 
 stage enjoyed in London, and such was its reputation 
 on the continent, that troops of players occasionally 
 proceeded to the Netherlands, for the purpose of ex- 
 hibiting their performances; and we can trace in 
 Germany about the year 1600 (probably some years 
 earlier), the existence of a company of comedians 
 who, under the title of the English Company, travelled 
 the country round, for the purpose of giving the Ger- 
 man public some idea, however imperfect, of the 
 
Shakespeare in Germany. 7 
 
 height which poetry and the dramatic art had attained 
 in England." He adds, that he had himself ascertained 
 the dates of the years in which these comedians per- 
 formed before the court of Dresden, but had un- 
 fortunately mislaid the notes he had made of them. 
 
 Tieck does not decide who these actors really were; 
 whether they were natives of England; or young 
 Germans connected with the Hanse Company, then 
 established in London ; or persons who had travelled 
 from Germany to England on a theatrical speculation, 
 for the purpose of securing a stock of new dramas; 
 but his description of the volume of German transla- 
 tions of English plays, published in Germany in 1620, 
 which he supposes to have emanated from them, would 
 seem to favour the supposition that they were, as their 
 name implies, a company of English players. The 
 same inference may be drawn from one clear instance 
 which Tieck gives of English actors being found in 
 Germany. He is speaking of the marks of distinc- 
 tion with which professed players were then received 
 in that country, and after stating that the magistrates 
 of the different cities were in the habit of going out 
 to meet them on their approach, he adds that Las- 
 senius, one of the earliest actors whose name is pre- 
 served, and who, as he was playing about the year 
 1600, might possibly have belonged to this very troop, 
 became afterwards a doctor of theology ; and another 
 Hans von Stockfisch (probably an assumed theatrical 
 name), received a salary of two hundred dollars, and 
 other allowances, from John Sigmund of Branden- 
 burg, for whom he procured a company of comedians 
 from England and the Netherlands about the year 
 1614. 
 
 Tieck, who regards the English company of come- 
 
8 Shakespeare in Germany. 
 
 dians as having exercised an extraordinary influence 
 on the German drama, by the direction which they 
 gave to the theatrical compositions of Jacob Ayrer, 
 describes very fully the extremely interesting volume 
 which he supposes to have emanated from them. It 
 was first printed in 1620, and its quaint, old-fashioned 
 title, may be thus translated : " English Comedies 
 and Tragedies; that is, right pleasant, noble and 
 select, spiritual and worldly Comedies and Tragedies, 
 with the humours of Pickle Herring which on ac- 
 count of their pleasant invention, merry conceits, and 
 true histories, have been acted and performed by the 
 Englishmen in Germany, at the royal, electoral, and 
 princely courts, and in all the great free cities of the 
 empire, but have never before been printed. Now 
 published and set forth for the gratification and de- 
 light of all lovers of comedy and tragedy, &c. &c." 
 
 To this volume a second and a third were subse- 
 quently added ; neither of them, however, contains 
 any thing of importance. But the original collection, 
 which is of exceeding rarity, although a second edition 
 appeared in 1 630, contains, in addition to a number 
 of interludes, merriments, or jigs, no less than eight 
 old English dramatic pieces, translated into the very 
 commonest German prose, printed very incorrectly, 
 and in a language which seems to have been written 
 down from the recitation of unskilful actors, being 
 filled with uncouth phrases and words misapplied 
 the construction of the sentences any thing but Ger- 
 man, and the whole abounding with coarse equivoques 
 and obscene allusions. The first of these is the 
 " History of Esther and Haman," which Tieck speaks 
 of as having been played in London in 1594, and even 
 earlier, and which we learn from Mr. Collier's ad- 
 
Shakespeare in Germany. 9 
 
 mirable Annals of the Stage, was printed by William 
 Pickering, in 1561. Tieck describes this piece, though 
 a mere sketch, as being clearly the work of a theatri- 
 cal poet who understood stage effect, so that the ar- 
 rangement and connection of the scenes betray quite 
 a different spirit from the historical plays of Hans 
 Sachs, or those which Ayrer composed when not 
 imitating a foreign model. The comic character in 
 it, who is called Hans Knapcase,has the same struggles 
 for mastery with his wife as the Jahn Posset of 
 Ayrer's Whitsun play, and Edward III., but with 
 some additional jests. Hans is the carpenter who 
 builds the gallows for Haman, who, however, hangs 
 himself, so that Hans is unnecessarily dragged into 
 the scene. 
 
 The second is the " Prodigal Son," which Tieck 
 describes as being more skilfully and cleverly com- 
 posed. 
 
 This is followed by the " History of Fortunatus/' 
 which Tieck has reprinted in the second volume of 
 his collection, and respecting which he remarks that 
 it is interesting to observe how skilfully the author 
 has treated the subject, which is one by no means 
 well adapted to the stage. A play with the title of 
 " Fortunatus " had been performed in London, in 
 1595, or earlier. It was remodelled in 1600 by 
 Decker, who, from the subject being so well known, 
 entitled his work "The Old Fortunatus." This re- 
 modelled version by Decker, which, whatever may 
 now be thought of it, laid the foundation of the cele- 
 brity which lie afterwards enjoyed, was not the one 
 used by the English company in Germany; and from 
 this circumstance Tieck concludes, and apparently 
 with great reason, that they had left London some 
 time before the year 1600. 
 
10 Shakespeare in Germany. 
 
 The fourth piece, which appears to be one of the 
 oldest, is " a triumphant comedy," entitled, "Of a Son 
 of the King of England, and a Daughter of the King 
 of Scotland." The plot is very simple, and turns upon 
 the circumstance of the English Prince, during a war 
 with England and Scotland, falling in love with the 
 daughter of his enemy, and procuring a truce in order 
 that he may visit his beloved in the disguise of a 
 jester. The prince, who is called Serule, being the 
 comic character of the piece, there is no clown intro- 
 duced into it. 
 
 The fifth play, which bears the fewest traces of its 
 English origin, is called " Sidonea and Theagenea," 
 and consists of a mere love story, during the progress 
 of which the peasant Cnemon and his sweetheart are 
 by no means sparing of coarse jests. 
 
 The sixth of these dramas is one of the most re- 
 markable, from the very bold manner in which it 
 combines old English history and allegory. It abounds 
 in satire, which is very spirited, even in the wretched 
 translation, and is the same piece which was printed 
 in London in 1603, under the title of " Nobody and 
 Somebody ; with the true chronicle History of Ely- 
 dure, who was fortunately three times crowned King 
 of England." 
 
 This is followed by the tragedy of "Julio and 
 Hypolita," which is almost the same as Shakespeare's 
 " Two Gentlemen of Verona," except that in the Ger- 
 man piece, at the wedding, the deceived friend stabs 
 the false one, who has certainly carried on his intrigue 
 very clumsily the bride murders herself, and her 
 lover follows her example. The clown of the play is 
 called Grobianus Pickleherring. Tieck tells us that 
 the piece is only very roughly and briefly given, much 
 
Shakespeare in Germany. 1 1 
 
 of it appearing to be omitted, as is indeed obviously 
 the case with most of the others in this collection ; 
 yet, as it is in all probability a translation of an earlier 
 English play than Shakespeare's, it is much to be wished 
 that Tieck had reprinted it, that some idea might have 
 been formed of the materials out of which Shakespeare 
 fashioned what his last editor pronounces " his first 
 complete comedy : " for, if the supposition be correct 
 that an earlier English play existed on the same sub- 
 ject as the " Two Gentlemen of Verona," it will 
 be but reasonable to conclude that it was to such play, 
 and not to the "Diana" of George Montemayor, that 
 Shakespeare was indebted for his plot. 
 
 The eighth and last of these plays is " Titus Andro- 
 nicus." Tieck, who has reprinted it in his fifth 
 volume, says, " This most horrible tragedy was an 
 especial favourite with the London public, before 
 whom, from the year 1593 it was frequently per- 
 formed. Shakespeare re-wrote it in 1600, and gave it 
 the form which it now assumes in the collection of 
 his works. None but the uncritical English editors 
 could, in the face of contemporaries, the published 
 impression of it, and all signs of authenticity, pro- 
 nounce it on the score of its inferiority alone not to 
 be genuine ; and since Shakespeare re-wrote it, with- 
 drew it from another theatre, and represented it upon 
 his own, the probability is that the earlier 'Andro- 
 nicus ' was written by him. The German translation 
 is only a version of the ' Andronicus ' in its first form, 
 and that, moreover, an abbreviated one ; for the mur- 
 dered sons of Titus do not appear in it or contribute 
 to the action of the piece, while the assumed madness 
 of Titus, which suggests to the empress the idea of 
 disguising herself as Revenge, is passed over in silence, 
 
12 Shakespeare in Germany. 
 
 by which means the keeping of the latter part of the 
 poem is destroyed. On the other hand, its extra- 
 vagant horrors are every where exaggerated, yet it is 
 easy to discover, scattered here and there throughout 
 the piece, passages which are all but literally trans- 
 lated from the poet's verses ; and this old piece must 
 therefore be considered as of the highest value, since 
 it affords us a tolerably, clear view of this youthful 
 work of Shakespeare, and we are enabled by means of 
 this fragment to compare it with his later version of 
 it" 
 
 Tieck then proceeds to justify himself in the eyes 
 of his German readers for reprinting the " Titus 
 Andronicus," and " Fortunatus ; " " which," he says, 
 " considering the wretched language in which they 
 are written, are only deserving their attention partly 
 as literary curiosities and partly as strangers, which 
 having been received with welcome on their arrival 
 in the country, have now come to be looked upon as 
 originally belonging to it ; " and he numbers among 
 subjects of foreign growth now naturalized in Ger- 
 many, "Faustus" for he supposes the "Faustus" 
 of Mario we, and some very remarkable pieces of which 
 traces are discoverable in the writings of Ayrer, to 
 have been introduced at the same time into that coun- 
 try by the English comedians. 
 
 Before I conclude this part of my subject, in which 
 I hope 1 have contributed some fresh materials, how- 
 ever trifling they may be considered, towards the lite- 
 rary history of the drama, and of two of Shakespeare's 
 compositions, let me add, that our friend, the Eev. 
 Joseph Hunter, has for some time possessed evidence 
 of early English players visiting the continent; the 
 knowledge of which he arrived at while pursuing those 
 
Shakespeare in Germany. 13 
 
 researches to which we are indebted for his interesting 
 "Dissertation on the Tempest." 
 
 And now, having shown you how Jacob Ayrer was 
 enabled, by means of these wanderers, to acquire a 
 knowledge, of the various dramas performing on the 
 English stage towards the close of the sixteenth cen- 
 tury, I next beg to call your attention to a few of the 
 productions of this worthy notary of Nuremberg, 
 among which we shall find translations of two other 
 early English dramas, which, if I am right in my be- 
 lief, furnished Shakespeare with the groundwork of 
 two of the most striking of his matchless compositions. 
 
 Ayrer appears to have been a very voluminous 
 writer, being the author of no less than thirty dramas, 
 besides six-and-thirty Whitsun plays, which latter, 
 although they appear to have been printed as early as 
 1610, were not given to the public until they appeared 
 in the complete collection of his works, published in 
 1618. Among these Whitsun plays, to which Tieck 
 considers the jigs of the old English theatre as bearing 
 the closest possible resemblance, are several which he 
 pronounces to be unquestionably derived from Eng- 
 lish sources ; one of the chief reasons which have led 
 him to this conclusion being the fact of the clown of 
 these pieces being represented with a fife or tabor 
 a constant practice on the English stage, but of which 
 no traces are to be found in the national fools of the 
 German, Spanish, Italian, and French theatres. And, 
 therefore, although one of the Whitsun plays " Der 
 Uberwundene Trummelschlager " (the Vanquished 
 Drummer) is thoroughly Germanised, he does not 
 hesitate to pronounce it an English farce, and sug- 
 gests whether the old proverbial allusion to " Jack 
 Drum's entertainment," may not have originated from 
 
14 Shakespeare in Germany. 
 
 some such merriment the old play, printed in 1616, 
 under that title (of which the German piece is not, as 
 might be supposed, a translation), affording no illustra- 
 tion of the source from which the saying is derived. 
 
 Again, of the thirty dramas written by Ayrer 
 though five are founded on events recorded in the 
 " History of Rome " still in some of these the Eng- 
 lish clown plays his part, while, with the exception 
 of three which are taken from the " Heldenbuch," the 
 tragedy of " Theseus," and four long pieces on the 
 subject of " Valentine and Orson," which may be 
 original (though these last exhibit traces of old 
 English books), the majority of his compositions con- 
 tain decided proofs of their English origin, and of 
 their author's acquaintance with the English stage. 
 His "History of the Emperor Mahomet, and the Siege 
 of Constantinople," might have been derived from the 
 well-known accounts of the taking of that city ; but 
 it is far from improbable that he borrowed it from the 
 drama which George Peele wrote upon that subject, and 
 the popularity of which is supposed to be established 
 by Pistol's exclamation, " Have we not Hiren here?" 
 Again, his " Getreue Ramo " and " Edward III." are 
 supposed to be taken from English plays founded on 
 popular romances ; while his play, " Von zween fiirst- 
 lichen Riithen die beide um ein Weib buhlten" (Of 
 the two prince's councillors who courted one woman), 
 is decidedly copied from an English original ; and his 
 "Alt Buhler" (old lover) is a somewhat amplified 
 version of the farce or jig, " Die schone Maria," one 
 of the five pieces of that description printed in the 
 collection of the English comedians. 
 
 But leaving these general assertions, and coming 
 to plain facts, we find that his comedy of the " King 
 
Shakespeare in Germany. 15 
 
 of Cyprus and Queen of France," is nearly identical, 
 scene for scene, with the " Dumb Knight " of Lewis 
 Machin and Gervase Markham, printed in 1608, and 
 reprinted in Dodsley's old plays, vol. iv., Collier's 
 edition. While his play of "Belimperia and Horatio," 
 which Tieck has reprinted in the first volume of his 
 collection, is nothing more than a German version of 
 " The Spanish Tragedy, or Hieronymo is Mad again," 
 which it follows scene for scene, and name for name, 
 with this exception, that out of anxious consideration 
 for the Emperor, Ayrer has changed the locality from 
 Spain to Greece, and entitled the King Amurath, and 
 the Marshal Malignus, instead of Hieronymo. Tieck, 
 who gives it as his opinion that the original old play 
 of " The Spanish Tragedy " laid the foundation of the 
 tragic drama of England, speaks of it as having been 
 played in London as early as 1570, (but produces no 
 evidence in support of this statement, which is pos- 
 sibly a misprint for 1590), being afterwards re-written 
 and enlarged by Kyd in 1593 and 1597 ; and states 
 that it is from this old play in its earlier form, that 
 Ayrer derived his drama. That the latter part of this 
 statement is correct, there can, I think, be little doubt. 
 But the next of Ayrer's pieces which Tieck has 
 reprinted, possesses still greater attraction for the 
 English reader, more especially if Tieck be correct 
 in his supposition (and there seems no reason to doubt 
 that he is so) that it is an adaptation from the English. 
 It is entitled " Phoenizia," and like Shakespeare's 
 " Much Ado about Nothing," is founded on Bandello's 
 well-known novel, entitled " Fenicia." In fact, Tieck 
 looks upon Ayrer's play as being a German version 
 of the earlier English drama, on which Shakespeare 
 founded his admirable comedy ; and Tieck is, I have 
 
16 Shakespeare in Germany. 
 
 no doubt, perfectly right in this supposition. One 
 instance will, I think, prove that Shakespeare did not 
 derive his plot directly from Bandello. In the novel, 
 Timbreo (the Claudio of the play), witnesses the hired 
 servant of Girondo in the dress of a gentleman, as- 
 cending a ladder to the chamber of Fenicia ; but in 
 Shakespeare's play this incident is altered, and that 
 too for the worse. " Shakespeare," says Skottowe, 
 " again deviates from the novel when he desires to 
 excite jealousy in Claudio, who witnesses an amorous 
 conversation between Borachio and the waiting- 
 woman of Hero, disguised in the clothes of her mis- 
 tress. Borachio addresses Margaret throughout by 
 the name of Hero. Probability is violated in this 
 case ; for as Claudio is supposed to be near enough 
 to hear distinctly the dialogue contrived for his de- 
 ception, he must have been stupid beyond all calcu- 
 lation not to have discovered that the pretended lady, 
 neither in voice nor person, resembled Hero." 
 
 But if Tieck be correct in supposing that Shake- 
 speare derived his plot from the earlier English play 
 from which Ayrer has copied his " Phoenicia," it is 
 not Shakespeare, but his prototype, who is in this in- 
 stance in fault ; for in the German version we find 
 Timbreo not only witnesses the ascent of Gerwalt to 
 Phoenicians chamber ; but, like Shakespeare's Claudio, 
 he overhears an amorous conversation between Ger- 
 walt and John the clown of the piece, and the servant 
 of Gerando disjguised as Phoenicia and this fact alone 
 furnishes a strong presumption, that Shakespeare was 
 indebted not to Bandello, but to some earlier drama- 
 tist for the plot of this comedy. A careful perusal of 
 the old German play has indeed satisfied my mind 
 that it is derived from an earlier English play ; and 
 
Shakespeare in Germany. 17 
 
 should some unlooked-for piece of good fortune ever 
 unearth it, I have no doubt that, like Ayrer's drama, 
 it will be found to commence with a mythological 
 introduction in which Venus and Cupid play con- 
 spicuous parts, but which Shakespeare altogether re- 
 jected, although it had not altogether faded from his 
 memory when he penned Benedict's witticisms upon 
 the subject of the " Blind God/' 
 
 But important as /consider this fact to be, as illus- 
 trative of the sources to which Shakespeare was in- 
 debted for his plots, you will probably agree with me 
 in thinking the next as still more so. " The origin of 
 the plot of the ' Tempest ' is for the present a Shakes- 
 pearian mystery," are the words of our friend Mr. 
 Hunter, in his learned and interesting dissertation 
 upon that play. That mystery, however, I consider 
 as solved Tieck appears to entertain no doubt upon 
 the subject and I hope to bring the matter before 
 you in such a manner, as will satisfy you of the cor- 
 rectness of Tieck's views in this respect. But to the 
 point Shakespeare unquestionably derived his idea of 
 the " Tempest" from an earlier drama, now not known 
 to exist, but of which a German version is preserved 
 in Ayrer's play entitled " Die Schone Sidea " (the 
 beautiful Sidea) ; and the proof of this fact is to be 
 found in the points of resemblance between the two 
 plays, which are far too striking and peculiar to be 
 the result of accident. 
 
 It is true that the scene in which Ayrer's play is 
 laid, and the names of the personages differ from those 
 of the " Tempest ; " but the main incidents of the 
 two plays are all but identically the same. For in- 
 stance, in the German drama, Prince Ludolph and 
 Prince Leudcgast supply the places of Prospero and 
 
 C 
 
18 Shakespeare in Germany. 
 
 Alonzo. Ludolph, like Prosper o, is a magician, and 
 like him has an only daughter Sidea the Miranda 
 of the " Tempest" and an attendant spirit Runcifal, 
 who, though not strictly resembling either Ariel or 
 Caliban, may well be considered as the primary type 
 which suggested to the nimble fancy of our great 
 dramatist, those strongly yet admirably contrasted 
 beings. Shortly after the commencement of the play, 
 Ludolph having been vanquished by his rival, and 
 with his daughter Sidea driven into a forest, rebukes 
 her for complaining of their change of fortune, and 
 then summons his spirit Runcifal to learn from him 
 their future destiny, and prospects of revenge. Runci- 
 fal, who is, like Ariel, somewhat " moody," announces 
 to Ludolph that the son of his enemy will shortly 
 become his prisoner. After a comic episode, most 
 probably introduced by the German, we see Prince 
 Leudegast, with his son Engelbrecht the Ferdinand 
 of the " Tempest" and the councillors, hunting in the 
 same forest; when Engelbrecht and his companion 
 Famulus, having separated from their associates, are 
 suddenly encountered by Ludolph and his daughter. 
 He commands them to yield themselves prisoners 
 they refuse, and try to draw their swords, when, as 
 Prospero tells Ferdinand, 
 
 " I can here disarm thee with this stick, 
 And make thy weapon drop," 
 
 so Ludolph, with his wand, keeps their swords in their 
 scabbards, paralyzes Engelbrecht, and makes him con- 
 fess his 
 
 " Nerves are in their infancy again, 
 And have no vigour in them," 
 
 and when he has done so gives him over as a slave to 
 Sidea, to carry logs for her. 
 
Shakespeare in Germany. 19 
 
 The resemblance between this scene and the parallel 
 scene in the " Tempest," is rendered still more strik- 
 ing in a late part of the play, when Sidea, moved by 
 pity for the labours of Engelbrecht, in carrying logs, 
 declares to him, 
 
 " I am your wife, if you will marry me," 
 
 an event which, in the end, is happily brought about 
 and leads to the reconciliation of their parents, the 
 rival princes. 
 
 And now, my dear sir, when you consider these 
 several particulars, and that Tieck, who is himself an 
 eminent German critic, pronounces the work of his 
 countryman to be most decidedly an imitation of an 
 earlier English play although we no longer possess 
 that play I say, when you consider all these things, 
 can you refuse your assent to the conclusion to which 
 Tieck arrived long since, that it is more than probable 
 that Ayrer's " Sidea," and Shakespeare's " Tempest," 
 "alike, but oh, how different!" were both derived 
 from one common source, and that an earlier English 
 drama. 
 
 Before I conclude this communication, which has 
 grown under my pen to an extent far beyond what I 
 originally intended, I would fain avail myself of the 
 opportunity it affords me of calling the attention 
 of the Shakespearian commentators to two or three 
 points connected with the " Tempest," which appear 
 to me deserving of more attention than they have yet 
 received. 
 
 Mr. Hunter has already noticed how much that is 
 Hebraistic this play contains ; and assuredly if we 
 examine the peculiarities by which the magic ofPros- 
 pero is characterized, we see at once from its oriental 
 
20 Shakespeare in Germany. 
 
 colouring, that he must have " learned the art which 
 none may name," among the adepts of the east, most 
 probably among the descendants of Solomon, whose 
 dominion over the world of spirits formed, according 
 to legendary tale, the source of his wisdom. 
 
 Now when we remember this, and also that one of 
 the most remarkable events in the history of Lam- 
 pedusa is its being the scene where the fleet of Charles 
 the Fifth was shipwrecked, and bear in mind how an 
 event of this importance must have directed atten- 
 tion to the island during the sixteenth century ; and 
 learn, moreover, that there exists among the Jews a 
 tradition that the very tempest that dispersed it, and 
 thereby rendered the island remarkable, was raised 
 by the magical skill of an Algerine Jew, who " put 
 the wild waters in a roar," one cannot help suspecting 
 that Shakespeare had heard the story, and engrafted 
 upon the old play, to which he was indebted for the 
 hints of his plot, all the learning which he possessed 
 connected with oriental magic and Jewish tradition. 
 
 The whole of the supernatural machinery of the 
 play is, indeed, deeply tinged with Jewish superstition. 
 I need not stop to show you how completely Prospero 
 answers to the generally-received idea of a cabalistic 
 philosopher, nor detain you with speculations on the 
 resemblance which Caliban bears to the fish-idol of 
 Ashdod, the Dagon of the Philistines, for these points 
 have been already ably illustrated by Mr. Hunter ; 
 but I must call your attention to the connection which 
 exist between Ariel and the Jewish spirits DHt^ 
 (Schedim). Mr. Hunter speaks of Shakespeare as either 
 " inventing a name not before in the spiritual voca- 
 bulary, or adopting one from the undiscovered writer 
 whom he follows ; " and says further, " that in the 
 
Shakespeare in Germany. 21 
 
 dramatis persona, Ariel is described as ( an airy spirit/ 
 and the resemblance in the sound of this word to this 
 description was, perhaps, the sole circumstance which 
 determined Shakespeare to the choice, if it were a choice 
 and not an invention." Mr. Hunter also refers to that 
 part of the Prophet Isaiah, in which Ariel, the Lion 
 of God,* is used as a personation of Jerusalem add- 
 ing, " that some of the attributes and feats of Ariel 
 may seem to have been suggested by what he read in 
 that prophet." That Shakespeare learned the name of 
 Ariel from his Bible, and selected it from the resem- 
 blance its sound bore to the character of his quaint 
 spirit, and that some of the feats and attributes of that 
 spirit were suggested by the words of Isaiah, is ex- 
 tremely probable ; but, at the same time, it is impor- 
 tant to know, as confirmatory of the Hebraistic cha- 
 racter of this glorious play, that Ariel not only answers 
 to the description of the Jewish spirits, Schedim,f 
 but that Ariel ~ is the name of one of the 
 
 * The learning of the commentators on the use of the name 
 Ariel, in the text, is well condensed in an introductory para- 
 graph to an admirable sermon preached by Melvill, on 5th 
 November, 1837. 
 
 f Sale, in his " Introduction to the Koran," I. 96 (ed. 1801), 
 says, " The Mahommedan notions concerning these genii, agree 
 almost exactly with what the Jews write of a sort of demons 
 called Schedim, whom some fancy to have been begotten by two 
 angels, named Aza and Azael, on Naamah the daughter of 
 Lamech, before the flood. However, the Schedim, they tell us, 
 agree in three things with the ministering angels ; for that, like 
 them, they have wings, and fly from one end of the world to the 
 other, and have some knowledge of futurity ; and in three things 
 they agree with men like whom they eat and drink, are propa- 
 gated and die. They also say that some of them believe in the 
 law of Moses and are consequently good, and that others of them 
 are infidels and reprobates." 
 
 So it is stated in the book " Berith Menucha," fol. 37, col. 1., 
 
22 Shakespeare in Germany. 
 
 seven princes of angels or spirits who preside over 
 waters under Micael, the arch-prince, and that there- 
 fore Prospero might well inquire of him, 
 
 " Hast thou, spirit, 
 
 Performed to points the Tempest that I bade thee ? " 
 
 I have now, my dear sir, laid before you my small 
 store of that knowledge illustrative of Shakespeare, of 
 which Johnson said " every man has some, and none 
 much," and I have done so, trusting to your kindness 
 as much as to its own merits, to give it welcome. 
 Believe me, 
 
 My dear sir, 
 Your obliged and very faithful servant, 
 
 WILLIAM J. THOMS. 
 
 where we learn also that another spirit Hariel, or, as it is written 
 in other copies, Ariel, has dominion over cattle. Heywood, on 
 the other hand, in his " Hierarchic of the Blessed Angels" (lib. 
 iv. p. 216-217), ascribes to Ariel supremacy on the earth, 
 " Others there be, that do not doubt to say, 
 That the foure Elements are forced t'obey, 
 Foure severall Angels ; Seraph reigns o'er Fire ; 
 Cherub the Aire ; and Tharsis doth aspire 
 Over the water; and the Earth's great Lord 
 Ariel. The Hebrew Rabbins thus accord." 
 And explaining the origin of these names, adds, 
 " For instance, Seraph, if we but retyre 
 To the word's force, importeth nought save fire : 
 Cherub, aire : Tharsus, water : Ariel, earth." 
 And in his notes upon this book, Heywood furnishes us with 
 the following illustration of the belief upon which the character 
 and agency of Ariel in the " Tempest " is founded " Saint 
 Augustine in his booke ' De Cognitione Verae Vitae " is per- 
 suaded that Spirits by God's permission can raise Stormes and 
 Tempests, and command raine, hail, snow, thunder, and light- 
 ning, at their pleasures." 
 
II. 
 
 THE FOLK-LORE OF SHAKESPEARE. 
 
 (1847.) 
 
THE following Papers appeared in the " Athenaeum " during 
 the year 1847. The circumstances under which they were 
 written are stated in the Introduction prefixed to them. The 
 present writer may perhaps be permitted here to put upon 
 record that the term " Folk-Lore/' which was so universally 
 accepted as in less than a twelvemonth to have arrived at the 
 dignity of a household word, was first introduced by him, under 
 the pseudonym of Ambrose Merton, in his communication to 
 the "Athenaeum" of the 22nd August, 1846. 
 
THE FOLK-LORE OF SHAKESPEARE. 
 
 HOSE readers of the Athenseum " who 
 take an interest in our English " Folk- 
 Lore " will, doubtless, remember that the 
 articles so entitled which have from time 
 to time appeared in these columns, were evoked by 
 an intimation that " communications on such sub- 
 jects from earnest and well-informed correspondents" 
 would be welcome. They may remember, too, that 
 such intimation was given at the suggestion of a cor- 
 respondent signing himself "Ambrose Merton, " 
 who, in soliciting the aid of the (f Athenaeum " for pre- 
 serving the infinite number of minute facts illustra- 
 tive of this branch of antiquarian learning scattered 
 over the memories of its many readers, confessed to 
 a personal interest in the success of his appeal on 
 the ground of his having long contemplated a work 
 in connection with English Folk-Lore. 
 
 That correspondent was the present writer; and 
 the work to which he referred was one in which he 
 proposed to make the writings of Shakespeare and that 
 Folk-Lore which the poet loved, mutually illustrative 
 of each other. The papers under the above special 
 heading which may from time to time appear in our 
 columns, are fragments of that attempt to throw a light 
 
26 The Folk-Lore of Shakespeare. 
 
 over the writings of the Poet of the People from the 
 side of our popular literature, customs, and super- 
 stitions. 
 
 I. SHAKESPEARE'S FAIRY LORE. 
 
 ** Then since no muse hath been so bold, 
 Or of the later, or the old, 
 Those elvish secrets to unfold 
 
 Which lie from others reading ; 
 My active muse to light shall bring 
 The court of that proud fairy king, 
 And tell there of the revelling : 
 Jove prosper my proceeding ! " 
 
 DBAYTON'S Nymphidia. 
 
 HOSE, alone, who have made Popular 
 Antiquities, and more especially Popular 
 Mythology, an object of study can 
 thoroughly appreciate the difficulty of forming any- 
 thing approaching to a proper classification of the 
 facts which exist upon those subjects. Neither the 
 " Popular Antiquities " of Brande, nor that far more 
 important work the " German Mythology " of James 
 Grimm, furnishes any arrangement which could be 
 followed with advantage on the present occasion. 
 
 A mere glance at the writings of Shakespeare must 
 convince us that the fairy mythology of England 
 of which, as has been elsewhere observed, " he was 
 the best and most beautiful expositor" was that 
 branch of our Folk-Lore which he most ardently 
 admired and most successfully employed ; and it 
 seems to be only a fitting homage to his judgment 
 that our earliest attention should be devoted to illus- 
 trate the history of the 
 
The F oik-Lore of Shakespeare. 27 
 
 " Elves of hills, brooks, standing lakes, and groves ; 
 And ye, that on the sands with printless foot 
 Do chase the ebbing Neptune, and do fly him 
 When he comes back ; you demy-puppets, that 
 By moonshine do the green-sour ringlets make 
 Whereof the ewe not bites ; and you whose pastime 
 Is to make midnight mushrooms." 
 
 In the above beautiful invocation (in which War- 
 burton's classical prejudices could only see an imitation 
 of that of Medea 
 
 " Auraeque, et venti, montesque, amnesque, lacusque, 
 Diique omnes nemorum, diique omnes noctis, adeste " 
 
 although, as Boswell justly remarks, Ovid has not 
 supplied anything resembling the exquisite fairy 
 imagery with which Shakespeare has enriched his 
 speech) the various elements that go to form the fairy 
 mythology of Shakespeare are intimately blended. 
 And so intimate, indeed, is this union, so closely 
 have the centuries which have gone to their formation 
 interwoven the Celtic with the Teutonic, and these 
 two with the modifications consequent upon the intro- 
 duction of Christianity that it is no longer possible 
 to say with certainty the points at which the one 
 ceases and the other has supplanted it. 
 
 For however earnestly the reader may join with 
 Falstaff in exclaiming, " Heaven defend me from a 
 Welsh fairy, lest he transform me to a piece of 
 cheese ! " however imperfect may be our records of 
 Welsh or Ancient British fairy lore- it is not the less 
 certain that the Fairies of Shakespeare, and of many 
 of our fireside stories, are indebted for several of the 
 characteristics with which they are invested, both 
 in the works of our poets and in the stories of our 
 old crones, to their Celtic descent. " The fairies of 
 
28 The Folk-Lore of Shakespeare. 
 
 Europe," says a learned German,* who has obviously 
 been led to investigate their history from its connec- 
 tion with that of the Celtic races, "belong originally 
 to the Celts, from whom, with their accompanying 
 legends, they first passed over to the Germans." He 
 is very possibly right; for he is speaking of such 
 fairies as those to whom Milton alludes, as 
 
 " Faery damsels met in forests wide 
 By Knights of Logres, or of Lyones, 
 Lancelot, or Pelleas, or Pellenore," 
 
 who had originally nothing in common with those 
 elves and dwarfs to whom the name is now so univer- 
 sally but, with deference be it spoken, so improperly 
 applied. Mr. Keightley the introductory chapter 
 of whose interesting " Fairy Mythology " is devoted 
 to an investigation into the origin of the word Fairy 
 is of opinion that "after the appearance of the 
 'Faerie Queene' al] distinctions were confounded; 
 the names and attributes of the real Fays or Fairies 
 of romance were completely transferred to the little 
 beings who, according to the popular belief, made 
 ' the green-sour ringlets whereof the ewe not bites.' 
 The change thus operated by the poets established 
 itself firmly among the people : a strong proof, if 
 this idea be correct, of the power of the poetry of a 
 nation in altering the phraseology of even the lowest 
 classes of its society. Shakespeare must be regarded 
 as a principal agent in this revolution." 
 
 "Without being prepared, with Mr. Keightley, to 
 ascribe this confusion of the Celtic Fairy with the 
 Teutonic Elf to the influence of Spenser's splendid 
 
 * Schreiber " Die Feen in Europa." See also his Essay, 
 entitled " Feen und Hexen." 
 
The Folk- Lore of Shakespeare. 29 
 
 Allegory * or, indeed, to admit that such confusion 
 did not exist at a far earlier period, (for it is obvious 
 that when Chaucer speaks of 
 
 " The Elf-quene with her joly compagnie," 
 he invests the Celtic fairy with a name which does 
 not properly belong to her) we are quite ready to 
 concede that after the two classes had become so 
 closely identified by Shakespeare, after he had once 
 joined 
 
 " Elves and Fairies in a ring," 
 it was not to be expected that when 
 
 " Their midnight revels by a forest side, 
 Or fountain, some belated peasant sees, 
 Or dreams he sees," 
 
 he should readily mark the difference between the 
 Fairies who are properly the descendants of the 
 Druidesses of old and the Elves, who boast their 
 origin from, and their connection with, the Duergar 
 of the North. 
 
 A confusion of names has obviously contributed to 
 this confusion of attributes. " The very name Fairy," 
 says Schreiber, " betrays its Celtic origin " " and 
 points to the Romance Fada, the Italian Fata, and 
 Spanish Hada. " f Grimm, on the other hand, treating 
 of the relationship between Parca and Fatum, speaks 
 
 * Though this would seem to be supported by the closing 
 note of Dr. Johnson on the " Midsummer Night's Dream : " 
 " Fairies in his [Shakespeare's] time were much in fashion ; 
 ;ommon tradition had made them familiar, and Spenser's poem 
 uad made them great." 
 
 f See further, on the connection of the more modern Fairies 
 with the Druidical system on the one hand and the Classical 
 Mythology on the other, Alfred Maury, " Les Fees du Moyen- 
 Age." 
 
30 The Folk-Lore of Shakespeare. 
 
 of the impersonation of this latter word in the Ro- 
 mance tongue after the Parcce had disappeared from 
 the imagination of the people ; but is doubtful as to 
 whether such impersonation was called forth by the 
 influence of the female divinities of the Celtic mytho- 
 logy or of those of the German Norns. Of the Fairies 
 of romance there exist a number of traditions corres- 
 ponding to those which exist in the Folk-Lore of 
 Germany. Folquet de Puar sings 
 
 " Aissimfadero tres serors 
 En aquella ora qu ieu sui natz 
 Que totz temps fos enamoratz ; " 
 
 Guilhaume de Poitou 
 
 " Aissi fuy de nueitz fadatz sobr' un puegau;" 
 and Marcabrus 
 
 " Gentilfada 
 
 Vos adastret, quan fos nada, 
 Duna beutat esmerada. " 
 
 In the remarkable collection of Neapolitan tales, 
 by Giambattista Basile, entitled, " II Pentamerone,"* 
 we have frequent mention of certe Fate; one story 
 especially, named " Le Tre Fate," and one entitled 
 " Le Sette Cotenelle," which is nearly identical with 
 "DieDreiSpinnerinnen" of Grimm and of the various 
 cognate legends of the North. Cervantes, too, in his 
 " Don Quixote," mentions " los siete Castillos de las 
 siete Fadas." f The Fairies, again, to whom Brun 
 
 * It is rather a remarkable circumstance, that among the 
 curious notes which Felix Liebrecht, the recent editor of this 
 work, has collected, he has not devoted any to the illustration 
 of the "Fate," and^the popular notions of the Neapolitans with 
 regard to them. 
 
 f Grimm, " Deutsche Mythologie," s. 383. 
 
The Folk-Lore of Shakespeare. 31 
 
 de la Montagne is presented at the fountain in the 
 Forest of the Brocheliande, as we learn from the 
 romance so entitled, (fragments of which have been 
 printed by M. Le Roux de Lincy),* are three in 
 number ; and strongly resemble, as well in the gifts 
 which they present to the child, as in their appearance 
 and properties, the Parcae of Classical, and the Norns 
 of Scandinavian, Mythology. These last, again, figure 
 under the name of " Elves" in Layamon's translation 
 of the " Brut Chronicle : " where we learn that, on 
 the birth of Arthur 
 
 Sone swa he com an eorthe So soon he came on earth 
 
 Alven hine ivengen. Elves received him. 
 
 Heo bigolen that child They enchanted that child 
 
 Mid galdere swithe stronge. With magic most strong. 
 
 Heo zeven him mihte They gave him might 
 
 To beon best alre cnihten. To be best of all knights. 
 
 Heo zeven him an other thing They gave him another thing 
 
 That he scolde beon riche king. That he should be a rich king. 
 
 Heo ziven him that thridde They gave him the third 
 
 That he scolde longe libben. That he should long live. 
 
 Heo ziven that kin-bern They gave to that kingly child 
 
 Custen swithe gode. Virtues most good. 
 
 That he was mete-custi That he was most generous 
 
 Of alle quikemonnen, Of all men alive, 
 
 This the Alven him zef. This the Elves him gave. 
 
 Layamon, vv. 1925419269. 
 
 Sir Frederick Madden, from whose admirable edi- 
 tion f of this valuable relic of our early literature we 
 
 * In his very interesting "Livre des Legendes," Introduction : 
 a work which makes us regret that the volumes, to which it 
 was to serve as an introduction, have not yet been given to the 
 world. 
 
 f Layamon's " Brut, or Chronicle of Britain; a Poetical Semi- 
 Saxon Paraphrase of the Brut of Wace. Now first published 
 
32 The Folk-Lore of Shakespeare. 
 
 have taken the foregoing quotation, in remarking that 
 this curious passage is not in Wace who contents 
 himself with stating, 
 
 " Ertur son nom ; de sa bunte 
 Ad grant parole puis este " 
 
 adds, " It will be remarked that the Elves in Layamon 
 bear a greater affinity to the Fays of romance than to 
 the popular Fairies, between whom is a marked differ- 
 ence." How far Sir F. Madden is justified in the 
 opinion which he advances in the latter part of the 
 same note namely, that " It is almost certain that 
 the French received their knowledge of those Fays 
 from the Northern Mythology, in which the attend- 
 ance of certain Norns or Fairies at the birth of a child 
 was recognized," we are not prepared to say. 
 
 From a consideration of the facts which have been 
 already adduced, and which might readily be mul- 
 tiplied a hundred-fold, it is obvious that while a con- 
 fusion of names has led to a confusion of attributes, 
 the converse of that proposition is equally true, and 
 the well-known circumstance that different systems 
 of mythology ascribe certain given powers and offices 
 to beings of a character originally totally distinct, has 
 equally contributed to the confusion which now pre- 
 vails in our Fairy Mythology : in short, that a com- 
 munity of attributes has led to an interchange of 
 names. 
 
 I have entered at some length into these preliminary 
 observations on the intermixture of the superstitions 
 of different races discoverable in our fairy mythology, 
 
 from the Cottonian Manuscripts in the British Museum, ac- 
 companied by a Literal Translation, Notes, and a Grammatical 
 Glossary. By Sir Frederick Madden." 
 
The Folk-Lore of Shakespeare. 33 
 
 because, although it is probable that in no branch of 
 our Folk-Lore will this intermixture be found to 
 prevail to such an extent as in that which relates to 
 Elves and Fairies, no division of the subject will be 
 found entirely free from it : and because, before the 
 reader proceeds to consider the various points in that 
 fairy mythology to which Shakespeare's allusions must 
 direct inquiry the various attributes of fays and 
 elves which, recorded by his immortalizing pen, have 
 been fortunately perpetuated for the investigation of 
 the antiquary, it is essential that the reader's mind 
 should be impressed with the fact, that the system 
 which he is about to consider is not the immediate 
 offspring of that which prevailed 
 
 "In olde days of the King Artour 
 Of which that Bretons speken great honour," 
 
 nor of that which the followers of Hengist and 
 Horsa spread amongst us ; but an intermixture of all 
 these that it possesses a many-sided character. In 
 short, it is necessary to convince him of what the 
 prejudiced view of the antiquary has too often dis- 
 regarded, namely, that the history of our supersti- 
 tions, like that of our language and institutions, has 
 to be traced back, not to the time of the Norman 
 Conquest only not even to the time of the Hept- 
 archy not even to the day when 
 
 " Jove's bird, the Roman Eagle, winged 
 From the spungy south to this part of the west" 
 
 but through the period when 
 
 " A Roman and a British ensign waved 
 Friendly together, " 
 
 up to the very earliest ages of British history. 
 
 Archaeology, in all its branches, is at length assum- 
 
 D 
 
34 The Folk-Lore of Shakespeare. 
 
 ing the precision of a science ; and, reversing the rule 
 which formerly prevailed, now seeks diligently for 
 facts instead of endeavouring to supply their place by 
 theories, and to make up by prejudice what may be 
 wanting in knowledge. 
 
 The words of one of the most profound scholars of 
 the present day will bring these remarks to a fitting 
 close. Although originated by his inquiries into the 
 etymology of Saxon boundaries, they will be found to 
 apply most forcibly to the various phases of English 
 Folk-Lore : 
 
 " It cannot be doubted," says Mr. Kemble, " that 
 local names, and those devoted to distinguish the 
 natural features of a country, possess an inherent 
 vitality which even the urgency of conquest is fre- 
 quently unable to destroy. A race is rarely so en- 
 tirely removed as not to form an integral, though 
 subordinate, part of the new state based upon its 
 ruins ; and in the case where the cultivator continues 
 to be occupied with the soil, a change of master will 
 not necessarily lead to the abandonment of the names 
 by which the land itself, and the instruments or pro- 
 cesses of labour are designated. On the contrary, 
 the conquering race are apt to adopt these names from 
 the conquered ; and thus after the lapse of twelve 
 centuries and innumerable civil convulsions, the prin- 
 cipal words of the class described yet prevail in the 
 language of our people, and partially in our literature. 
 Many, then, of the words which we seek in vain in 
 the Anglo-Saxon dictionaries are, in fact, to be sought 
 in those of the Cymri, from whose practice they 
 were adopted by the victorious Saxons in all parts of 
 the country. They are not Anglo-Saxon, but Welsh 
 (i.e., Foreigh Wylisc) very frequently unmodified 
 either in meaning or pronunciation." 
 
The Folk-Lore of Shakespeare. 35 
 
 II. SHAKESPEARE'S ELVES AND FAIRIES. 
 
 " Fairies, black, grey, green and white, 
 You moonshine revellers, and shades of night, 
 You orphan-heirs of fixed destiny, 
 Attend your office, and your quality." 
 
 ,HE most successful attempt which has 
 hitherto been made to preserve the popular 
 stories that are still current in any part of 
 the British Islands is, unquestionably, " The Fairy 
 Legends and Traditions of the South of Ireland," by 
 Mr. Crofton Croker; and the reader who is interested 
 in the " small philosophy " supposed to be involved 
 in the study of popular superstitions will, doubtless, 
 remember the curious essay " On the Nature of the 
 Elves " written by the Brothers Grimm, a trans- 
 lation of which forms so interesting a portion of the 
 third volume of Mr. Croker's amusing work. 
 
 The writings of Shakespeare, and the records which 
 he has left us of the sayings and doings, the haunts 
 and habits, of our English 
 
 44 Urchins, ouphes, and fairies green and white," 
 
 furnish a poetical and striking commentary upon that 
 learned dissertation, as also upon the notes on the 
 same subject which James Grimm has collected in his 
 " German Mythology." For instance, one of the most 
 striking peculiarities which the fairies of Shakespeare 
 exhibit is their diminutive size. Queen Mab 
 
 " comes 
 
 In shape no bigger than an agate stone 
 On the forefinger of an alderman ; " 
 
36 The Folk-Lore of Shakespeare. 
 
 and Puck tells us that when Oberon and Titania 
 meet, 
 
 " They square, that all the elves for fear 
 Creep into acorn cups, and hide them there." 
 
 This corresponds exactly with the tiny dimensions 
 attributed to them in the mythology of the north ; 
 where it is said, that men are of a middle size be- 
 tween the giants and elves the stature of the giants 
 being as much greater than that of human beings as 
 the stature of the elves is below it.* 
 
 The dwarf-like form of the elves is, however, vari- 
 ously described. They are sometimes represented as 
 being of the size of a child of four years old. Thus 
 Elberich, the most renowned of the dwarfs (the 
 Oberon of Shakespeare be it remembered but of this 
 more hereafter,) is described, when discovered by 
 Otnit sleeping under the linden tree, as being of the 
 measure of a child of four years old,f 
 
 "Nu bist in kindes maze des vierden jahres alt." 
 
 And it is said of Autilois in Ulrich's "Alexander : " 
 " Er was kleine und niht groz in der maze als diu 
 kint, wen si in vierjdren sint" " He was little and 
 not greater in measure than the child when it is in its 
 fourth year."J When, therefore, Shakespeare makes 
 
 * Grimm, "Deutsche Mythologie," s. 418. 
 
 f Ettmuller's " Kunec Ortnides Mervart und Tot," ii. 24. 
 Grimm, " Deutsche Mythologie," s. 418, remarks in a note that 
 in the Middle Ages, the diminutive form ascribed to the dwarfs 
 and elves was thence also attributed to the Christian angels. 
 Thus we read in the Titurel of Wolfram von Eschenbach 
 " Bin jegelich engel schinet also gestalter als ein kint injaren 
 vieren in der jugende." 
 
 J Sir Joshua Reynolds little thought, at that happy moment 
 
The Folk-Lore of Shakespeare. 37 
 
 Mrs. Page, in compliance with the suggestion of her 
 husband, 
 
 " to make us public sport, 
 Appoint a meeting with the fat old fellow," 
 
 propose that 
 
 " Nan Page, my daughter, and my little son, 
 And three or four more of their growth, we'll dress 
 Like urchins, ouphes, and fairies green and white, 
 With rounds of waxen tapers on their heads 
 And rattles in their hands," 
 
 it is obvious that in the popular mind of England, at 
 the time when he wrote " The Merry Wives of Wind- 
 sor," the fairies were supposed sometimes to resemble 
 little children, at least in size. 
 
 At other times, again, the stature of the elves is 
 described, both in England and on the Continent, as 
 being far beneath that ever assumed by mortals. 
 Thus, the troop of fairies who appeared to Herman 
 von Rosenberg when he was celebrating his nuptials, 
 to request that they might at the same time hold the 
 bridal feast of a newly married elfin-couple, are re- 
 presented as having been scarcely "two spans" high; * 
 while the sprite (wihtel) mentioned in a fragment 
 of " Gawain," printed by Hoffman von Fallersleben 
 
 of inspiration when he transferred to his glowing canvas the 
 elfin and changing features of 
 
 " that shrewd and knavish sprite 
 Called Robin Goodfellow," 
 
 what great authority he had for so representing that "tricksy 
 spirit;" for giving that "merry wanderer of the night" the 
 form of a little child a form which we believe he has ever 
 since assumed, in the minds of all who have once looked upon 
 that beautiful creation of Sir Joshua's pencil. 
 * Grimm, " Deutsche Sagen," i. 54. 
 
38 The Folk-Lore of Shakespeare. 
 
 in the " Alt-Deutsche Blatter," is stated to have been 
 scarcely a thumb long 
 
 '* Reht als ein doum elle 
 Chum was er so long! "* 
 
 These, therefore, approach far more closely to the 
 standard of Titania's followers ; and might well have 
 taken part in the duties which she imposed upon her 
 train when she bade them 
 
 u Some, to kill cankers in the musk-rose buds, 
 Some, war with rear mice for their leathern wings 
 To make my small elves coats ; and some keep back 
 The clamorous owl that nightly hoots and wonders 
 At our quaint spirits ;** 
 
 and have joined Peasblossom, Cobweb, Moth, and 
 Mustard-seed in attendance upon Bottom, when 
 Titania commanded them 
 
 " Be kind and courteous to this gentleman ; 
 Hop in his walks, and gambol in his eyes ; 
 Feed him with apricots and dewberries 
 With purple grapes, green figs, and mulberries ; 
 The honey bags steal from the humble bees, 
 And for night-tapers crop their waxen thighs, 
 And light them at the fiery glowworm's eyes 
 To have my love to bed and to arise ; 
 And pluck the wings from painted butterflies, 
 To fan the moonbeams from his sleeping eyes ; 
 Nod to him, elves, and do him courtesies." 
 
 That the belief in the existence of an elfin race 
 small enough to "creep into acorn-cups and hide 
 them there " f was not confined to this country, but 
 
 * We may here remark that the Elfin character of our Tom 
 TTiumb (the German Dummling, and the French Petit Poucet,) 
 which Grimm has somewhere noticed as being clearly indicated 
 by the intelligence with which he is gifted as well as by his 
 diminutive size, is as obviously pointed at in his name. 
 
 j" Dray ton, in his " Nymphidia," has a similar incident ; his 
 
The Folk-Lore of Shakespeare. 39 
 
 was equally prevalent in Denmark, we learn from the 
 ballad of Eline of Villenskov, where it is said 
 
 u Out then spake the smallest Trold : 
 
 No bigger than an ant; 
 Oh, here is come a Christian man, 
 His schemes I'll sure prevent." * 
 
 We will not now stop to consider, with Grimm, 
 the circumstance that this tiny race is everywhere 
 
 elaborate description of which serves to mark, still more dis- 
 tinctly, the very minute size of his fairies : 
 
 " At length one chanced to find a nut, 
 In th'end of which a hole was cut, 
 Which lay upon a hazel root, 
 
 There scattered by a squirrel, 
 Which out the kernel gotten had, 
 When quoth this fay, ' Dear queen, be glad, 
 Let Oberon be ne'er so mad 
 
 I'll set you safe from peril.' 
 
 ' Come all into this nut,' quoth she, 
 * Come closely in be ruled by me, 
 Each one may here a chuser be, 
 
 For room, ye need not wrestle, 
 Nor need ye be together heapt.' 
 So one by one therein they crept, 
 And lying down, they soundly slept, 
 
 And safe as in a castle." 
 
 It is a curious fact, that next to Shakespeare we are indebted 
 to Drayton, another Warwickshire man, for the best materials 
 for our fairy mythology. Is that country still rich in fairy- 
 lore ? and if so, will no one undertake the pleasant task of 
 collecting it ? 
 
 * Danske Viser, i. 176. 
 
 " Det da meldte den mindste Trold 
 
 Han var ikke storre end en myre ; 
 Her er kommet en Christen mand, 
 Den maa jeg visseligen styre." 
 
40 The Folk-Lore of Shakespeare. 
 
 represented as forming a nation of themselves ; a fact 
 which has led some antiquaries to believe that in 
 certain regions at least, if not in all, the traditions of 
 the fairy or elfin race have reference to a people sub- 
 jugated by a nation whose descendants now inhabit 
 such districts. When Shakespeare's allusions to the 
 King and Queen of Fairy Land shall be under con- 
 sideration, some observations respecting the people 
 over whom they rule may find more fitting place. 
 
 Turn we, in the meanwhile, to the subject of their 
 inordinate love of music and dancing. There is 
 scarcely any one point in the fairy character upon 
 which the universal voice of national tradition is so 
 well agreed, as upon that which relates to the fond- 
 ness everywhere exhibited by the fairies for music 
 and revelry. To them, according to the legendary 
 records of every country, is owing such mysterious 
 and harmonious sounds as Caliban describes when he 
 pays 
 
 " The isle is full of noises ; 
 
 Sounds and sweet airs, that give delight and harm not. 
 Sometimes a thousand (wangling instruments 
 Will hum about mine ears; and sometimes voices 
 That, if I then had waked after long sleep, 
 Will make me sleep again ;" 
 
 and in like manner does the Folk-Lore of every nation 
 abound in well-remembered instances of their being 
 seen to meet 
 
 44 On hill, in dale, forest, or mead, 
 By paved fountain, or by rushy brook, 
 Or on the beached margent of the sea, 
 To dance their ringlets to the whistling wind." 
 
 The writings of Shakespeare abound in graphic 
 notices of these fairy revels, couched in the highest 
 
The Folk-Lore of Shakespeare. 41 
 
 strains of poetry ; and a comparison of these with 
 some of the popular legends which the industry of 
 continental antiquaries has preserved will show us 
 clearly, that these delightful sketches of elfin enjoy- 
 ment have been drawn by a hand as faithful as it is 
 masterly. As the object of these papers, however, is 
 to illustrate the writings of Shakespeare, rather than 
 to quote them, one brilliant passage from the close of 
 the " Midsummer Night's Dream " which proves 
 that, even when bestowing a blessing upon mortals, 
 the fairies oftentimes accompanied their precious gifts 
 by both a a Roundel and a Fairy Song " will show 
 how he made use of the popular belief of his own time 
 and country as the machinery of his dramas, and how 
 closely that belief corresponds with the traditions of 
 many of the other nations of Europe 
 
 " Puck. And we fairies, that do run 
 By the triple Hecat's team 
 From the presence of the sun, 
 
 Following darkness like a dream, 
 Now are frolic ; not a mouse 
 Shall disturb this hallowed house : 
 I am sent with broom before 
 To sweep the dust behind the door. 
 
 (Enter Oberon and Titania with all their Train.) 
 Oleron. Through the house give glimmering light 
 
 By the dead and drowsy fire ; 
 Every elf, and fairy sprite, 
 
 Hop as light as bird from brier ; 
 And this ditty after me 
 Sing, and dance it trippingly. 
 Titania. First, rehearse your song by rote, 
 
 To each word a warbling note. 
 
 Hand in hand, with fairy grace, ^ 
 
 Will we sing and bless this place." 
 
 If the reader would learn how far the fairies are 
 
42 The Folk-Lore of Shakespeare. 
 
 indebted for this love of music and dancing to a 
 taste which they may have inherited from their Celtic 
 progenitors, let him turn to the popular traditions of 
 Brittany, which tell how the Kerrigans or Dwarfs 
 are there seen, night after night, dancing their merry 
 rounds to the twinkling stars ; and that the burden 
 of their song or roundel was originally "Monday, 
 Tuesday, Wednesday? to which " Thursday and 
 Friday " have, more recently, been added : while 
 "Saturday and Sunday" being to them days marked 
 with a black stone, have never been allowed to form 
 a portion of the elfin chorus.* Schreiber tells us, 
 however,! that a midnight wanderer, who accidentally 
 intruded upon their revelry, tired of so monotonous 
 a song, varied it by adding the fatal words "Saturday 
 and Sunday;" but that no sooner had he given utter- 
 ance to them, than he was pinched, kicked, and cuffed 
 by the tiny host, until he was left half dead upon the 
 plain. Whereas, had he concluded the song, as he 
 ought to have done, with the words "And so ends the 
 week ! " the long repentance to which the Korrigans 
 are condemned would that moment have been brought 
 to a conclusion.^ The Breton peasant who believes 
 and relates these legends cautions the wayfarer who 
 
 * Villemarque', " Barzas-Breiz. Chants Populaires de la 
 Bretagne," tome i. p. 50. 
 
 f " Hexen und Feen," p. 38. The legend of Knockgrafton, 
 in Crofton Croker's " Fairy Legends," resembles this in many 
 particulars : and a Spanish story, to the same effect, is told in 
 Thorns' " Lays and Legends of Spain," p. 83. 
 
 J Maury, " Les Fees du Moyen Age," expresses his opinion, 
 that the belief in these nocturnal dances has its origin in those 
 rites of Druidism, as well as of the Polytheism of Greece and 
 Rome, which were celebrated at night : adding Horace thus 
 
The Folk-Lore of Shakespeare. 43 
 
 may chance to hear the unearthly music of the 
 Korrigans not to yield to the temptation of joining 
 their mazy dances ; and warns him that if he once 
 does so, he will be dragged into the circle and com- 
 pelled to dance until he drops and dies from exhaus- 
 tion. 
 
 How bewitching is the music of the Welsh fairies, 
 how irresistible the desire to join their dance which 
 it awakens in those who hear it the melancholy fate 
 of Rhys ap Morgan, as recorded by Davidd Shone, 
 will serve to show us.* 
 
 Pluquet tells us, in his " Contes Populaires de 
 Bayeux," that the fairy rings called by the peasants 
 of Normandy Cercles des Fees, are believed by them 
 to be formed by the fairies 
 
 " Where round and round all nights, in moonshine fair, 
 They dance to some strange music in the air." 
 
 And Mdlle. Bosquet f confirms his statements. These 
 Norman sprites may possibly be of Celtic descent; 
 but the Oennereeske, or underground people of Friesic 
 tradition, whose tiny footsteps are seen imprinted in 
 the Dunes of Frieseland are, on the other hand, un- 
 questionably of Scandinavian origin. Of their love 
 of music and dancing there can be little doubt, since 
 
 represents Venus conducting the Chorus of Dancers beneath 
 the pale beams of the watery moon : 
 
 " Jam Cytherea choros ducit Venus, imminente Luna, 
 Junctaeque Nymphis Gratiae decentes." Lib. i. Od. 4." 
 
 * " Fairy Mythology of the South of Ireland," vol. iii., p. 214. 
 
 f " La Normandie Romanesque et Merveilleuse." Grimm, 
 " Deutsche Mythologie," p. 438, informs us that these circlets 
 are called Alledands by the Danes, and Alfdands by the Swedes. 
 We may add that the Norwegians designate them by a similar 
 name Alfedands. 
 
44 The Folk-Lore of Shakespeare. 
 
 Kohl * was assured that they sometimes joined the 
 shepherds in their dances on the heath, and at other 
 times were discovered sitting on barrows and tumuli, 
 singing and playing instruments of music. 
 
 Faye gives a similar account of the fondness for 
 dancing exhibited by the Norwegian elves : and if 
 we turn to Thiele's " Danish Legends," we there 
 meet with corresponding notices of the " elve folk " 
 of Denmark; while Afzelius furnishes similar re- 
 cords of the Swedish elves. 
 
 To these latter is attributed the same jealousy of 
 mortal eye espying their wild revelry which made 
 Falstaff exclaim 
 
 " They are fairies ; he that speaks to them shall die ! 
 Til wink and couch ; no man their work must eye.*' 
 
 And the ballad of " Sir Olof," one of the most popular 
 in the rich ballad literature of Sweden and Denmark, 
 turns upon this peculiarity of the fairy character. 
 The following is a translation from a version given 
 by Arrwiddson in his " Svenska Fornsanger : " f 
 
 SIB OLOP AHD THE FAIRIES. 
 
 Sir Olof rides out at break of day, 
 Failing the dew and driving the mist, 
 
 He rides till he reaches the mountain grey, 
 At even Sir Olof returns again. 
 
 * Kohl, "Die Marschen und Inseln der Herzogthumer 
 Schleswig und Holstein," ii. 267. 
 
 f ' Svenska Fornsanger, En Samling af Kampavisor, Folk 
 Visor, Lekar och Dansar, samt Barn och Vall-Sanger," Svols. 
 8vo. This admirable collection of Swedish popular songs is far 
 less known in this country than it deserves to be. The learned 
 editor, Adolf Iwar Arwiddson, is the Librarian of the Royal 
 Library at Stockholm. 
 
The Folk-Lore of Shakespeare. 45 
 
 E'er Sir Olof had ridden that mountain o'er, 
 
 Falling the dew, $*c., 
 The Elf-King's daughter stood him before, 
 
 At even Sir Olof, frc. 
 
 Her snowy white hand outstretched she, 
 
 " Oh, prithee, Sir Olof, come dance with me." 
 
 " With thee, maiden, dance, I nor can nor may, 
 For to-morrow it is my bridal day." 
 
 That elf-maiden smote with her hand so white, 
 " Sorrow and sickness on thee alight ! " 
 
 That elf-inaiden smote with her cap so small, 
 " No more shall priest's benison on thee fall ! " 
 
 Sir Olof has turned his noble steed, 
 
 And home to his mother has ridden with speed. 
 
 And straight when she saw him that mother said, 
 "What has paled that cheek, once so bonny and red?" 
 
 ** Oh well may my cheek so pale be found, 
 For, alas ! I have trodden on fairy ground. 
 
 " To-morrow my love with her maidens will come 
 To ask thee, oh mother, why tarrieth thy son. 
 
 " And when she thus asks thee, oh mother, then say, 
 My son to the greenwood hath taken his way." 
 
 When the night it was past, and the day it was come, 
 Came his love and her bridesmaids to Sir Olofs home. 
 
 " God's blessing, oh mother-in-law, rest on thee, 
 
 Say, where is my bridegroom, say where tarrieth he ? " 
 
 " Askest thou after Olof, thy bridegroom so gay, 
 My son to the greenwood hath taken his way." 
 
 " say, does he prize more the hart and the roe 
 Than the love of his young bride, oh can it be so ?" 
 
 Then straightway she goes to his chamber so wide, 
 The arras and hanging she throweth aside, 
 
46 The Folk-Lore of Shakespeare. 
 
 Then straightway she draweth the curtains so red, 
 And there lay Sir Olof, but Sir Olof lay dead. 
 
 And when from that chamber the maiden came down, 
 Her fair hair hung wildly beneath her gold crown. 
 
 And before the next morning's sun arose, 
 There were three lying dead in Sir Olof s house. 
 
 The first waa Sir Olof, the second his bride, 
 
 Falling the dew and driving the mist, 
 The third was his mother, for sorrow she died. 
 
 At even Sir Olof returns again. 
 
 We will bring the present paper to a close with a 
 Flemish Legend ; which, while it exhibits another 
 instance of fairy fondness for music and dancing, (for, 
 doubtless, the merry dancers therein were fairies,) will 
 serve at the same time to show the uncertainty and 
 capriciousness of the elfin character. 
 
 An old fiddler was returning home from the fair at 
 Opbrakel, where he had contrived to line his purse 
 pretty well by the exercise of his calling ; and his 
 road lay through the Forest of Nederbrakel, in the 
 neighbourhood of which he resided. It was just mid- 
 night; and Kartof for such was the fiddler's name 
 who had learned from the Americans to love the 
 fragrant weed, felt how much he should enjoy the 
 company of his pipe if he could but get a light. By 
 great good luck, just as this wish arose in his mind, 
 he perceived a light in the middle of the wood. He 
 accordingly turned his steps in that direction ; and 
 on reaching the spot whence the light proceeded, was 
 surprised to see a glorious bonfire and a number of 
 men and women dancing around it. Kartof begged 
 the favour of a light; and twenty hands were instantly 
 stretched out to supply his want. Well pleased was 
 
The Folk-Lore of Shakespeare. 47 
 
 the old fiddler when he found his pipe once more 
 alight, and the grateful vapour curling round his 
 nostrils. While he was taking a few quiet whiffs 
 before resuming his journey, one of the dancers spied 
 the violin under his arm ; and begged him, in return 
 for their civility, to play a few dance tunes. To 
 this, Kartof, who was a little vain of his skill, readily 
 consented ; and while he was tuning his instrument 
 they handed him a glass of capital wine by way of 
 encouraging him to do his best. At length all was 
 ready. Kartof struck up one of his liveliest airs, 
 and off went the dancers : and so well pleased were 
 they with his performance, that they kept ever and 
 anon rewarding him with bright gold-pieces, and 
 plying him with the good liquor to keep his strength 
 up. After some time, the wine and the exertion of 
 playing overpowered poor Kartof, and he dropped 
 down upon the grass fast asleep ; and so the dance 
 ended. The sun was high in the heavens, next 
 morning, when Kartof awoke, and lifted his heavy 
 head from the ground to see where he had been 
 sleeping and to collect his scattered senses. He found 
 himself in the middle of the wood, beside a heap 
 of ashes which were still smouldering. He tried 
 his fiddle ; for his drunkenness had not made him for- 
 get his performance of the preceding night nor the 
 rich guerdon which he had received for it. His fiddle 
 was all right ; but when he came to look at the gold 
 pieces oh, misery and disappointment ! they were 
 all turned to beech leaves, the same as those which 
 lay around him in thousands. So, poor Kartof re- 
 turned home, with an aching head and a troubled 
 spirit sorely puzzled what to make of his adven- 
 tures in the Forest of Nederbrakel. 
 
48 The Folk-Lore of Shakespeare. 
 
 III. PUCK, OR ROBIN GOODFELLOW. 
 
 " My gentle Puck, come hither." 
 
 N the brilliant and animated picture which 
 Shakespeare has left us of the Court of 
 Fairy, its pomps and revelry, crowded as 
 the canvas is with objects of beauty and interest, there 
 is one figure which stands so prominently forward as 
 instantly to arrest our attention one figure on which, 
 unmindful of the gorgeous imagery by which it is 
 surrounded, the eye delights to dwell. It is not that 
 of "jealous Oberon, captain of the fairy band" it 
 is not that of " proud Titania " but it is the well- 
 drawn and richly-coloured portrait of 
 
 " that shrewd and knavish sprite 
 Called Robin Goodfeliow." 
 
 And the object of the present paper is to show that, 
 masterly as is the portrait as a work of Art, there is 
 not one touch in it which is not based in truth. 
 In the character of Puck 
 
 bodied almost every attribute with whmh 
 nafion of the people has invested theJFairy. race ; and 
 haT"neither omitted one trait necessary to give bril- 
 liancy and distinctness to the likeness, nor sought to 
 heighten its effect by the slightest exaggeration. For, 
 carefully and elaborately as he has finished the picture, 
 he has not in it invested the " Lob of Spirits " with 
 one gift or quality which the popular voice of the age 
 was not unanimous in bestowing upon him. What 
 those gifts, powers, and qualities were, let Shake- 
 speare tell us : 
 
The Folk-Lore of Shakespeare. 49 
 
 " Fairy. Either I mistake your shape and making quite, 
 Or else you are that shrewd and knavish sprite 
 Call'd Robin Goodfellow. Are you not he, 
 That frights the maidens of the villagery; 
 Skims milk ; and sometimes labours in the quern ; 
 And bootless makes the breathless housewife churn ; 
 And sometimes makes the drink to bear no barm ; 
 Misleads night-wanderers, laughing at their harm. 
 Those that Hobgoblin call you, and sweet Puck, 
 You do their work, and they shall have good luck ; 
 Are you not he ? 
 
 Puck. Thou speak'st aright. 
 
 I am that merry wanderer of the night. 
 I jest to Oberon, and make him smile, 
 When I a fat and bean-fed horse beguile, 
 Neighing in likeness of a filly foal : 
 And sometimes lurk I in a gossip's bowl, 
 In very likeness of a roasted crab ; 
 And when she drinks against her lips I bob, 
 And on her withered dewlap pour the ale. 
 The wisest aunt telling the saddest tale, 
 Sometimes for three-foot stool mistaketh me ; 
 Then slip I from her bum, down topples she, 
 And " Tailor " cries, and falls into a cough : 
 And then the old quire hold their hips and laugh, 
 And waxen in their mirth, and neeze, and swear, 
 A merrier hour was never wasted there." 
 
 The speech which Puck makes to fright the " crew 
 of patches " 
 
 " I'll follow you, I'll lead you about, around, 
 Through bog, through bush, through brake, through brier, 
 SometFme a horse I'll be, sometime a hound ; 
 A hog, a headless bear, sometime a fire ; 
 And neigh, and bark, and grunt, and roar, and burn, 
 Like horse, hound, hog, bear, fire, at every turn ;" 
 
 and that in which he describes the trick that he has 
 put upon Bottom 
 
 " An ass's nowl I fixed on his head," 
 complete this masterly sketch. Let us analyze it, and 
 
 
 
50 The Folk-Lore of Shakespeare. 
 
 we shall see how admirably and consistently has the 
 imagination of Shakespeare, while thus " bodying 
 forth the form of things unknown," incorporated > in 
 this one picture in little, all the ^^.|y r ti*riatjria f>f t] 1f> 
 rffinnir rnfthrj wmrn prnnnnmd in thr " rnlllLflF " 
 of Lis day. And that this was done designedly and 
 of aforethought can scarcely be doubted, when it is 
 borne in mind that Shakespeare has designated this 
 personification of the fairy tribe not by any imaginary 
 title, but simply as Puck. For though " Puck " is 
 
 nOW Only npjlipjljhn ffop^mnf^l,]!^' IhPrr^wnnfT^Pr 
 
 ofthenigEt," it was originally a name applied tb""!he 
 ^ ole^a^fr-oLjSiafifl/ and not to any individiial 
 fay, more, it is ihtt IlUIne by which they are 
 still designated by the peasantry of Friesland and 
 Jutland ; and when we remember how large a pro- 
 portion of what are called our Anglo-Saxon progeni- 
 tors migrated from those countries, it seems scarcely 
 too much to say, with M. Kohl, " that the Jutes and 
 Anglo-Saxons could .not even get rid of the Pucks 
 when they sailed for England." 
 
 Be this as it may, however, it will at least justify 
 us in applying the curious information which this 
 amusing traveller has collected on the subject of these 
 Friesian sprites to illustrate the history and character 
 of our own "sweet Puck." Puk, Nis Puk, Huispuk, 
 Niskepuk, Wolterke, Nisebok, Nisske, Nisskuke, and 
 Pulter Claas, are the names which are applied in those 
 regions, according to the statement of Kohl,f to the 
 
 * More upon this point, when the curious subject of the 
 names by which the fairies are designated in the writings of 
 Shakespeare shall come under our consideration. 
 
 { " Die Marschen und Inseln der Herzogthumer Schleswig 
 und Holstein," von J. G. Kohl, band ii., s. 282, et seq. 
 
The Folk-Lore of Shakespeare. 51 
 
 domestic or household spirit. Of these Puk, or Niss 
 Puk, is that which is most commonly bestowed upon 
 him, as well by the Friesians as by the Jutes and 
 Danes. And in every way, continues that writer, 
 is the name of this spirit most remarkable, since it is 
 the same under which he passed over into England, 
 where he plays the same pranks as on this side of the 
 Northern Ocean, and where those pranks have been 
 sung and celebrated by the greatest poet of that 
 nation. What Shakespeare has so poetically related 
 of the tricks and merry pranks of Puck is told at the 
 present day, only somewhat more coarsely, by the 
 peasantry of Friesland and Jutland. 
 
 The Puks, like the Oennereeske, or underground 
 people, are small and dwarflike. They are described 
 as wearing pointed red caps, long grey or green 
 jackets, and slippers on their feet. They take up 
 their abode under the roof, whither they go in and 
 out at pleasure, either through a broken window, 
 which no one ventures to mend, or through some 
 other opening left for the purpose. As the Romans 
 made offerings to their Lares, and prepared food for 
 them, so the Friesians set out on the floor a bowl of 
 porridge for the Puk, who is not well pleased if it be 
 not made more palatable by a bit of butter.* Al- 
 though people generally feel a certain dread of these 
 Puks, and do not very readily approach the places 
 which they are known to frequent, these spirits are 
 on the whole well disposed towards mankind, and 
 anxious to be on good terms with them. For, like 
 
 * Kohl adds, " The same custom is observed in the Erzge- 
 birge at the present day ; and the Letts, Cossaks, and other 
 people say it was formerly practised among them." 
 
52 The Folk-Lore of Shakespeare. 
 
 the Oennereeske, the Puks are of themselves neither 
 decidedly malicious nor beneficent. When pleased 
 with the master of the house in which they reside, 
 they take upon themselves at night the performance 
 of all the household duties* wash and cleanse the 
 rooms and furniture, bring in fodder, tend the cattle, 
 and take care that everything thrives. Nay, so 
 anxious are they that it should be so, that rather than 
 fail they do not scruple to rob the neighbours. They 
 are oftentimes heard in the middle of the night bust- 
 ling over their work, and going up and down about 
 the house ; and sometimes they amuse themselves by 
 playing tricks upon the maids and servants, tickling 
 them under the nose to make them sneeze in their 
 sleep, pulling off the bed-clothes, and indulging in 
 such other pranks as those which Shakespeare at- 
 tributes to his celebrated Queen Mab. The tricks 
 played by these Puks upon the goodman of the house 
 are oftentimes of so comic a character that one can 
 scarcely conceive how they ever entered into the 
 imagination of the people. 
 
 They tell a story of one of these Puks, who was 
 once seen, in broad daylight, sitting outside a garret 
 window, with his head resting idly on both hands, 
 and who amused himself by singing the praise of his 
 own beauty, although he was frightfully ugly, and 
 
 * So, in the very remarkable account of the domestic spirit 
 Hinzebnan which Grimm has given in his "Deutsche Sagen," 
 i., p. 103, et seq., we find that precisely the same description of 
 household duties was undertaken by that drudging fiend ; and 
 other stories in the same collection furnish similar instances. 
 Thiele furnishes legends of the same character from Denmark ; 
 Crofton Croker from Ireland ; and Chambers gives us a corres- 
 ponding account of the Scottish Brownie. 
 
The Folk-Lore of Shakespeare. 53 
 
 the roundness and symmetry of his legs, which he 
 kept bobbing up and down, although those legs were 
 as thin as sticks ; and thus he continued, now teazing 
 the yard-dog by holding out to him first one and then 
 the other of his shrivelled legs, and now mocking the 
 servants and making faces at them, until at last one 
 of the stable-boys crept up stealthily behind him, 
 and with a pitchfork pushed him down off the window 
 sill. But down into the yard Puk never fell, for 
 nothing reached the ground but some broken pots- 
 herds and dirty straw. Puk was, however, greatly 
 offended at the trick which had been played him, and 
 soon took his revenge. 
 
 When these Puks are offended with the master of 
 the house, they plague him so incessantly, and play 
 him so many tricks, that he is at last fain to abandon 
 his house. Yet it often happens that he does not, by 
 so doing, get freed from his domestic spirit ; for, like 
 the " atra cura " of Horace, the Puks continue to 
 follow him, let him take as much pains as he may to 
 keep his plans a secret from them. They conceal 
 themselves in the waggon in which his household 
 goods are packed up; and when, on the journey, 
 they are discovered, and asked " What are you doing 
 here ?" they repeat the answer which the peasant had 
 given to the inquiries of his neighbours " Oh ! we 
 are moving to-day."* Thus, the Jutes and Anglo- 
 
 * Crofton Croker, in the notes to his story of the " Haunted 
 Cellar " (" Fairy Legends of the South of Ireland," i., p. 143) 
 has collected several amusing instances of the failure of such 
 attempts to get rid of these domestic spirits ; and Grimm, in 
 his " Deutsche Sagen," i., p. 93, relates a story of a peasant who, 
 driven to desperation by the tricks of a Kobold, determined, by 
 way of getting rid of him, to burn the barn in which the spirit 
 
54 The Folk-Lore of Shakespeare. 
 
 Saxons could not free themselves from the Puks when 
 they crossed the seas to England, for they followed 
 them thither. 
 
 How striking is the resemblance between this ac- 
 count of the manner in which the Friesian peasant 
 
 " Tells how the drudging Goblin sweat 
 To earn his cream-bowl duty set" 
 
 and that of our own sweet Puck ! Their names are 
 not more identical than their characteristics. For as 
 the Friesian Puk when kindly disposed would, we 
 see, do the work and give good luck to those who 
 pleased him, so, on the other hand, he was as ready 
 as our own hobgoblin "to fright the maidens of the 
 villagery," 
 
 " And bootless make the breathless housewife churn." 
 
 The manner in which Puck's favour was bestowed 
 on those " that Hobgoblin called him and sweet 
 Puck " is also faithfully copied from popular belief 
 as it exists in these islands as well as on the Conti- 
 nent. Thus, in Germany the favour of the elves is 
 propitiated by bestowing on them such a name as 
 Gutgesell, nachbar, or lieber nachbar ; and in the 
 Netherlands, goede kind in Denmark, gad dreng, 
 kiarre granne, are names bestowed upon them with 
 the same object. In Ireland, again, they are called 
 the good people ; in Scotland, the good neighbours ; 
 
 had taken up its abode. Accordingly, having removed his corn 
 from it, he set fire to the Kobold's retreat ; and, when the flames 
 were at their height, was just congratulating himself upon 
 being freed from his tormentor, when he heard his well-known 
 voice calling out from the waggon on which he was removing 
 his property" It was quite time for us to come out ! It was 
 quite time for us to come out !" 
 
The Folk-Lore of Shakespeare. 55 
 
 and Mr. Chambers* tells us that in the latter country 
 " the fairies are said to have been exceedingly sensi- 
 tive upon the subjects of their popular appellations. 
 They considered the term Fairy " disreputable, and 
 are thought to have pointed out their approbation 
 and disapprobation of the other phrases applied to 
 them in the following verses : 
 
 " Gin ye ca' me imp or elf, 
 I rede ye look weel to yourself; 
 Gin ye ca' me fairy, 
 I'll work you muckle tarrie (vexation) ; 
 Gin gude neibor ye ca' me, 
 Then gude neibor I will be ; 
 But gin ye ca 1 me seelie wicht, 
 I'll be your friend both day and nicht." 
 
 And Kirk, in his " Secret Commonwealth " one of 
 the most curious treatises on any subject connected 
 with popular mythology ever penned tells us, 
 " These &iths or fairies they call Sleagh Maith, or the 
 Good People, it would seem to. prevent the dint of 
 their ill-attempts (for the Irish use to bless all they 
 fear harm of)." In the characters, too, which Puck 
 assumes when his object is to 
 
 " Mislead night wanderers, laughing at their harm," 
 for which purpose he says, 
 
 " Sometime a horse I'll be, sometime a hound, 
 A hog, a headless bear, sometime a fire," 
 
 he is, as unquestionably, only taking upon himself 
 forms which the spirits of popular belief were con- 
 
 * In page 32 (edit. 1842) of his very valuable, because 
 obviously genuine, collection of Scottish Folk-Lore, entitled 
 " Popular Rhymes, Fireside Stories and Amusements of Scot- 
 land." 
 
56 The Folk-Lore of Shakespeare. 
 
 stantly in the habit of assuming. How very ancient 
 and far-spread is the belief in spirits, or fairies, assum- 
 ing the form of a horse, we learn from Gervase of 
 Tilbury ; who, in a well-known and oft-quoted pas- 
 sage of his " Otia Imperialia," speaks of a spirit which 
 in England was called Grant* and appeared in 
 " likeness of a filly foal." " Est in Anglia quoddam 
 demonum genus, quod suo idiomate Grant nominant 
 ad instar pulli equini anniculi," &c. ; and Mr. Keight- 
 ley, in his " Fairy Mythology," has shown from Grose 
 " that in Hampshire they still give the name of Colt 
 Pixy to a supposed spirit, or fairy, which, in the shape 
 of a horse, wickers, i.e., neighs and misleads horses 
 into bogs," &c. a prank which is exactly one of 
 those that Puck plays when he assumes the shape of 
 a horse " to make Oberon smile." Pluquet, in de- 
 scribing Le Goubelin or gobelin of Normandy who 
 resembles Shakespeare's Puck in many particulars 
 tells us, among other things, that he sometimes takes 
 the form of a handsome black horse, but, woe to 
 the unhappy traveller who is tempted to bestride 
 him ! and we learn from Mdlle. Bosquet that Le 
 Chevalier Bayard is the name given to this Lutin or 
 gobelin by the Norman peasantry. I have printed 
 in the " Lays and Legends of Spain," p. 93, a curious 
 account of a spirit horse, extracted from Torque- 
 ineda's " Spanish Mandeville of Miracles"; and also 
 another extract from the same work, in which is an 
 account of " two great black mastives " which are 
 
 * Grimm, " Deutsche Mythologie," ss. 222 and 946, points 
 out the resemblance between this name and that of the ma- 
 licious spirit Grendel in Beowulf. Grimm alludes also to tho 
 fact, as connected with this subject, that the Devil is represented 
 in many places as being discoverable by his horse-foot. 
 
The Folk-Lore of Shakespeare. 57 
 
 obviously evil spirits who have assumed that ap- 
 pearance. 
 
 This, then, is an authority, and one of which fre- 
 quent instances might be adduced, for Puck's assump- 
 tion of the form of a " hound." But the consideration 
 of spirits in the form of hounds would almost form a 
 chapter of itself. We will therefore pass that by for 
 the present ; as also that of Puck's self-transformation 
 into a fire by which, although it is not expressly 
 stated, it is clear that Shakespeare alluded to the Will- 
 o'-the- Wisp. Grimm furnishes some instances of the 
 Evil One assuming the shape of a " hog "; and, as in 
 the transformations which Puck assumes the more 
 malevolent features of the elfin character are dis- 
 coverable, such instances as the present serve to show 
 how, in the ever-varying phases of the popular 
 mythology, the once harmless fairies have gradually 
 got confounded with the spirit of evil a state of 
 things to which the introduction of Christianity has 
 no doubt greatly contributed. 
 
 What authority Shakespeare had for making his 
 shrewd and knavish sprite take upon himself the 
 shape of a bear I know not. Some such authority 
 will no doubt be discovered. But the only con- 
 nection between elves and bears which I remember 
 to have met with is in the following Norwegian 
 legend,* a counterpart of which may very pos- 
 sibly have been current in England when Shakespeare 
 wrote, and so have suggested to him the transforma- 
 tion in question. 
 
 * A High German poetical version of this legend occurs in 
 a MS. of the fourteenth century pieserved at Heidelberg. An 
 analytical translation of it will be f< und in Grimm's " Essay on 
 the Elves" in Croker's "Fairy Legends," iii., p. 131, et seq. 
 
58 The Folk-Lore of Shakespeare. 
 
 There was once a man up in Finmark, who had 
 caught a great white bear, which he determined to 
 take as a present to the King of Denmark. Now, it 
 fell out, that while he was on his journey, he arrived 
 on Christmas Eve at the village of Dovrefield ; and 
 accident brought him to the house of a man named 
 Halvor, of whom he begged a night's lodging for 
 himself and his bear. " Ah ! God help me," ex- 
 claimed Halvor, " how can I give anybody a night's 
 lodging ? Why every Christmas Eve I have so many 
 Trolls (Elves) come to this house, that I and all my 
 family are obliged to quit it, and have not even a 
 roof to cover us." 
 
 " Oh, you may give me a shelter for all that," said 
 the man ; " for my bear can sleep here behind the 
 stove, and I can creep into the bed-press." 
 
 Halvor had nothing to say against this ; but he and 
 his family withdrew, taking care, however, to get 
 everything ready for the Trolls, and to leave plenty 
 of rice-milk, dried fish and sausages upon the tables, 
 and, in fact, everything necessary to make them a 
 good feast. 
 
 As soon as they were gone, in came the Trolls. 
 Some were large, some little, some had long tails, 
 some none, and some had monstrous noses ; but all 
 ate, and drank, and enjoyed the good things that were 
 set before them. In the midst of their merriment, 
 one of the little Trolls, who had espied the bear 
 sleeping behind the stove, stuck a piece of sausage 
 on the end of a fork, and holding it under the bear's 
 nose, called out " Pussy, pussy, do you like sausage 
 too ? " Upon which the bear being roused and angered, 
 began to growl so terribly that he soon frightened 
 the Trolls, great and small, out of the house. 
 
The Folk-Lore of Shakespeare. 59 
 
 Next year, just before Christmas, when Halvor 
 was in the forest chopping wood and making ready for 
 a visit from the Trolls, he suddenly heard some one 
 calling him by name, " Halvor, Halvor."" Yes," 
 said Halvor.--" Have you got your great cat still ?" 
 "Yes," said Halvor, "and she has got seven kittens 
 fiercer and bigger than herself." " Oh !" said the 
 Troll, " if that's the case, we won't enter your doors 
 again," and from that time forth Halvor was never 
 troubled with the Trolls again on Christmas Eve. 
 
 IV. PUCK AS WlLL-o'-THE- WlSP. 
 
 " Some call him Robin Goodfellow, 
 
 Hob-goblin, or Mad Crisp ; 
 And some againe doe terme him oft 
 By name of Will-the- Wispe." 
 
 HAT we are justified in saying, it is clear 
 that Shakespeare alluded to the Will-o'- 
 the-Wisp when he makes Puck declare that, 
 among other shapes, he will be " sometime a fire," 
 is proved by other passages in his writings. The 
 first, and the more obvious one, is that in which 
 Stephano, after Ariel has led him and his drunken 
 companions through 
 
 " Tooth'd briers, sharp furzes, pricking goss and thorns," 
 
 and " left them i' the filthy mantled pool," reproaches 
 Caliban : " Monster, your fairy, which you say is a 
 harmless fairy, has done little better than play'd the 
 Jack with us," that is, as Dr. Johnson observes, 
 " He has played Jack- with-a-Lan thorn, has led us 
 about like an Ignis fatuus, by which travellers are 
 decoyed into the mire." 
 
60 Tlie Folk-Lore of Shakespeare. 
 
 (t The Tempest " contains another allusion to this 
 subject It is in the speech in which Ariel who, it 
 must be remembered, is, like Puck, a fairy assures 
 Prospero that he has 
 
 " Performed to point, to every article, 
 The tempest that he bade him ;" 
 
 and runs as follows: 
 
 "I boarded the King's ship; now on the beak, 
 Now in the waist, the deck, in every cabin, 
 I flam'd amazement : sometimes I'd divide, 
 And burn in many places : on the top mast, 
 The yards and bowsprits, would I flame distinctly ; 
 Then meet and join ; Jove's lightnings, the precursors 
 ()' the dreadful thunder-claps, more momentary 
 And sight-outrunning were not." 
 
 A third passage, the peculiar force of which was 
 first pointed out by Mr. Hunter, in his recent and 
 valuable addition to our stores of Shakespearian 
 Illustration,* occurs in " Lear," where Gloster's torch 
 being seen in the distance, the Fool says, " Look, 
 here comes a walking fire." Whereupon Edgar, 
 speaking in his assumed character, says, " This is the 
 foul fiend, Flibbertigibet ; he begins at Curfew, and 
 walks till the first cock." " From which," observes 
 Mr. Hunter, " Flibbertigibet seems to be a name for 
 the Will-o'-the-Wisp. Hence the propriety of 'He 
 begins at Curfew, and walks till the crowing of the 
 cock ;' that is, is seen in all the dark of night." 
 
 That Mr. Hunter is right is unquestionable, from 
 Mad Tom's previous declaration that he is one " whom 
 the foul fiend hath led through fire and through flame, 
 
 * " New Illustrations of the Life, Studies, and Writings of 
 Shakespeare," vol. ii., p. 272. 
 
The Folk-Lore of Shakespeare. 61 
 
 through ford and through whirlpool, over bog and 
 quagmire." And it would only have been part of 
 that consistency observable in the most trifling 
 speech of every personage in Shakespeare's dramas 
 that Edgar should avail himself, upon the mention of 
 the " walking fire," to carry on his assumed character 
 of Mad Tom, by identifying it with the "foul fiend" 
 by whom he had been so grievously misled. But it 
 is a curious fact, which has hitherto, I believe, escaped 
 the notice of the commentators, that when Shake- 
 speare wrote " a walking fire " was a common name 
 for the Ignis fatuus, as we learn from the story " How 
 Robin Goodfellow lead a Company of Fellowes out 
 of their way."* 
 
 " A company of young men having beene making 
 merry with their sweethearts, were, at their coming 
 home, to come over a heath. Robin Goodfellow, 
 knowing of it, met them, and to make some pastime 
 hee led them up and downe the heathe a whole night, 
 so that they could not get out of it, for hee went 
 before them in the shape of a walking fire, which they 
 all saw and followed till the day did appeare; then 
 Robin left them, and at his departure spake these 
 words : 
 
 " Get you home, you merry lads, 
 Tell your mammies and your dads, 
 And all those that newes desire, 
 How you saw a walking fire,^ 
 
 * See p. 21 of "The Mad Pranks and Merry Jests of Robin 
 Goodfellow." Reprinted from the Edition of 1628, with an 
 Introduction by J. Payne Collier, Esq., F.S.A. ; not the least 
 curious of the publications of the Percy Society, or of the many 
 reprints, for which the admirers of our early literature are in- 
 debted to the zeal and acquirements of my excellent friend. 
 
 f So in the poetical chap-book called " The Merry Pranks of 
 
62 The Folk-Lore of Shakespeare. 
 
 Wenches, that doe smile and lispe, 
 Use to call me Willy-Wispe." 
 
 This quotation proves both that Lear's Fool supposed 
 Gloster's torch to be a Will-o'the-Wisp, and also, 
 what we desired to show, that Puck, or Kobin Good- 
 fellow, sometimes under such a form 
 
 " Misled night-faring clowns 
 O'er hills, and sinking bogs, and pathless downs/' 
 
 The connection between the Ignis fatuus and the 
 Elfin race has been noticed by Grimm, who remarks 
 that it is pointed at in the earliest names for this 
 walking light which he has met with, namely, elflicht 
 and the Danish Vattylis ; while the connection which 
 subsists between the Ignis fatuus and the domestic 
 spirits is shown by the fact that it is frequently desig- 
 nated after mankind, as Will-of-the-Wisp, Will-with- 
 the-Wisp, Jack-o'-Lan thorn, &c. 
 
 The popular belief as to the nature of this ap- 
 pearance is divided at the present day at least in 
 Germany, where it is generally designated Irlicht or 
 I r wish, from its similarity to a wisp (in German wiscJi) 
 of lighted straw. According to some, these phantoms 
 are believed to be the souls of children who have died 
 unbaptized ; while others again believe them to be 
 the restless spirits of wicked and covetous men who 
 have not scrupled, for the sake of their own aggran- 
 disement, to " remove their neighbours' landmarks." 
 
 Robin Goodfellow, very pleasant and witty," reprinted by Mr. 
 Collier, we read, p. xviii 
 
 " Sometimes he'd counterfeit a voyce, 
 
 And travellers call astray ; 
 Sometimes a walking fire he'd be, 
 And lead them from their way." 
 
The Folk-Lore of Shakespeare. 63 
 
 In Brittany, as we learn from Villemarque, the 
 Porte-brandon* appears in the form of a child bearing 
 a torch, which he turns like a burning wheel ; and 
 with this it is said that he sets fire to the villages, 
 which are sometimes suddenly in the middle of the 
 night wrapped in flames. 
 
 In Lusatia, where these wandering wildfires are 
 also supposed to be the souls of unbaptized children, 
 they are believed to be perfectly harmless,! an( * to 
 be relieved from their destined wanderings as soon 
 as any pious hand throws a handful of consecrated 
 ground after them. 
 
 The Lygtem&nd, or Lightmen, of Denmark are 
 the spirits of unjust men, who by holding out a false 
 light seek to allure wayfarers into fens and other 
 dangerous places. The best defence against them is 
 for the party who sees them to turn his cap inside 
 out.J Whoever sees them must take care not to 
 point at them, otherwise they will come and do him 
 a mischief. It is also said that when a Lygteman is 
 called he will come and shine before the party who 
 called him, but who must take care that he does not 
 injure him for his presumption in so calling him. 
 
 In the parish of Juulstrup, near Aalborg, some 
 
 * " Barzas-Breiz," I. 230, where other particulars of this 
 Breton feu-follet are recorded. 
 
 f Grave, " Volksagen und Volksthumliche Denkmale der 
 Lausitz," p. 167. 
 
 J In the interesting notice of the Pixies of Devonshire [Afh. 
 991], we are told that they delight in leading astray such per- 
 sons as they find abroad after nightfall, and that the only remedy 
 in such a case is to turn some part of the dress. So Bishop 
 Corbet, in his " Iter Septentrionale " 
 
 " turn your cloaks, 
 Said he, for Puck is busy in these oaks." 
 
64 The Folk-Lore of Shakespeare. 
 
 peasants were once packing corn in the middle of the 
 night when it was pitch dark. Suddenly one of these 
 spirits appeared, to whom a boy called out fearlessly 
 " You had better come and shine before us." 
 Whereupon the Lygteman approached, settled over 
 where they were loading, then followed with the 
 waggon till it came right to the granary. Near 
 Skovby by Falker these Lygtemen are very nu- 
 merous. They are there said to be the ghosts of 
 land surveyors, who in their lifetime have acted un- 
 justly in their admeasurements, and are now con- 
 demned to run up the Hill of Skovby and measure 
 it with red-hot iron rods, exclaiming while they do 
 so, " This is a right and proper boundary, from here 
 to here."* Afzelius relates a similar legend which is 
 current in Sweden.f 
 
 Mdlle. Bosquet, in her " Normandie Romanesque 
 et Merveilleuse," gives us some very curious notices 
 upon the subject of the popular belief in Normandy 
 regarding these Feux Follets. They are there re- 
 garded as cruel and malicious spirits, whom it is 
 extremely dangerous to encounter. To fly from 
 them is to invite them to follow and persecute the 
 unhappy wight who sees them, whose only chance of 
 escape is to throw himself on his face and invoke the 
 Divine assistance in releasing him from his danger. 
 Among the superstitions which prevail on this sub- 
 ject are two deserving of notice : one is that the 
 Ignis fatuus is the spirit of some unhappy woman, 
 who is destined thus to run enfourolle to expiate her 
 intrigues with a minister of the church, and it is 
 
 * See Thiele " Danmarks Folkesagn," ii. 299. 
 t Swenska Folkets Sago-Hafder, ii. 172. 
 
The Folk-Lore of Shakespeare. 65 
 
 designated from that circumstance La Fourlore or 
 La Fourolle. Another opinion is, that Le Feu 
 Follet is the soul of a priest who has been con- 
 demned thus to expiate his broken vows of perpetual 
 chastity ; and it is very probable that it is to some 
 similar belief existing in this country at the time 
 when he wrote that Milton alludes in L'AUegro, 
 when he says, 
 
 " She was pinched and pulled, she said, 
 And he by Friars' Lanthorn led." 
 
 In the curious collection which Kuhn has pub- 
 lished under the title of " Markische Sagen und 
 Legenden" we find two passages which serve to 
 illustrate the preceding notices. The first, particu- 
 larly, will show that it was consistent with the elfin 
 character of Puck that he should assume the form of 
 the Will-of- the- Wisp. It is the legend of a peasant 
 in Schwina, who for a long time had a Kobold living 
 in his house, by whose means he became a rich man. 
 Among the forms which this Kobold sometimes took 
 was that of a calf with fiery eyes, though more fre- 
 quently he lay upon the hearth in the shape of an 
 old cat Sometimes he was found in the morning in 
 the stove in the shape of a flame of fire ; when the 
 maid, suddenly frightened at the sight, would run to 
 her mistress and tell her that there was a fiery monster 
 in the grate, but by the time the mistress came he 
 had vanished. This Kobold at length becoming too 
 intimate with the good woman of the house, her hus- 
 band one day caught him, packed him up in a basket, 
 and had him carried away to such a distance that he 
 could never find his way home again. The second 
 passage describes the Leuchtmannekens (or little light- 
 
 F 
 
66 The Folk-Lore of Shakespeare. 
 
 men), as they are there called, as little spirits who 
 carry a light, and ofttimes so lead night wanderers out 
 of their road that it is long before they can find their 
 way again. But that these spirits, (which are there 
 also described as the souls of unbaptized children who 
 cannot rest in their graves) are not always malicious, 
 but will sometimes do good service to those who know 
 how to propitiate them, is shown by the following 
 story : 
 
 Close by Stulpe, and at the foot of the Gohn Moun- 
 tain, these little light-men are often seen ; and an old 
 man who had lived in that neighbourhood for many 
 years frequently saw them dancing merrily before 
 him as he returned home late at night from carousing 
 in the village. If it was very dark, or a heavy fall 
 of snow had taken place, he would call out to one of 
 these little light-men, "Come, and light me home!" 
 This it would do instantly, going before him until he 
 had reached his dwelling-place, where it vanished. 
 Then he laid a halfpenny upon the sill of the door, 
 and was sure to find it gone the next morning. 
 By that means, he secured the good offices of his 
 little attendants as he returned home from his next 
 merry-making. 
 
 But dismissing these ignes fatui, by referring the 
 reader desirous of knowing more of the Folk-Lore 
 which exists upon the subject of them to Mr. Jabez 
 AUies's interesting brochure " On the Ignis Fatuus, 
 or Will-o'-the-Wisp, and the Fairies" and the scien- 
 tific inquirer as to the cause of the phenomenon to a 
 dissertation in the 51st livraison of the Revue Bri- 
 tannique entitled "Observations Physiques sur les 
 Feux-Follets," (an article which I have not had an 
 opportunity of consulting,) let us turn our attention 
 
The Folk-Lore of Shakespeare. 67 
 
 to the trick which Puck played upon poor Bottom ; 
 and, long as is the quotation, we must describe it in 
 Shakespeare's own inimitable language : 
 
 " My mistress with a monster is in love. 
 
 Near to her close and consecrated bower, 
 
 While she was in her dull and sleeping hour, 
 
 A crew of patches, rude mechanicals, 
 
 That work for bread upon Athenian stalls, 
 
 Were met together to rehearse a play, 
 
 Intended for great Theseus' nuptial day. 
 
 The shallowest thick-skin of that barren sort, 
 
 Who Pyramus presented, in their sport 
 
 Forsook his scene, and entered in a brake : 
 
 When I did him at this advantage take, 
 
 An ass's nowl I fixed on his head. 
 \ Anon, his Thisbe must be answered, 
 
 And forth my mimic comes. When they him spy 
 
 As wild geese that the creeping fowler eye, 
 
 Or russet-pated choughs, many in sort, 
 ! Rising and cawing at the gun's report 
 
 Sever themselves and madly sweep the sky ; 
 
 So, at his sight, away his fellows fly : 
 
 And, at our stamp, here o'er and o'er one falls ; 
 
 He murder cries, and help from Athens calls. 
 
 Their sense thus weak, lost with their fears, thus strong, 
 
 Made senseless things begin to do them wrong : 
 
 For briars and thorns at their apparel snatch ; 
 ! Some sleeves ; some hats ; from yielders all things catch, j 
 
 I led them on in this distracted fear, 
 
 And left sweet Pyramus translated there ; 
 
 When in that moment (so it came to pass) 
 
 Titania waked and straightway loved an Ass." 
 
 Though " The Mad Pranks and Merry Jests of Ko- 
 bin Goodfellow," which Mr. Collier supposes Shake- 
 speare to have been acquainted with, did not furnish 
 him with any authority for the ludicrous transforma- 
 tion which he makes Puck affect in the person of 
 honest "Nick Bottom," who had been selected to 
 
68 The Folk-Lore of Shakespeare. 
 
 play Pyramus, because "Pyramus is a sweetfaced 
 man/' there can be little question that the possibility 
 of such transformations was in his day an article of 
 popular belief. 
 
 This may be inferred from the following passage 
 from Reginald Scot's " Discoveries of Witchcraft," 
 book xiii., ch. 19 : where he is speaking of certain 
 great matters that may be wrought by Art Magic :* 
 
 " As for example, if I affirm that with certain 
 charms and popish prayers I can set an horse or an 
 asses head upon a man's shoulders I shall not be be- 
 lieved ; or if I do it I shall be thought a witch. And 
 yet, if I. Bap. Neap, experiments be true, it is no 
 difficult matter to make it seem so ; and the charm of 
 a witch or papist joined with the experiment, will 
 also make the wonder seem to proceed thereof. The 
 words used in such case are uncertain, and to be re- 
 cited at the pleasure of the witch or cosencr. But 
 the conclusion of this, cut off the head of a horse, or 
 an ass, (before they be dead, otherwise the vertue or 
 strength thereof will be the less effectual), and make 
 an earthen vefesel of fit capacity to contain the same, 
 and let it be filled with the oyl and fat thereof, cover 
 it close, and dawb it over with lome ; let it boyl over 
 a soft fire three days continually, that the flesh boy led 
 may run into oyl, so as the bare bones may be seen, 
 beat the hair into powder and mingle the same with 
 the oyl ; and annoint the heads of the standers by, 
 and they shall seem to have horses or asses heads. 
 If beasts heads be anointed with the oyl made of a 
 
 * Although our quotation is from the edition dated in 1665, 
 it must be borne in mind that the book appeared as earl/ 
 as 1584. 
 
The Folk-Lore of Shakespeare. 69 
 
 man's head, they shall seem to have men's faces, as 
 divers authors soberly affirm." 
 
 This trick of Puck's may, however, have been 
 suggested to Shakespeare by one that is related of the 
 world-renowned Doctor Faustus. That Shakespeare 
 knew of Faustus we see by his allusion to him in " The 
 Merry Wives of Windsor," where Bardolph speaks of 
 
 " three German devils, three Doctor Faustuses": 
 
 and in the forty-third chapter of " The History of the 
 Damnable Life and Deserved Death of Dr. John 
 Faustus,"* which tells "how Dr. Faustus feasted his 
 guests on Ash-Wednesday," we read, " The guests 
 having sat, and well eat and drank, Dr. Faustus made 
 that every one had an ass's head on, with great and 
 long ears, so they fell to dancing, and to drive away 
 the time until it was midnight, and then every one 
 departed home, and as soon as they were out of the 
 house, each one was in his natural shape, and so they 
 ended and went to sleep." Now, although from the 
 uncertainty which at present prevails as to when the 
 English story-book was first printed it cannot be 
 asserted that Shakespeare was acquainted with it, the 
 probability is that he was so or, at least, might have 
 been. x In the first place, we know that the German 
 Volksbuch, which corresponds with our English one, 
 was printed at Frankfort in 1587 (and here let me 
 remark that some of the German antiquaries have 
 regarded the history of Faust as of English origin) ; 
 and in the next place we have the fact that " The 
 Second Report of Dr. John Faustus, containing his 
 Appearances and the Deeds of Wagner," was pub- 
 
 * This is reprinted as well as "The Second Report" in the 
 '* Early Prose Romances," vol. iii. 
 
70 TJie Folk-Lore of Shakespeare. 
 
 lished in this country as early as 1594; from which 
 we may reasonably infer the existence of an earlier 
 edition of the tract before alluded to. 
 
 The readers of the beautiful German tales of Mu- 
 saus doubtless remember his story of Rubezahl or, 
 as the translator of the selection of them (said to be 
 no less a person than the late Mr. Beckford) which 
 appeared in 1791 under the title of "Popular Tales 
 of the Germans " anglicised his name, Number Nip. 
 They cannot have been otherwise than struck with 
 the resemblance between this tricksome spirit of the 
 Giant Mountains and our own Puck ; but may pro- 
 bably have ascribed no small portion of this resem- 
 blance to the manner in which Musaus has told his 
 story. The resemblance is, however, very great; 
 and is perhaps still more so when read in the simple 
 legends in which Rubezahl figures, than in Musaus's 
 witty and spirited tale. These traditions were first 
 collected by Pnetorius, in the middle of the seven- 
 teenth century, in a work which I have not had the 
 good fortune to have the opportunity of consulting.* 
 A selection of the merry tricks recorded by Praitorius 
 is inserted in Busching's Collection of Popular 
 Traditions, Tales, and Stories ;f and with an extract 
 from one of these, which will serve to establish the re- 
 semblance between Puck and Rubezahl, and to show 
 
 * Under the title " Dsemonologia Rubinzalii Silesii," the 
 third edition of which was published at Leipsic in 1668. 
 
 f " Volks-Sagen, Marchen und Legenden," gesammelt von 
 J. G. Busching. The Rubezahl Legends form also the subject 
 of the following works : I. " Die Wundersamen Mahrlein von 
 Berggeist Rubezahl," von Dr. Heinrich Doring, Leipzig, no 
 date. II. " Rubenzahl oder Volksagen im Reisenbirge," pub- 
 lished in 1821 : and III. "Das Buch vom Rubezahl," &c., von 
 J. Lyser, Leipzig, 1834. 
 
The Folk-Lore of Shakespeare. 71 
 
 that the transformation which poor Bottom underwent 
 was a common incident in works of popular fiction, 
 we will conclude this chapter. Rubezahl has been 
 entertaining a party of guests in a deserted hostelry 
 in which he had taken up his abode ; and after having 
 related the various proofs of his extraordinary powers 
 which he had given, the story runs : 
 
 And when they had been thus merry for some 
 time, one among them said to Rubezahl, " Sir host, I 
 pray you be so kind as to show us some pretty spor- 
 tive jest." But Rubezahl said, " There is enough 
 this time : this time you and the other lords have seen 
 enough." All the lords agreed with Rubezahl, saying 
 " The pastime would indeed be superfluous." But 
 he who had spoken persevered, and begged so hard 
 for one, as a sort of night-cap or sleeping draught, 
 that Rubezahl at length said " It shall be so." In a 
 trice this same guest had gotten on his shoulders an 
 ox's head with great horns, just like the head of a 
 real ox. 
 
 At this sight the rest of the company began to 
 laugh at and mock him. This angered him, and he 
 sought to reproach them for so doing, but when he 
 tried to speak, he could only bellow for all the world 
 as if he had been a living ox : and when he lifted a 
 cup to his mouth and tried to drink out of it, he 
 could not get a draught of wine, his lips were so much 
 too large. At length Rubezahl's servant brought 
 him some in a large vat, by which means he was 
 enabled to get a hearty draught. Thus had the lords 
 their sport with the ox ; and well pleased were they 
 with this merry jest. 
 
 In the meanwhile a rumour of what had happened 
 reached the ears of this gentleman's wife ; upon which 
 
72 The Folk-Lore of Shakespeare. 
 
 she, with some of her companions, rode after her 
 husband, and alighted at Rubezahl's dwelling. On 
 entering she was informed that her husband had got 
 an ox's head; and, when she found it was so, she 
 addressed the foulest language to Rubezahl, for put- 
 ting this shame upon her husband. Rubezahl spoke 
 mildly to her in reply, telling her to hold her tongue. 
 This, too, did the other guests ; but in vain. Upon 
 this Rubezahl conjured a cow's head, with horns com- 
 plete, upon the poor woman's shoulders, at the sight 
 of which the laughter increased ; and when the poor 
 woman tried to remonstrate, she only began to blare, 
 and so did the ox likewise. 
 
 Merry indeed were all faces then, and right merrily 
 wore they their caps : and in this spirit did the guests 
 all go to sleep together, and snore the whole night 
 through. And when they awoke early on the fol- 
 lowing morning, lo ! there they all lay on an open 
 heath. The occurrences of the preceding day seemed 
 no more than a dream : yet some of them guessed 
 shrewdly that this was a merry jest which had been 
 put upon them by Rubezahl.* 
 
 V. THE NAMES OF SHAKESPEARE'S FAIRIES. 
 
 " Elves, list your names ! ** 
 
 r HE several names by which the various 
 members of the Elfin race are designated 
 in the writings of Shakespeare mark as 
 distinctly as any other of their characteristics the dif- 
 ferent elements out of which the beautiful system of 
 
The Folk-Lore of Shakespeare. 73 
 
 our Fairy Mythology has been evolved : and to this 
 subject it is that we now propose to direct the reader's 
 attention. 
 
 That our Fairies derive that name, as well as many 
 of their attributes, from the name Fata, by which the 
 Parca3 of antiquity were sometimes designated, few 
 who read Mr. Keightley's observations " On the 
 Origin of the word Fairy "* will be inclined to doubt. 
 And, although that gentleman has subsequently f ex- 
 
 * " Fairy Mythology," vol. i., p. 8 et seq. 
 
 f In his " Tales and Popular Fictions," p. 340, where he gives 
 the following, as his perfect theory of the true origin of the 
 word in question : 
 
 " There can be no doubt that our word Fairy is the French 
 f eerie, which originally signified illusion, and is derived from 
 fee. I therefore reject, with full convictions, all the Etymons 
 (such as that from Pert) which go on the supposition of Fairy 
 being the original name. The Italian fata, Provengal fada, 
 French fae,faee,fee, are, beyond question, the words first used 
 to designate the being whom we call Fairy. Of these words, 
 I regard the Latin fatum as the root. In a coin of Diocletian 
 the Destinies are, I know, named Fatae, and this might seem to 
 give a ready origin of the Italian and Provencal names, but 
 there is so little resemblance between the Parcce and the Fairies 
 of romance, that I cannot adopt it. My opinion is, that, as 
 from the Latin grains came the Italian verb aggradare, and the 
 French agreer, so from, fatum came affatare, fatare Italian, and 
 faer,feer French, signifying to enchant ; and ibaifato,fata,fae, 
 face, fee are participles of these verbs. I believe there is not a 
 single passage in the whole French romances in which these 
 last words occur, in which they may not be taken participially : 
 such are les chevaliers faes, les dames faees, and the continually 
 recurring phrase elle sembloit (or ressembloii) fee. La fee is, 
 therefore, la femme fee, and une fee is unefemme fee. The 
 Italian fata is, in the romantic poems, always employed as a 
 substantive ; but it is well known that a number of substantives, 
 in all languages, are in reality adjectives or participles, and in 
 the " Pentamerone"/ota and/atota are evidently employed as 
 equivalents. I therefore regard/afa as nothing more th&ufatata 
 
74 The Folk-Lore of Shakespeare. 
 
 pressed his disbelief of the identity of the Fatae with 
 our modern Fairies, and confined himself to the view 
 which had originally been advanced by Tyrrwhitt,* 
 and subsequently by Price,f namely, that the root 
 of our modern name of Fairy was to be found in the 
 Latin fatum, it seems to us that further examina- 
 tion would have satisfied Mr. Keightley, as it has 
 satisfied SchreiberJ and Jacob Grimm, that our 
 Fairies, as we have just stated, have derived that name, 
 as well as many of their attributes, from those spirit- 
 ual beings whom Ausonius mentions as the triafata. 
 To the Latin, at all events, we must look for the 
 origin of our word Fairy ; and it is to be hoped we 
 shall hear no more of its being derived either from 
 the Persian Peri, or from thai fairness of complexion 
 which is sometimes spoken of as one of the most 
 marked characteristics of the Fairy race. || 
 
 The name Elf has not presented to the philologists 
 difficulties like those which they encountered in their 
 endeavours to discover the origin of the word Fairy. 
 In the latter case many of them were led by the 
 deceitful Will-o'-the-Wisp-like light of seeming and 
 specious etymons, 
 
 contracted after the usual rule of the Italian language, and 
 esteem unafata to signify merely una donna fatata" 
 
 * In his note on the word faerie, in the Wife of Bath's Tale. 
 See Chaucer's " Canterbury Tales," vol. iv., p. 228 (ed. 1822). 
 
 f See his edition of Warton's " History of Poetry," vol. iv., 
 p. 482, where he observes, that " the forms in which this word 
 (Jay or fee) and its congeners exist in the romance dialects 
 seem to leave no doubt that the Latin fatum is its real source." 
 
 I " Die Feen in Europa," s. 1. 
 
 " Deutsche Mythologie," s. 238. 
 
 || See Brande's "Popular Antiquities" (ed. Ellis, 1841), 
 ii., 276. 
 
The Folk-Lore of Shakespeare. 75 
 
 " Over hill, over dale, 
 Thorough bush, thorough briar," 
 
 until they were left floundering in the very deepest 
 sloughs of etymological uncertainty. But the light 
 which has guided them to the origin of the word Elf 
 has been clear, distinct, and trustworthy; and all 
 have been enabled by its beams to discern that our 
 English name Elf is the same as the Anglo-Saxon 
 Alf y the old High German, and the middle High 
 German Alp; the old Norse Alfr, and the Gothic 
 Albs ; and that corresponding with our English Elf, 
 in the plural Elves, we have the Swedish Elf in the 
 plural, Elfvar masculine and Elfvor feminine, the 
 Danish Elv and Elve in the plural. 
 
 This word Elf has, however, undergone some 
 strange modifications. In Beowulf we read of 
 
 " Edtenas and Ylfe 
 And Orcneas." * 
 
 " Eotens and Elves and Ores ; " and in Lazamon 
 again, as in the passage quoted from Sir F. Madden's 
 excellent edition in the first paper of this series, 
 we find them spoken of as Alven 
 
 " Sone swa he com an eorthe " So soon he came on earth 
 Alven hine ivengen." Elves received him." 
 
 Robert of Gloucester speaks of the Elvene ; and 
 coming down to Shakespeare's own times, we find 
 Drayton in his exquisite piece of fairy poetry, " The 
 Nymphidia," using the word avlf 
 
 " These, when a child haps to be got, 
 Which after proves an idiot, 
 When folks perceive it thriveth not, 
 The fault therein to smother, 
 
 * See p. 9 of Mr. Kemble's edition. 
 
76 The Folk-Lore of Shakespeare. 
 
 Some silly, doating, brainless calf, 
 That understands things by the half, 
 Says that the fairy left this aulf 
 And took away the other." 
 
 From this Aulf the transition to Ouphe, another 
 of Shakespeare's fairy names, is very easy. This 
 latter designation of the elfin race occurs twice in 
 " The Merry Wives of Windsor." In the first place, 
 where Mrs. Page proposes 
 
 *' Nan Page, my daughter, and my little son, 
 And three or four more of their growth we'll dress 
 Like urchins, ouphes, and fairies, green and white ;" 
 
 and in the second, where Mrs. Quickly, or rather 
 the Fairy Queen,* addresses this fairy band for we 
 agree with Mr. Collier and Mr. Harness that the 
 speech should be spoken by her 
 
 "About, about; 
 
 Search Windsor Castle, elves, within and out : 
 Strew good luck, ovphcs, on every sacred room." 
 
 In a note on the former of these passages Steevens 
 boldly tells us that *' Ouphe is the Teutonic word for 
 a fairy or goblin."f It may be; but Grimm, who 
 
 The following is Mr. Collier's note, and appears conclusive 
 upon the subject : "At the suggestion of the Rev. Mr. Harness, 
 I have no difficulty in assigning this and other speeches to the 
 Fairy Queen or Anne Page so disguised : they are quite out of 
 character with Mrs. Quickly, to whom they have hitherto been 
 given. The prefix in the old copies is Qn and Qui, but it was 
 an easy error of the press, and much more probably so than that 
 such a part should have been intrusted to Mrs. Quickly. 
 
 f Mr. Collier has a far better note upon this passage in his 
 recent edition of Shakespeare, i., p. 255, "Ouphe" and Elf would 
 seem to have the same origin, the Teutonic Alf, a fairy or goblin. 
 It is variously spelt in our old writers, Ofe, Auf, and Ophe, as 
 well as Ovphe. The modern orthography is Oaf, and it gene- 
 rally means a dolt or blockhead. 
 
The Folk-Lore of Shakespeare. 77 
 
 probably knows quite as much of the Teutonic lan- 
 guages as did the Puck of Commentators himself, 
 quotes no other authority for the word than Shake- 
 speare. He sees in it only another form of the cognate 
 Elf; and speaks of a corresponding form in the 
 middle High German Ulf, in the plural Ulve " von 
 den ulven entbunden werden" and proves the iden- 
 tity of this Ulp with Alp 9 and consequently with our 
 English Elf, from a Swedish song published by 
 Arwiddson, in his collection of Swedish ballads, in 
 one version of which the elfin king is called " Heir 
 Elfver" and in the second, " Herr Ulfver." Hans 
 Sachs, again, the worthy old shoemaker of Nurem- 
 burgh, used 'dip " du olp du dolp ! " in the same sense 
 as Elf; which again is nearly identical with Alp or 
 Olp, a name given in Suffolk and many other parts 
 of England to the bullfinch.* 
 
 Grimm, in his " Deutsche My thologie," notices the 
 connection which exists in many points between the 
 elves of popular superstitions and bees ; and in the 
 same manner, that the name of the former should 
 sometimes, as in the cases just referred to, be applied 
 to the birds of the air, is easily understood when cer- 
 tain points of resemblance between them are taken 
 into consideration. Thus, fairies and elves are often 
 represented in flocks or troops, like birds ; like birds 
 
 * See Major Moor's curious collection of Suffolk provin- 
 cialisms, entitled " Suffolk Words and Phrases," under the words 
 Alp, Nope, and Olp. 
 
 Alpe occurs too in the " Promptorium Parvulorum," where 
 it is rendered " a byrde, Ficedula " and Mr. Way, in his note, 
 remarks Ficedula, a wodewale or an alpe, MED. GR. In Nor- 
 folk, the bullfinch is called Blood-olph, and the green Gros-beak, 
 green Olf, probably a corruption of Alpe, FOBBY. Ray gives 
 Alp as generally signifying the bullfinch. 
 
78 The Folk-Lore of Shakespeare. 
 
 too they fly away and vanish. A curious instance 
 of the existence of this identity in popular opinion 
 has lately been furnished me in a little Devonian 
 legend : the result of an inquiry made of a country 
 girl as to what she knew of the Pixies. She said she 
 had never seen any; but that she had often heard 
 of them, and how they would fly into the houses 
 at night, and make use of them. That they were 
 often heard laughing and moving the furniture about; 
 but that they always made the house very tidy be- 
 fore they went away, and always left a piece of silver 
 at the bottom of a water jug. She added, that these 
 Pixies often amused themselves by misleading people ; 
 and that she once " knew a man, who one night 
 could not find his way out of one of his own fields, 
 all he could do, until he recollected to turn his coat; 
 and the moment he did so he heard the Pixies sMJly 
 away up into the trees, and there they sate and 
 laughed oh I how they did laugh! but the man 
 then soon found his way out of the field." Before 
 concluding our notice of this word ouphe, we may 
 remark that, in addition to the instances of Shake- 
 speare's use of it which we have already quoted, it has 
 been proposed to amend two other passages by its 
 introduction. The first is in the " Comedy of Errors," 
 where Theobald suggested, and very plausibly, that 
 we should read, 
 
 " We talk with goblins, oupkes, and elvish sprites," 
 instead of 
 
 " We talk with goblins, owls, and elvish sprites.** 
 
 The second is in " The Merry Wives of Windsor/' 
 where Warburton proposed to amend that obscure 
 passage 
 
The Folk-Lore of Shakespeare. 79 
 
 " You orphan heirs of fixed destiny," 
 by reading, 
 
 " You oupJien heirs of fixed destiny ;" 
 
 with what propriety, we shall find a better opportu- 
 nity for discussing. 
 
 Urchin, another name applied by Shakespeare to 
 the fairies, has served to vex the commentators, and 
 this because it is an old name for a hedgehog. Thus, 
 we find Steevens interpreting the first passage in 
 " The Tempest," in which it occurs 
 
 " Urchins 
 
 Shall, for that vast of night that they may work, 
 All exercise on thee." 
 
 " Urchins, i. e. hedgehogs" adding, Urchins are 
 enumerated by Reginald Scot among other terrific 
 beings." And again, " Urchins are, perhaps, here 
 put for fairies." Milton in his (t Masque" speaks of 
 " urchin blasts ; " and we still call any dwarfish child 
 an urchin. The word occurs again in the next act. 
 Malone, not altogether satisfied with Steevens's note, 
 says " In ' The Merry Wives of Windsor' we have 
 urchins, ouphes, and fairies ; " and a passage, to which 
 Mr. Steevens alludes inclines me to think that urchins 
 here signify beings of the fairy kind 
 
 " His spirits hear me, 
 
 And I need must curse ; but they'll nor pinch, 
 Fright me with urchin-shows, pitch me i' the mire, 
 Nor lead me, like a fire-brand in the dark, 
 Out of my way, unless he bids them." 
 
 How Steevens and Malone could read this latter 
 passage, which forms so admirable an illustration of 
 the manner in which the urchins were, for the vast 
 
80 The Folk-Lore of Shakespeare. 
 
 of night that they might work, to exercise on Cali- 
 ban, and remembering as they did the combination 
 of " urchins, ouphes, and fairies " in " The Merry 
 Wives of Windsor," could yet doubt that urchin was 
 used by Shakespeare as synonymous with elf and fairy, 
 is most extraordinary. Lest, however, any of my 
 readers should share that doubt, I subjoin in a note* 
 
 * " But certainly some one knave in a white sheet hath co- 
 sened and abused many thousands that way ; specially when 
 Robin Goodfellow kept such a coil in the countrey ; but you 
 shall understand that these bugs specially are spyed and feared 
 of sick folk, children, women, and cowards, which, through weak- 
 ness of mind and body, are shaken with vain dreams and con- 
 tinual fear. The Scythians, being a stout and warlike nation 
 (as divers writers report), never see any vain sights or spirits. 
 It is a common saying, * A Lyon feareth no Bugs.' But in our 
 childhood, our mothers' maids have so terrified us with an ugly 
 Devil having horns on his head, fire in his mouth, and a tail in 
 his breech, eyes like a bason, fangs like a dog, claws like a bear, 
 a skin like a niger, and a voice roaring like a lyon, whereby we 
 start and are afraid when we hear one cry Bough : and they have 
 so frayed us with Bui-beggars, Spirits, Witches, Urchens, Elves, 
 Hags, Faeries, Satyrs, Fans, Faunes, Sylens, Kit-with-the-Can- 
 stick, Tritons, Centaures, Dwarfes, Gyants, Imps, Colcars, Con- 
 jurors, Nymphes, Changelings, Incubus, Robin Goodfellow, 
 the Spoorn, the Mare, the Man-in-tbe-Oak, the Hell-wain, the 
 Firedroke, the Puckle, Tom-thombe, Hobgoblin, Tomtumbler, 
 Boneless, and such other Bugs, that we are afraid of our shadows : 
 insomuch that some never fear the Devil, but in a dark night ; 
 and then a polled sheep is a perilous beast, and many times is 
 taken for our fathers' soul, specially in a churchyard, where a. 
 right hardy man neretofore'scant durst passe by night but his hair 
 would stand upright. For right grave writers report, that spirits 
 most often and specially take the shape of Women, appearing to 
 monks, &c., and of Beasts, Dogs, Swine, Horses, Goats, Cats, 
 Hares ; of Fowles, as Crowes, Night Owles, and Shreeke Owles : 
 but they delight most in the likeness of Snakes and Dragons. 
 Well, thanks be to God, this wretched and cowardly infidelity, 
 since the preaching of the Gospel, is in part forgotten : and 
 
The Folk-Lore of Shakespeare. 81 
 
 the passage from Reginald Scot, to which Steevens 
 
 alluded, and which should certainly have satisfied 
 
 him that Shakespeare did not use the word urchin in 
 
 the sense of hedgehog. I furnish them, too, with the 
 
 following passage from Rowland,* in which urchins 
 
 and elves are as closely identified as by Shakespeare 
 
 " In old wives daies, that in old time did live, 
 
 (To whose odde tales much credit men did give) 
 
 Great store of goblins, fairies, bugs, nightmares, 
 
 Urchins and elves to many a house repaires." 
 
 And, lastly, I quote from my lamented friend, the 
 late Mr. Douce's admirable " Illustrations of Shake- 
 speare and of Ancient Manners," (vol. L, p. 11), 
 " The Urchins' Dance," copied by him from a rare 
 old collection of songs set to music by John Bennett, 
 Edward Piers or Peirce, and Thomas Ravenscroft, 
 composers in the time of Shakespeare, and entitled 
 " Hunting, Hawking, Dauncing, Drinking, Enamor- 
 ing," 4to., no date, which contains also the Elves' 
 dance and the Fairies' dance 
 
 " The Urchins' Dance. 
 By the moone we sport and play, 
 With the night begins our day ; 
 As we friske the dew doth fall, 
 Trip it little urchins all, 
 Lightly as the little bee, 
 
 doubtless the rest of those illusions will in short time (by God's 
 grace) be detected and vanish away." I have given this curious 
 passage from the 15th chapter of the 7th book of Scot's " Dis- 
 coverie" first, because it is a curious illustration of the Folk- 
 Lore of Shakespeare's time; secondly, in the hope that my 
 readers will favour me with any allusions to the Spoorn, 
 Calcars, the Man-in-the-Oak, Tom Tumbler, Boneless, &c., 
 which they may meet with. 
 
 * " More Knaves yet. The Knaves of Spades and Diamonds," 
 p. 1 14, of the edition of " The Four Knaves," edited by Mr. Rhn- 
 bault for the Percy Society. 
 
 G 
 
82 The Folk-Lore of Shakespeare. 
 
 Two by two, and three by three, 
 And about goe wee, goe wee." 
 
 In the note from which this extract is taken, Mr. 
 Douce, after remarking that " Mr. Steevens has ob- 
 served that the primitive sense of urchin is a hedge- 
 hog, whence it came," says he, " to signify anything 
 dwarfish," proceeds to remark, " There is, however, 
 good reason for supposing it of Celtic origin. Erch 
 in Welch is terrible, and urzen a superior intelligence. 
 In the Bas-Breton language urcha signifies to liowl." 
 Urthin-wadd Elgin, says Scot, in his " Discoverie of 
 Witchcraft," (p. 224, ed. 1665,) " was a spirit in the 
 days of King Solomon, came over with Julius Caesar, 
 and remained many hundred years in Wales, where 
 he got the above name." 
 
 In confirmation of the accuracy of Mr. Douce's 
 views as to the Celtic origin of the word urchin when 
 used to designate a fairy, we may call attention to 
 the urisks or Highland fairies, mentioned in Graham's 
 " Sketches of Perthshire." 
 
 We may add, too, that near Inverness is a re- 
 markable oblong mound, the name of which illustrates 
 the present subject. It is called Tom-na-Heurich, 
 or the Hill of the Fairies : and when we visited it in 
 1839 we were gravely told that it was once the dwel- 
 ling-place of the fairies; and it seemed extremely 
 doubtful whether our informant did not believe that 
 they were still seen to issue from it occasionally. 
 
 iy not the spirit Ly Erg, mentioned by Daly ell, 
 in his "Darker Superstitions of Scotland" be also 
 connected with the subject of our present inquiry ? 
 He is described as appearing with " a red hand in 
 the habit of a souldier, and challenges men to fight 
 with him ; as lately as 1669 he fought with three men, 
 who died immediately after." 
 
The Folk-Lore of Shakespeare. 83 
 
 VI. OF PUCK'S SEVEKAL NAMES. 
 
 " Those that Hobgoblin call you, and sweet Puck, 
 You do their work, and they shall have good luck." 
 
 HERE is, as has been already observed, 
 much significance in the fact, that Shake- 
 speare has bestowed upon 
 
 " That shrewd and knavish sprite 
 Called Robin Goodfellow" 
 
 the expressive name of Puck; and has thus^distin^ 
 guished Oberon's '-trusty spirit" by no fanciful or 
 ilimjgMry ""epithet, but by a name which was in this 
 country in Shakespeare's days a generic name applied 
 to the whole race of Fairy : as it still appears to be 
 in cur tall! dis> trie Is oi Worcestershire ; * and, as our 
 extracts from Kohl's " Travels" have shown, it is still 
 in Friesland also. 
 
 This name Puck of which the earliest instance 
 that occurs to us is in " Piers Ploughman," where it 
 is used to signify the Devil is perhaps the most 
 remarkable of all the various designations by which 
 the Fairy race have been distinguished, for, like that 
 race, it seems to comprise within itself distinct traces 
 of both Celtic and Teutonic elements. 
 
 * See Mr. J. Allies " On the Tgnis Fatuus," p. 7 ; where we 
 are told" The peasantry in Alfrich, and those parts, say that 
 they are sometimes what they call ' Poake ledden ;' that is, that 
 they are occasionally waylaid in the night by a mischievous sprite 
 whom they call Poake, who leads them into ditches, bogs, pools, 
 and other such scrapes, and then sets up a loud laugh, and leaves 
 them quite bewildered in the lurch." 
 
84 The Folk-Lore of Shakespeare. 
 
 Sir Francis Palgrave * was the first to call attention 
 to its etymological peculiarities, when remarking upon 
 the influence of language in embodying belief and 
 giving it tenacity: "A curious exemplification of 
 this process," he remarks, " is afforded by the name 
 of Puck as applied to the Evil One, which also fur- 
 nishes a striking' proof of the steadiness with which 
 the meaning first annexed to a verbal sign adheres to 
 it through the modifications which it receives in lan- 
 guage, whilst the mind retains the leading idea annexed 
 to the root with equal obstinacy. The gradual tran- 
 sition from delusion to sport and merriment, and from 
 sport and merriment to mischief, and from mischief 
 to terror, is very observable. Paccan or Pceccian 
 (Anglo Saxon) signifies ' to deceive by false appear- 
 ances, to delude, to impose upon.' In the cognate 
 Nether-Saxon, the verb Picken signifies to gambol ; 
 and when inflected into Pickeln and Paekeln, to play 
 the fool. From the Anglo-Saxon root we have Pack 
 or Patch, the fool ; whilst from Pickeln and Paeckeln 
 are derived Pickle, a mischievous boy ; and the Pickle- 
 hdrin of the Germans, a merry-andrew, or zany, so 
 called, perhaps, from his hairy, or, perhaps, leafy vest- 
 ment. According to this analogy, Ben Jonson intro- 
 duces the devil Puckhairy ; who probably appeared 
 in the shaggy garb which he is well known to have 
 worn in his character of Robin Hood, or Robin Good- 
 fellow. Pueke and Puck are the sportive devils of 
 the Goths and Teutons. When used in a milder 
 sense, it becomes Poike ( Sueo-Gothic), a boy, and 
 Piga (Anglo-Saxon), and Pige (Danish), a girl, from 
 
 * In his interesting paper on " The Popular Mythology of the 
 Middle Ages," in the 22nd volume of the " Quarterly Review .** 
 
The Folk-Lore of Shakespeare. 85 
 
 their playfulness. Pug in Old English, and Bogle in 
 Scottish, are equivalent to Puck; and some of our 
 readers may not be aware that the monkey acquired 
 his name of Pug from his malice. Bwg, in the British 
 language, is a goblin ; and Bog, the angry god of the 
 Slavi, is still the same identical term. Bucca (Anglo- 
 Saxon), a goat, and Buck, were so called from their 
 skittish savage nature ; the former being the favourite 
 incarnation of Satan. In BaxxsAco we trace the mis- 
 chievous mirth and wild inspiration caused by the 
 delusion' of wine : and we think that in Peccare we 
 discern the agency of error and deceit."* 
 
 Price, the learned editor of Warton, followed up 
 these Puckian etymologies, by observing f "that the 
 Puck and the Scottish Bogle are the same as the Ger- 
 man Spuk and the Danish Spogelse, without the sibilant 
 aspiration. These words are general names for any 
 kind of spirit, and correspond to the Pouk of ' Piers 
 Ploughman.' In Danish Spog means a joke, trick, 
 or prank ; and hence the character of Robin Good- 
 fellow. In Iceland Puki is regarded as an evil sprite ; 
 and in the language of that country * at pukra 1 means 
 both ( to make a murmuring noise ' and ( to steal clan- 
 destinely.' The names of these spirits seem to have 
 originated in their boisterous temper. Spuken (Ger- 
 man), to make a noise; Spog (Danish), obstrepe- 
 
 * The following is the author's note on this passage : " The 
 same root is possibly the origin of the Socket, a Larva or terri- 
 culamcntum, which schoolboys used to make by scooping out a 
 turnip. A friendly antiquary suggests also that Old Poker or 
 Tom Poker, who haunted the nursery in Horace Walpole's time, 
 belongs to the same family. And we suppose him to have been 
 the Sueo- Gothic Tomte Pucke or House Puck" 
 
 f In his preface to the edition of 1824. Vide vol. i., p. 31, 
 ed. 1840. 
 
86 The Folk-Lore of Shakespeare. 
 
 rous mirth ; Pukke (Danish), to boast, scold. The 
 Germans use Puchen in the same figurative sense, 
 though literally it means to strike, beat, and is the 
 same with our poke. In Ditmarsch, the brownie, or 
 domestic fairy, is called Nitsche Puk." 
 
 To this goodly list of words supposed to be con- 
 nected with Puck, Mr. Keightley added * the " Scot- 
 tish Pauky and the Devonshire Pixies" 
 
 To these we may add, from Dalyell,f the Scottish 
 Paichs y an ancient diminutive race to whose extra- 
 ordinary strength the origin of Linlithgow Palace is 
 ascribed ; and from Grimm, who looks upon Puck 
 as connected with the Danish Poo, young ; and so 
 derived from the Finnish Poica, a son, the Low 
 German Pook, a little, under-sized person, and the 
 North Friesian Huspuke.\ Grimm, moreover, re- 
 cognizes the identity of the Irish Pooka, and the 
 Welsh Pwcca or wcca, with Puck; and these 
 names clearly establish the proposition, that Puck, 
 as a designation of the Fairy race, comprises within 
 itself distinct traces of Celtic as well as of Teutonic 
 elements. 
 
 To the former of these classes, too, belongs, in all 
 probability, the Cornish Piskey, a name generally 
 applied to the Fairies ; but which is also, as we have 
 been assured on most undoubted authority, a common 
 appellation in the neighbourhood of Truro for moths ; 
 which are there believed by some to be fairies, by 
 others, departed souls. As a consequence of this 
 
 * " Fairy Mythology ," ii., p. 118, note. 
 
 f Dalyell's " Darker Superstitions of Scotland," p. 532. 
 Dalyell notices, too, the Pocclus of the Samagitae, mentioned 
 by Lasicius, " De Dies Samagitarum," p. 54. 
 
 I " Deutsche Mythologie," s. 468. 
 
The Folk-Lore of Shakespeare. 87 
 
 latter belief, it is there thought that when moths are 
 very numerous their appearance is an omen of a great 
 mortality. The connection between this superstition 
 and that article of the Folk-Lore of Greece which 
 regarded the soul as a winged spirit, is not more re- 
 markable than the identity which appears to exist 
 between the names of the Grecian Yup^iJ and the 
 Piskey of Cornwall. 
 
 The Puckrel, an imp mentioned by Gilford, in his 
 " Dialogue concerning Witches and Witchcraft,"* 
 closes this somewhat extensive list of names which 
 resemble one of those that were so pleasing to Oberon's 
 Messenger as always to propitiate his favour and se- 
 cure his friendly offices. 
 
 Let us now consider the other epithet which 
 sounded so sweetly in his ears namely, Hobgoblin. 
 
 The latter portion of this compound epithet is, of 
 course, derived from the Greek xcjSaAo?, and the 
 Latin Cobalus, through the Middle Latin Gobelinus 
 and the French Gobelin. Grimm remarks that the 
 character of this domestic spirit resembles in many 
 points that of the Jester; and he refers to the German 
 Narrenkolbe as corresponding with the English Hob- 
 goblin, which he states to be the same as Clowngoblin.\ 
 
 * See p. 9 of the Percy Society's reprint of the edition of 
 1603 "He showed him her in a glasse, and told him she had 
 three or four impes, some call them puckrels" &c. 
 
 f This Grimm does on the authority of Nares ; who states, 
 however, that Hob was also used as a substitute for Hobgoblin, 
 and quotes as his authority Beaumont and Fletcher's " Monsieur 
 Thomas" 
 
 " From Elves, Hobs and Fairies 
 That trouble our dairies, 
 From Fire-drakes and Fiends, 
 And such as the Devil sends, 
 Defend us, good Heaven ! " 
 
88 The Folk-Lore of Shakespeare. 
 
 He afterwards refers to the practice of bestowing 
 upon these spirits Christian names, in their diminutive 
 forms, as a proof of the familiarity of intercourse 
 which existed between mankind and this elfin race ; 
 and of which the English Robin Goodfellow, and the 
 Danish Nissen Goddreng furnish us with striking in- 
 stances. Now Hob, although very generally used 
 to signify a clown or countryman, as in the old 
 poem quoted by Steevens, in one of his notes on 
 Coriolanus, 
 
 "The country gnuffs, Hob, Dick, and Hick," 
 
 is also the familiar or diminutive form of Robert and 
 Robin, so that Hobgoblin is equivalent to Robin the 
 Goblin, t. e. Robin Goodfellow. This is borne out 
 by the passage in the " Nymphidia," in which, when 
 describing Oberon's first encounter with his trusty 
 messenger, Drayton says 
 
 "He mecteth Puck, which most men call 
 Hob-goblin, and on him doth fall 
 
 With words from frenzy spoken, 
 * Hoh ! Hoh ! ' quoth Hob, ' God save thy Grace ! 
 Who dressed thee in this piteous case ? 
 He thus that spoiled my sov'reign's face 
 
 I would his neck were broken ;' " 
 
 for in this case Hob is clearly used as a proper name. 
 And with reference to the present point, it may be 
 remarked, that the Will-o'-the-Wisp, which, as we 
 have seen, is one of the forms commonly assumed by 
 Puck, is called in Worcestershire by the several 
 names of" Hob-and-his-Lanthorn," " Hobany's Lan- 
 thorn," and " Hoberdy's Lanthorn."* 
 
 See Mr. Allies's pamphlet " On the Ignis Fatuus," p. 3, 
 where it is stated that in the neighbourhood of Alfrich (i. e.) 
 
The F oik-Lore of Shakespeare. 89 
 
 In another of the epithets namely, that by which 
 the Fairy addresses Puck in the first scene in the 
 " Midsummer Night's Dream," in which the shrewd 
 and knavish sprite makes his appearance 
 
 " Thou Lob of Spirits ! " 
 
 some of the commentators see, and very correctly, no 
 doubt, an allusion to the " lubber fiend " spoken of 
 by Milton. Dr. Johnson's observation that Lob, 
 Lubber, Looby, Lobcock, all denote both inactivity 
 of body and dulness of mind is in the present case 
 altogether misplaced. For here the name Lob is 
 doubtless a well-established fairy epithet: and the 
 passage quoted by Steevens from Beaumont and 
 Fletcher's " Knights of the Burning Pestle," con- 
 firms this : " There is a pretty tale of a witch that 
 had the devil's mark about her, that had a giant to 
 be her son, that was called Lob-lye-by-the-Fire" 
 Grimm mentions a remarkable document, dated in 
 the year 1462, in which Bishop Gebhard, of Halber- 
 stadt, complains of the reverence paid to a spirit 
 called den guden lubben, the good lubbe, and to whom 
 bones of animals were offered on a mountain near 
 Schochwitz in the district of Mansfeld. " Not only," 
 adds Grimm,* " have piles of such bones been dis- 
 covered on the Zwp-berge, but at the neighbouring 
 church of Miillersdorf there is an idol built into the 
 wall which is traditionally said to have been brought 
 there from the Lupberge, or Lubbe mountain." 
 Presuming Lob to be, as we believe it is, a decided 
 
 Elf-reich, or Fairy-land, a name sufficiently significant as a 
 proper locality for such traditions), where the Ignes fatui are 
 thus designated, the so-called fairy-rings are very abundant. 
 * " Deutsche Mythologie," s. 492. 
 
90 The Folk-Lore of Shakespeare. 
 
 fairy epithet, it furnishes an explanation of a phrase 
 which has hitherto been a puzzle to the commen- 
 tators namely, Lob's Pound ; under which heading 
 we read in Nares as follows : " To be laid in Lob's 
 Poundy to be 'laid by the heels or clapped up in 
 jail' (Old Canting Dictionary); also, any close or 
 confined place; as in the following lines it means 
 ' behind the arras : ' 
 
 Who forced the gentleman, to save her credit, 
 To marry her, and say he was the party 
 Found in Lolft Pound.' 
 
 MASSINGER'S D. of Milan, iii. 2. 
 
 " Who Lob was is as little known as the site of 
 Lipsbury Pinfold. In ' Hudibras ' this term is em- 
 ployed as a name for the stocks, into which the 
 Knight puts Crowdero 
 
 1 Crowdero, whom in irons bound, 
 Thou basely threw'st into LoVt Pound: 
 
 I. iii. 909. 
 
 Dr. Grey, in the notes, tells a ludicrous application 
 of it in the case of one Lobby a dissenter minister." 
 
 But when we interpret Lob by Fairy, we can 
 easily understand the application of the name Lob's 
 Pound to those fairy rings, circlets, or dances, from 
 which those who had once entered them could not 
 extricate themselves; and of which Old Aubrey* 
 has left the following characteristic notice: "In 
 the yeare 1633-4, soone after I had entered into my 
 grammar at the Latin schoole at Yatton Keynel, our 
 curate, Mr. Hart, was annoy'd one night by these 
 
 * HalliwelTs " Illustrations of the Fairy Mythology of the 
 Midsummer Night's Dream," printed for the Shakespeare 
 Society, p. 235. 
 
The Folk-Lore of Shakespeare. 91 
 
 elves or fayries. Comming over the downes, it be- 
 ing neere darke, and approaching one of the faiery 
 dances, as the common people call them in these 
 parts, viz. the greene circles made by those sprites 
 on the grasse, he all at once sawe an innumerable 
 quantitie of pigmies, or very small people, dancing 
 rounde and rounde, and singing, and making all 
 maner of small odd noyses. He being very greatly 
 amaz'd, and yet not being able, as he sayes, to run 
 away from them, being, as he supposes, kept there 
 in a kinde of enchantment; they no sooner perceave 
 him, but they surround him on all sides, and what 
 betwixt feare and amazement, he fell down, scarcely 
 knowing what he did; and thereupon these little 
 creatures pinch'd him all over, and made a sort of 
 quick humming noyse all the time; but at length 
 they left him, and when the sun rose he found him- 
 self exactly in the midst of one of these faiery dances. 
 This relation I had from him myselfe, a few days after 
 he was so tormented ; but when I and my bedfellow 
 Stump wente soon afterwards at night time to the 
 dances on the downes, we sawe none of the elves or 
 fairies. But indeede, it is saide, they seldom appeare 
 to any persons who go to seeke for them." 
 
 In conclusion, we would remark, as curiously illus- 
 trating the subject of the present paper, that in 
 " Piers Ploughman " we meet with " Poukes pond- 
 fold:" 
 
 " Out of the poukes pond/old 
 
 No maynprise may us fecche 
 
 Till he come that I carpe of, 
 
 Crist is his name." 
 
 Hell is here spoken of as the "Pouk or Devil's 
 Pound : " and certainly this expression goes far to 
 
92 The Folk-Lore of Shakespeare. 
 
 support our opinion that Lob's Pound was originally 
 used in the same manner to express the fairy circlets 
 from which those who once entered them could by 
 no means escape. 
 
 VII. QUEEN MAB. 
 
 " Mercvtio. Oh, then I see Queen Mab has been with you. 
 BemvoKo. Queen Mab I What's she ?" Ed. 1597. 
 
 HE whole Fairy Mythology of Shake- 
 speare, varied and extensive as it is, does 
 not present us with any subject so preg- 
 nant with curious speculation as is the exquisite 
 description of the Fairy Queen which he has placed 
 in the mouth of Mercutio, in reply to that question 
 of Benvolio, " Queen Mab ! what's she ? " which 
 we agree with Mr. Hunter in thinking "ought by 
 all means to be retained, as affording a just pretence 
 for the long description of the practices and attributes 
 of Queen Mab that follows:"* 
 
 " She is the fairies' midwife ; and she comes 
 In shape no bigger than an agate stone 
 On the fore-finger of an alderman, 
 Drawn with a team of little atomies 
 Over men's noses as they lie asleep : 
 Her waggon-spokes made of long spinners' legs ; 
 The cover, of the wings of grasshoppers ; 
 The traces, of the smallest spider's web ; 
 The collars, of the moonshine's watery beams ; 
 Her whip, of cricket's bone ; the lash, of film : 
 Her waggoner, a small grey-coated gnat 
 Not half so big as a round little worm 
 Prick'd from the lazy finger of a maid. 
 
 * " New Illustrations of the Life, Studies and Writings of 
 Shakespeare," ii. 135. 
 
The Folk-Lore of Shakespeare. 93 
 
 Her chariot is an empty hazel nut, 
 Made by the joiner squirrel or old grub, 
 Time out of mind the fairies' coachmakers. 
 And in this state she gallops night by night- 
 Through lovers' brains, and then they dream of love- 
 On courtiers' knees, that dream on court'sies straight 
 
 O'er lawyers' fingers, who straight dream on fees 
 
 O'er ladies' lips, who straight on kisses dream ; 
 Which oft the angry Mab with blisters plagues 
 Because their breaths with sweetmeats tainted are. 
 Sometime she gallops o'er a courtier's nose, 
 And then dreams he of smelling out a suit ; 
 And sometime comes she with a tithe-pig's tail, 
 Tickling a parson's nose as 'a lies asleep, 
 Then he dreams of another benefice. 
 Sometime she driveth o'er a soldier's neck, 
 And then dreams he of cutting foreign throats, 
 Of breaches, ambuscadoes, Spanish blades, 
 Of healths five fathom deep ; and then anon 
 Drums in his ear, at which he starts and wakes ; 
 And, being thus frighted, swears a prayer or two, 
 And sleeps again. This is that very Mab, 
 That plats the manes of horses in the night ; 
 And bakes the elf-locks in foul sluttish hairs, 
 Which, once untangled, much misfortune bodes. 
 This is the hag, when maids lie on their backs 
 That presses them, and learns them first to bear, 
 Making them women of good carriage. 
 This, this is she." 
 
 In this admirable outpouring of Shakespeare's 
 abundant fancy we see the Fairy Queen not, as in 
 the " Midsummer Night's Dream," graced with a 
 name borrowed from Shakespeare's classical recollec- 
 tions, and in that name, as in many of her attributes, 
 bearing strong marks of her affinity to 
 
 " Modest Dian, circled with her nymphs," 
 
 but she is here presented to us under a totally dif- 
 ferent aspect under a name which, although it has 
 
94 The Folk-Lore of Shakespeare. 
 
 hitherto passed without notice from the commenta- 
 tors, calls for much examination ; and invested with 
 properties which identify her with the Night Hag of 
 popular superstition. This fact furnishes us with 
 another proof how intricately the many-coloured web 
 of that superstition is interwoven. When consider- 
 ing the name of Puck, we have seen how closely 
 that epithet identifies the Fairies with the race of 
 Fallen Angels; and in this beautiful passage from 
 " Romeo and Juliet," we find the Fairy Queen in- 
 vested with the attributes of one of the most re- 
 pulsive and the most dreaded of all the mysterious 
 creations which the busy imagination of uninstructed 
 man has ever called into existence. 
 
 And that this connection between the powers of the 
 elfin race and the dreaded visitations of the Night- 
 mare arises from no confusion in the mind of Shake- 
 speare, is evident from the fact, that his great prede- 
 cessor Chaucer has shown us, in a well-known passage 
 of The Wife of Bath's Tale," that such connection 
 belonged to the Folk-Lore of his times : 
 
 " In olde dayes of the Kyng Arthour, 
 Of which that Britouns spoken great honour, 
 Al was this lond fulfilled of fayrie : 
 The elf-queen, with hir jolie compaigne, 
 Daunced ful oft in many a grene mede. 
 This was the old oppynyoun as I rede ; 
 I speke of many hundrid yer ago ; 
 But now can no man see noon elves mo. 
 For now the grete charite and prayeres 
 Of lymytours and other holy freres, 
 That sechen every lond and every streem, 
 As thik as motis in the sonne-beem, 
 Blessynge halles, chambres, kichenes and boures, 
 Citees and burghes, castels and hihe toures, 
 Thropes and bernes, shepnes and dayeries, 
 
The Folk-Lore of Shakespeare, 95 
 
 That maketh that ther ben no fayeries. 
 For ther as wont was to walken an elf, 
 Ther walkith noon but the lymytour himself, 
 In undermeles and in morwenynges 
 And saith his matyns and his holy thinges 
 As he goth in his lyinytacion. 
 Wommen may now go saufly up and doun ; 
 In every bussch, and under every tre, 
 Ther is non other incubus but he, 
 And he ne wol doon hem no dishonour." * 
 
 And in " The Miller's Tale," in which Chaucer has 
 introduced an old charm against the Nightmare, we 
 have the identity between the 
 
 " Fairies and the tempters of the night" 
 
 as clearly marked as it is in the prayer of Imogen. 
 The carpenter is speaking to Nicholas, who is appa- 
 rently in a trance, or under the influence of an evil 
 spirit : 
 
 " This Nicholas sat stille as any stoon, 
 And ever he gapyd up-ward to the eyr. 
 This carpenter wende he were in despeir, 
 And hent him by the schuldres mightily, 
 And schook him harde, and cryed spitously, 
 4 What, Nicholas ? what how man, loke adoun : 
 Awake and thynk on Christes passioun ; 
 I crowche the from elves, and from wightes.' 
 Therwith the night-spel seyde he anon rightes 
 On the foure halves of the hous aboute, 
 And on the threisshfold of the dore withoute. 
 'Lord Jhesu Crist, and seynte Benedight, 
 Blesse this hous from every wikkede wight, 
 Fro nightes verray,f the white Paternoster ; 
 Wher wonestow now, seynte Petres soster.' " 
 
 * See vol. i., pp. 138 and 139, of " The [Canterbury Tales 
 of Geoffrey Chaucer," a New Text, with Illustrative Notes, 
 edited by Thomas Wright, Esq., M.A., for the Percy Society. 
 
 f Mr. Wright, from whose edition (vol. i., p. 139) we have 
 
96 The Folk-Lore of Shakespeare. 
 
 But the most striking proof of this identity is to 
 be found in Dray ton's "Nymphidia," where, after 
 a description of the palace of the fairy sovereigns, 
 .we read: 
 
 '* Hence Oberon him sport to make, 
 (Their rest when weary mortals take 
 And none but only fairies wake), 
 
 Descendeth for his pleasure : 
 And Mab, his merry queen, by night 
 Bestrides young folks that lie upright, 
 (/* elder times the Mare that hight), 
 
 Which plagues them beyond measure." 
 
 The propriety with which Shakespeare has in- 
 vested Queen Mab with the attributes of the Night- 
 mare is confirmed by an examination of the popular 
 belief upon the subject as it now exists among the 
 Continental nations. Among some of these, it is 
 designated the Alp, thereby pointing most dis- 
 tinctly to its elfin nature. Thus, in Altmark, as we 
 read in Kuhn's " Markische Legenden," the AW is 
 believed to seat himself on the body of a sleeping 
 person, and so cause horrible dreams. The best way 
 of relieving a person so tormented is to call him by 
 his Christian name. The Mahre, who is said to re- 
 semble the Alb in her nature, is represented as 
 assuming the form of a beautiful female spirit, who 
 
 made this quotation, observes, in a note, ** Verray is the reading 
 of the MSS. I have consulted. Tyrwhitt reads mare, which is 
 perhaps right." Tyrwhitt tells us (vol. iv M p. 197), "the 
 charm is so lamely represented in all the MSS., that I have 
 left it as I found it in the common editions." Speght gives us 
 the couplet 
 
 : o the night's mare the wite Paternoster 
 AVher wonnest thou saint Peter's suster ;" 
 and is followed by Urry almost to a letter. 
 
The Folk-Lore of Shakespeare. 97 
 
 can be seized by closing all means of escape from the 
 chamber ; and who certainly cannot glide away if 
 laid hold of by a person wearing gloves : and tra- 
 dition speaks of persons being married for years to 
 such a spirit, or Mahre, who has afterwards sud- 
 denly disappeared from them. 
 
 I do not propose to trespass upon the patience of 
 the reader by producing one tithe of the legends con- 
 nected with the Nightmare which are to be found in 
 the traditionary stores of Germany and Flanders, 
 Denmark and Norway, or in the dissertations by the 
 many authors, lay and clerical, who have made witch- 
 craft and demonology the subject of their specula- 
 tions. But with the view of satisfying him how 
 faithfully Shakespeare has represented the Folk-Lore 
 of his own time when he identified the Nightmare 
 with the Queen of the Fairies which fairies or elves, 
 it must be borne in mind, were sometimes most ma- 
 lignant in their nature and most inimical to man 
 I must call his attention to a German legend of the 
 Alp, as it is preserved in the " Deutsche Sagen"* of 
 the Brothers Grimm. 
 
 " It is in vain to close both doors and windows 
 carefully against the Alps : they can creep in at the 
 smallest cranny, and have an especial delight in 
 seeking out such. The noise which they make in 
 the walls when so employed is often heard in the 
 stillness of night. If, when they have entered the 
 room, the hole by which they gained admittance is 
 suddenly stopped up, they cannot away, although 
 
 * Band, I. s. 130. Grimm quotes, as the authority for this 
 description of the Alp, oral tradition, Prsetorius " Welt- 
 beschreibung" (I. 1-40, II. 160-162), and Brauner's " Curiosi- 
 taten," 126-137. 
 
 H 
 
98 The Folk-Lore of Shakespeare. 
 
 both doors and windows should be thrown open. 
 Then is the time to extort from them a promise never 
 more to disturb that place. On such occasions they 
 have frequently been known to complain most griev- 
 ously that they may have left their children at home, 
 who must perish if they are not set free. 
 
 " The Trud or Alp often travels a great distance on 
 these nocturnal trips. Once upon a time some shep- 
 herds who were tending their flocks in the middle of 
 the night, in some pastures on the banks of a river, 
 saw an Alp come thither, jump into a boat, cast it 
 off from the shore, and ferry himself across by means 
 of a staff which he brought with him. He then 
 moored the boat on the other side, and went on his 
 way. After a tune, he returned and ferried himself 
 over as before. The shepherds, after they had 
 watched for several nights and seen the same thing 
 repeated, took measures to remove the boat as soon 
 as he had crossed the river. When the Alp re- 
 turned he began to make great lamentations, and 
 threatened the shepherds that they should never 
 have any peace until they restored his boat ; which 
 at last they were obliged to do. 
 
 " A man once laid a hackel or flax comb upon his 
 stomach for the purpose of keeping off the Alp ; but 
 the Alp turned it round, and so drove the points of 
 it into the man's flesh. A better preventative is, 
 however, to turn the shoes before the bed, so that 
 the heels are next to the bedstead. When a man is 
 oppressed by the Alp, if he can only grasp his thumb 
 in his hand, the Alp must vanish. At night the Alp 
 often rides the horses, so that in the morning they 
 are found quite tired out But he can be kept away 
 by horse-heads. Whoever before he goes to sleep 
 
The Folk- Lore of Shakespeare. 99 
 
 does not move his stool to another place, will that 
 night be ridden by the Mahre. They delight in giving 
 people elf-locks (weichel-zopfe) by sucking and en- 
 tangling their hair. * * If any person oppressed by 
 the Alp says, 
 
 Trud komm Morgen Trud come to-morrow, 
 
 So will ich borgen So shalt thou borrow, 
 
 it immediately vanishes, and comes next morning in 
 the form of a man to borrow something. Or if any 
 body calls after the Alp Come to-morrow and drink 
 with me !' the person who sent the Alp is compelled 
 to come. 
 
 " According to Praetoriifs, the eyebrows of the Alp 
 meet together in a straight line; others say that 
 people whose eyebrows meet together on the fore- 
 head have the power, by a mere exercise of the 
 thoughts, to send the Alp to any one towards whom 
 they feel hate or anger. The Alp then issues from 
 their eyes, assumes the form of a small white butter- 
 fly, and settles upon the other party when sleeping." 
 
 It can scarcely be necessary to call the reader's 
 attention to the points in the foregoing quotation, 
 which will serve to confirm the view which it is the 
 object of the present paper to establish namely, the 
 identity of the Fairy Queen Mab and the Incubus 
 Ephialtes, or Nightmare. We think the facts in the 
 legend which Grimm has preserved, that the Hag 
 bears the name of Alp which is equivalent to Elf, 
 and consequently to Fairy and is, like the Elfin 
 Queen Mab, represented as 
 
 " Platting the manes of horses in the night," 
 
 and 
 
 "Baking the elf-locks in foul sluttish hairs," 
 
100 The Folk-Lore of Shakespeare. 
 
 are quite sufficient to make our readers identify the 
 two, and, whether we point to Alp or Mab, exclaim 
 with Mercutio, 
 
 "This, this is she. 
 
 Of the name of Mab, and of the attributes with 
 which Shakespeare, echoing the popular voice, has 
 invested her, we shall speak hereafter. 
 
 VIII. QUEEN MAB : HER NAME AND 
 ATTRIBUTES. 
 
 i 
 
 " This is that very Mab 
 That plate the manes of horses in the night, 
 hakes the elf-locks in foul sluttish hairs, 
 Which once untangled, much misfortune bodes. 
 This is the hag when maids lie on their backs 
 Which presses them. This, this is she." 
 
 }NE of the most striking of the elfin cha- 
 racteristics set forth in the foregoing pas- 
 sage, and one by which Mab the Fairy 
 Queen, and the Alp or Nightmare are 
 equally distinguished namely, that of 
 
 " Baking the elf-locks in foul sluttish hairs," 
 
 is one which they share in common not only with 
 Aiticaras, the Incubus of Lithuanian superstition, 
 but also with Frau Holle, who plays so distinguished 
 a part in the popular mythology of the Germans. 
 Frau Holle is not only represented as being rendered 
 still more hideous by having her own long hair elfed 
 into knots, but as also so entangling the locks of 
 others : and hence " he has been with Mother Holle" 
 
The Folk-Lore of Shakespeare. 101 
 
 is an expression commonly applied to any person 
 whose hair is particularly rough, matted and untidy. 
 Frau Holle, or Hulda, as she is sometimes desig- 
 nated, it may be remarked, resembles, too, the sove- 
 reign of the fairy race in many other particulars 
 besides her propensity to steal unbaptized children. 
 
 She is sometimes represented as fair and young 
 
 sometimes as altogether the reverse ; and oftentimes 
 she appears not alone, but as the head or queen of a 
 race of spirits who are called after her Huldrefolk* 
 Like Woden, again, Frau Holle takes her nightly 
 course through the air ; and, like that well-known 
 mythic hero, forms a portion of the wild host which 
 used formerly to terrify by their unearthly cries the 
 belated peasantry of Germany. 
 
 But there was another personage who, according 
 to the popular voice, was accustomed to take part in 
 these nocturnal flights these chasses fantastiques, as 
 they are designated in France whose name has 
 never, I believe, been brought under the notice of 
 the English reader, except by the late Mr. Douce, 
 (in his long, curious, and interesting note upon 
 Shakespeare's introduction of Hecate among modern 
 witches) ,f although that name is very possibly con- 
 nected with that of our own Mab, whom she un- 
 questionably so far resembles, that one of her pecu- 
 liarities is her 
 
 " Platting the manes of horses in the night." 
 I allude to Dame Abunde or Habunde ; whom Mr. 
 Douce describes as " having been the genuine queen 
 
 * See Grimm's " Deutsche Mythologie," s. 249. 
 f " Illustrations of Shakespeare and of Ancient Manners," 
 vol. i., p. 382, et seq. 
 
102 The Folk- Lore of Shakespeare. 
 
 of fairies, and of a most innocuous and benevolent 
 disposition, bestowing happiness and abundance on 
 all her votaries. In support of this latter statement 
 he quotes an ancient fabliau by Haisau, which has 
 never been entirely printed, in which she is thus in- 
 troduced 
 
 " Cestc richesse nus abonde 
 Nos lavons de par Dame Avonde," 
 
 and adds, " She is also mentioned in the works of 
 William Auvergne, Bishop of Paris in the fourteenth 
 century, as a spirit enriching the houses that she 
 visited." 
 
 Grimm, in his elaborate notice of Dame Abunde, 
 furnishes us with the passage from William of Au- 
 vergne, to which Mr. Douce alludes when speaking 
 of that important personage; and also with one 
 which, from its connection with another superstition 
 connected with the present inquiry, is no less interest- 
 ing namely, that in which the worthy Bishop of 
 Paris speaks of certain hags, or malicious spirits, who 
 were sometimes seen in stables with waxen lights, 
 from which they suffered drops to fall on the necks 
 and manes of the horses and of the manes of the 
 latter being carefully plaited " comes ipsorum diligenter 
 tricota."* 
 
 * This passage is sufficiently curious to be quoted at length. 
 It is found at p. 1066, of vol. i. of the edition of the Bishop's 
 collected works, published at Paris in 1674. " Sunt et alia? 
 ludificationes malignorum spirituum, quas faciunt interdum in 
 nemoribus et locis amcenis et frondosis arboribus, ubi apparent 
 in similitudine puellarum aut matronarum ornatu muliebri et 
 can dido, interdum etiam in stabulis, cum luminaribus cereis, ex 
 quibus apparent distillationes in comis et collis equorum, et 
 
The Folk-Lore of Shakespeare. 103 
 
 This superstition appears to have been very widely 
 circulated ; and Mr. Douce, in his observations upon 
 it, mentions a very uncommon old print by Hans 
 Burgmair relating to it, in which a witch is repre- 
 sented as entering the stable with a lighted torch, 
 and previously to the operation of entangling the 
 horse's mane practising her enchantments on the 
 groom who is lying asleep on his back, and apparently 
 under the influence of the Nightmare. 
 
 Of the connection which would seem to be esta- 
 blished by means of community of attribute between 
 Queen Mab and those female deities which, as 
 DomincB Nocturna, Bonce Mulieres, or Bonnes Dames, 
 are so frequently mentioned by the mediaeval writers, 
 and formed a peculiar hierarchy under their queen 
 who, whether she be called Diana, Bensozia, Berchta, 
 Befania, Abundia, Folia, Hulda, Frau Gaude, Herka, 
 Hruoda, Ostara, Ostavia, Herodias, or Astarte, is, 
 according to Schreiber,* no other than the Queen of 
 Heaven herself Regina Coeli, Virgo Ccelestis, Bona 
 Dea Sanctissima Coelestis, Invicta Co3lestis Urania, 
 & Cej we have not here, and at this time, an oppor- 
 tunity of treating in the manner which the subject 
 demands. 
 
 We will, therefore, proceed to consider briefly the 
 name which Shakespeare has in " Romeo and Juliet" 
 bestowed upon the sovereign of the fairy race 
 namely, Queen Mab. 
 
 The reader to whom the writings of Shakespeare, 
 
 comce ipsorum diligenter tricatae, et audies eos, qui talia se vi- 
 disse fatentur, dicentes veram ceream esse, quae de luminari- 
 bus hujusmodi still aver at." 
 
 * Schreiber, " Die Keren und Feen," a. 107. 
 
104 The Folk-Lore of Shakespeare. 
 
 Drayton, Herrick, the Duchess of Newcastle, and 
 others have made the name of Queen Mab as fami- 
 liar as the veriest household word, will probably be 
 surprised to learn that no earlier instance of Mab 
 being used as the designation of the Fairy Queen 
 has hitherto been discovered than that of Shake- 
 speare in his " Romeo and Juliet." He will probably 
 be almost as much surprised when he is told that none 
 of the commentators, wide as is their reading, exten- 
 sive as have been their labours, appear to have sought 
 to ascertain either what authority Shakespeare had 
 for so designating the fairies' midwife, or what is the 
 meaning of the designation which he in his " Borneo 
 and Juliet " thought fit to bestow upon her. This 
 is the more extraordinary since none can doubt that 
 Mab is a genuine name, and not like those which 
 Drayton, who designates the Fairy Queen by it, has 
 bestowed upon the members of her fairy court 
 
 u Hop and Mop and Dyp so clear, 
 Pip and Trip and Skip that were 
 To Mab, their sovereign ever dear, 
 
 Her special maids of honour ; 
 Fib and Tib and Pinck and Pin, 
 Tick and Quick and Jil and Jin, 
 Tit and Nit and Wap and Win, 
 The train that wait upon her" 
 
 or Shakespeare's own Peas-blossom, Cobweb, and 
 Mustard-seed, names created for the nonce, and 
 begotten of the poet's fancy. But though it is easy 
 to decide what is unquestionably the case that 
 Shakespeare learned that Mab was the name of the 
 Fairy Queen from the Folk-Lore of his own time, 
 for the name of Mab appears to have been at one 
 time current in Warwickshire, where, as we learn 
 from a note of Sir Henry Ellis, in his edition of 
 
The Folk- Lore of Shakespeare. 105 
 
 Brand, " Mab-led, pronounced Mob-led, signifies led 
 astray by a Will-o'- the- Wisp,"* what is the mean- 
 ing of that name Mab, and why it was originally 
 applied to the sovereign of fairy land, are questions 
 far more difficult of solution. 
 
 Looking to the general character given of Dame 
 Abunde, or Habunde the story of her visiting houses 
 at night, and partaking of the wine and good things 
 purposely left out for her, as, we learn from William 
 d'Auvergnef the practice was, and looking also to 
 her nightly trips, to which Meon also alludes in his 
 " Roman de la Rose," where he says . 
 
 " Que les cine sens ainsinc dec,oit 
 Par les fantosmes, qu'il re9oit, 
 Dont maintes gens par lor folie 
 Cuident estre par nuit estries 
 Errans aveques Dame Habonde" &c. 
 
 I at one time felt inclined to answer in the affir- 
 mative Mr. Keightley's question,:]: Is Mab a contrac- 
 
 * " Popular Antiquities," vol. iii., p. 218 (ed. 1841). 
 
 f The following is the good Bishop's account, which we ex- 
 tract the rather since we believe it has never hitherto been 
 laid before the English reader. In the original it follows the 
 passage given in a former note. " De illis vero substantiis, 
 quae apparent in domibus, quas dominas nocturnas, et principem 
 earum vocant dominant Abundiam, pro eo quod domibus, quas 
 frequentant, abundantiam bonorum temporalium praestare pu- 
 tantur, non aliter tibi sentiendum est, quam quemadmodum de 
 illis audivisti. Quapropter eo usque invaluit stultitia horninum 
 et insania vetularum, ut vasa vini et receptacula ciborum disco 
 operta relinquant, et omnino nee obstruant neque claudant eis 
 noctibus, quibus ad domos suos eas credant adventuras, ea de 
 causa videlicet, ut cibos et potus quasi paratos inveniant et eos 
 absque difficultate apparitionis pro beneplacito sumant." 
 GRIMM, " Deutsche Mythologie," s. 264. 
 
 J "Fairy Mythology," vol. ii., p. 135. The following is, I 
 
106 The Folk-Lore of Shakespeare. 
 
 tion of Habundia, who, Hey wood tells us, ruled over 
 the fairies ? more especially since it appeared that 
 Dame Abonde might possibly have been contracted 
 into Dame Ab, and thence into Mab. Another de- 
 rivation may be from Mabel (of which Mab is, I 
 believe, a common abbreviation); and respecting 
 which Camden in his " Remains" says, " Some will 
 have it to be a contraction of the Italians from Ma- 
 bella, that is, my fair daughter or maid. But whereas 
 it is written in deeds Amabilia and Mabilia, I think 
 it cometh from Amabilis, that is, loveable or lovely.*' 
 Further consideration, has, however, satisfied me 
 that the origin of this name Mab is to be found in 
 the Celtic. Beaufort, in his " Antient Topography 
 of Ireland," mentions Mabh as the chief of the Irish 
 fairies. When speaking of the Fiodha Rhehe, he 
 says "Fiodha Rhehe pronounced Fairy, that is, 
 sylvan divinities, from Fiodha woods, and Rhehe. 
 The Fiodha Rhehe, in the ancient Celtic Mythology, 
 were subordinate genii who presided over the vege- 
 table productions of nature and the animals of the 
 forest. They were the satyrs and elves of the Greeks 
 and Romans ; the chief of whom was Pan or Pallas, 
 called by the ancient Irish, Mogh, Magh, or Mabh. 
 The notion of fairies so prevalent amongst the coun- 
 try people at this day is the remains of this heathen 
 superstition." * Afterwards, which is more to our pre- 
 
 presume, the passage from Heywood's "Hierarchic of the 
 Blessed Angells," lib. 8, p. 507, to which Mr. Keightley alludes 
 " One kinde of these th' Italians Fata name ; 
 Fee, the French ; we, Sybils ; and the same 
 Others, White Nymphs ; and those that have them seen ; 
 Night-Ladies, some, of which Habundia Queene." 
 * No. xi. in vol. iii. of Vallancey's " Collectanea de Rebus 
 Hibernicis." See p. 350. 
 
The Folk-Lore of Shakespeare. 107. 
 
 sent purpose, Beaufort clearly identifies Mdbh with 
 Diana. He is speaking of the chief of the genii, 
 who in the old Irish and Celtic Mythology presided 
 over the various productions of nature, and of the 
 names which this divinity received according to the 
 different departments it was supposed to occupy ; and 
 he goes on to say, when presiding over the forests 
 and chief of the Fiodh Rhehe" (which, as we have 
 already seen, were fairies, corresponding with the 
 satyrs and elves of the Greeks and Romans), " it 
 was denominated Mabh by the Irish, by the Greeks 
 Diana, and by the Romans Pan" 
 
 Before meeting with the foregoing passages, which 
 are certainly curiously illustrative of the present in- 
 quiry, I had satisfied myself of the Celtic origin of 
 the name of Mab, but upon very different grounds; 
 for I saw in this designation a distinct allusion to 
 the diminutive form of the elfin sovereign. Mab, 
 both in Welsh and in the kindred dialects of Brit- 
 tany, signifies a child or infant ; and my readers will, 
 I am sure, agree with me that it would be difficult to 
 find any epithet more befitting one who 
 
 " Comes 
 
 In shape no bigger than an agate stone 
 On the forefinger of an alderman ;" 
 
 that dwarf-like sovereign whose tiny subjects are 
 employed 
 
 " Some to kill cankers in the musk rose-buds, 
 Some war with rear mice for their leathern wings 
 To make her small elves coats ;" 
 
 and who when frighted with the domestic squabbles 
 of their rulers, 
 
 " for fear 
 Creep into acorn cups and hide them there." 
 
108 The Folk-Lore of Shakespeare. 
 
 Here let me sing, with Bishop Corbet, 
 
 " Farewell Rewards and Fairies I " 
 
 and for awhile bring to a close so much of the illus- 
 trations of the Folk-Lore of Shakespeare as relates 
 to the Fairy Mythology of England. There are 
 many points connected with it still untouched ; but 
 the consideration of which it has seemed good to 
 defer to some more convenient opportunity. Frag- 
 mentary, however, as have been my notices of it, 
 I trust they have shown the varied origin of that 
 beautiful portion of our Popular Mythology of which 
 Shakespeare has made such admirable and effective 
 use, and have convinced my readers that, however 
 gorgeous the colouring, however skilful the grouping, 
 the pictures of the elfin race which Shakespeare has 
 left us have the additional charm of being truthful 
 copies of the originals from which he drew, and 
 which he found enshrined in the hearts and memories 
 of his contemporaries. 
 
 IX. THE OWL WAS A BAKER'S DAUGHTER. 
 
 " Ophelia. Well ! God 'ield you ! They say, the Owl was a 
 baker's daughter. Lord, we know what we are, but know not 
 what we may be." Hamlet, iv., 5. 
 
 is impossible to read Shakespeare with 
 the attention which his writings demand, 
 without very speedily coming to the con- 
 clusion that every word that is to be found in them 
 is there not for the mere sake of contributing to 
 the euphony of a sentence, or giving a more musical 
 flow to the cadence of a line, but with a good set 
 
The Folk-Lore of Shakespeare. 109 
 
 purpose : and in like manner that every allusion, 
 how vague soever it may appear to us with our im- 
 perfect knowledge of matters which were familiar as 
 household words to Shakespeare and his contempo- 
 raries, has a clear and definite foundation, could we 
 but trace it out. 
 
 A striking instance of this is shown in the few, 
 apparently incoherent, words of Ophelia : " They 
 say the owl was a baker's daughter." " This," says 
 Warburton, <( was a metamorphosis of the common 
 people arising from the mealy appearance of the 
 owl's feathers and her guarding the bread from mice." 
 Steevens corrected this note of Warburton's, remark- 
 ing, " To guard the bread from mice is rather the 
 office of a cat than an owl " and that " this was, 
 however, no ( metamorphosis of the common people,' 
 but a legendary story which both Dr. Johnson and 
 myself have read, but in what book at least I cannot 
 recollect." 
 
 And Steevens was right : for although the tale has 
 not been discovered in any printed book, its exist- 
 ence as a common Gloucestershire story was ascer- 
 tained by the late Mr. Douce ; who relates it in one 
 of the notes to the " Variorum Shakespeare" in the 
 following words : 
 
 " Our Saviour went into a baker's shop where they 
 were baking, and asked for some bread to eat. The 
 mistress of the shop immediately put a piece of dough 
 into the oven to bake for him ; but was reprimanded 
 by her daughter, who, insisting that the piece of 
 dough was too large, reduced it to a very small size. 
 The dough, however, immediately afterwards began 
 to swell, and presently became of a most enormous 
 size. Whereupon the baker's daughter cried out, 
 
1 10 The Folk-Lore of Shakespeare. 
 
 * Heugh, heugh, heugh I ' which owl-like noise pro- 
 bably induced our Saviour for her wickedness to 
 transform her into that bird. This story is often re- 
 lated to children to deter them from such illiberal 
 behaviour to poor people." 
 
 A writer in the " Gentleman's Magazine " for No- 
 vember, 1804 (pp. 1003-4), relates the following some- 
 what similar story, which he states to be well known 
 to the nurses in Herefordshire : A certain fairy, 
 disguised as an old distressed woman, went into a 
 baker's shop and begged some dough of his daughter, 
 of whom she obtained a very small piece. This she 
 further requested to bake in the oven; where it 
 swelling to the size of a large loaf, the baker's 
 daughter refused to let her have it. She, however, 
 gave the pretended beggar another piece of dough, 
 but still smaller than the first. This swelled in the 
 oven even more than the other; and was, in like 
 manner, retained. A third and still smaller piece of 
 dough came out of the oven the largest of all, and 
 shared the same fate. The disguised fairy, convinced 
 of the woman's covetousness by this repeated experi- 
 ment, no longer restrained her indignation : she re- 
 sumed her proper form and struck the culprit with 
 her wand ; who immediately flew out of the window 
 in the shape of an owl. 
 
 In Germany, as we learn from Grimm's " Deutsche 
 My thologie,"* a legend of similar character is related 
 of the Cuckoo ; and it is to this wide-spread tradition 
 that allusion is made in the popular rhyme so current 
 throughout that country which is addressed to the 
 
 * S. 641. Grimm quotes as his authority Praetorius Welt- 
 beschreibung, I. 656, II. 491. 
 
The Folk-Lore of Shakespeare. Ill 
 
 Cuckoo when he is heard for the first time, and in 
 which he is invited to prognosticate what " length of 
 days" the inquirer is destined to see : 
 
 Kukuk, Beckenknecht ! Cuckoo, Bakerwight ! 
 
 Sag mir recht, Tell me right, 
 
 Wie viel jahr Ich leben soil ? How many years I shall live? 
 
 and his meal-bedusted-looking feathers are referred to 
 as affording proof of the truth of the legend. What- 
 ever may be the origin of this remarkable legend 
 and that origin is at present involved in the greatest 
 obscurity the legend itself is very widely spread. 
 
 In Norway, the red-crested black Woodpecker is 
 called Gertrudsbird ; and in the Norwegian tales col- 
 lected by Asbiornsen and Moe we find the following 
 legend relating to it ; which I translate,* because it 
 furnishes at once a characteristic specimen of the 
 popular stories of Norway, and a remarkable parallel 
 to the tradition to which Shakespeare has alluded. 
 
 When our Saviour and St. Peter were wanderers 
 upon the face of the earth, they came once upon a 
 time to a woman who was standing at her kneading 
 trough and kneading dough. Her name was Ger- 
 trud ; and on her head she wore a red cap. As they 
 had both journeyed over a great distance and were 
 sore hungered, Our Saviour besought the woman to 
 give them a morsel of bread. Yes, she said, they 
 should have it ; and she took a very small piece of 
 dough and kneaded it ; but it soon became so large, 
 that it quite filled the kneading trough. No, that 
 was a great deal too much they could not have that. 
 
 * From the German translation of F. Breesemann, for I have 
 never been able to procure the Danish original entitled 
 " jtforske Folkeventyr." 
 
1 1 2 The Folk-Lore of Shakespeare. 
 
 Then she took a much smaller piece ; but as she was 
 kneading that, it became quite as large as the first 
 piece. No, that was a great deal too much they 
 could not have that The third time she took a 
 very, very little piece ; yet this time, also, it grew 
 to be a great deal too much. " No, no, I can't 
 give you anything," said Gertrud; "you must go 
 your way without a meal, for the loaf always gets 
 too big to give away." Then Our Lord was angered, 
 and said, " Since thou hast a heart so wicked, and 
 wilt not bestow upon me a morsel of bread, for a 
 punishment thou shalt be transformed into a bird ; 
 and thou shalt seek thy food between the bark and 
 the wood ; and thou shalt never quench thy thirst 
 but when the rain falleth !" And scarcely were the 
 'words spoken, before she was changed to a Gertruds- 
 bird (Woodpecker), and flew away up the chimney; 
 and even at the present day she is ofttimes seen flying 
 about with her red cap upon her head and her whole 
 body black for the soot of the chimney had black- 
 ened her. And she is ever heard tapping and pecking 
 the trees in search of food, and she always sings be- 
 fore rain for she is for ever in want of drink. 
 
III. 
 
 WAS SHAKESPEARE EVER 
 A SOLDIER? 
 
 (1859.) 
 
THE following Paper originally appeared in " Notes and 
 Queries." The writer having sent one of the few separately 
 printed copies to his kind and lamented friend the late Lord 
 Lyndhurst, was told by that eminent judge of evidence, 
 "that he had unquestionably proved his case." Another 
 noble Lord (still happily among us), who has received the 
 Thanks of Parliament for his ability and judgment displayed 
 in support of great military operations, assured the writer 
 that he had long felt convinced that Shakespeare must have 
 served in the army, and that this belief had been strongly 
 confirmed by witnessing the recent performance of his " Henry 
 the Fifth." With such opinions in his favour, it will not be 
 considered extraordinary if the writer considers that the ques- 
 tion, Was Shakespeare ever a Soldier ? must be resolved in 
 the affirmative. 
 
WAS SHAKESPEARE EVER A SOLDIER? 
 
 " Have I not heard great ordnance in the field ? 
 
 Have I not in a pitched battle heard 
 
 Loud 'larums, neighing steeds, and trumpets clang ?" 
 
 Taming of the Shrew. 
 
 'N the year 1843, when the expectancy 
 of being relieved from a great portion 
 of my official employments gave me a 
 prospect of devoting my time more ex- 
 clusively to literary pursuits, I sat down to a pleas- 
 ing task which I had long prescribed to myself, 
 namely, that of making a minute examination into 
 the writings of Shakespeare. 
 
 In this I had two especial objects ; the one, and 
 the only one to which I need now advert, being to 
 ascertain how far such an examination made by an- 
 other mind that is, a mind differently constituted, 
 although less gifted and far-sighted than those whic,h 
 had been already employed upon it might discover 
 in Shakespeare's writings the means of increasing the 
 comparatively scanty materials which we possess for 
 the biography of the poet. 
 
 Those labours were destined to be interrupted be- 
 fore I had accomplished one -half of my self-appointed 
 task, but not until I had arrived at a conclusion, of 
 
116 Was Shakespeare ever a Soldier? 
 
 the accuracy of which I now feel morally certain, 
 namely, that at some period of his life Shakespeare 
 must have seen military service. 
 
 I arrived at this conclusion just about the time at 
 which my friend Mr. Bruce discovered, or perhaps I 
 should rather say was about to call attention to, the 
 curious passage in a letter of Sir Philip Sidney, then 
 engaged in the war of independence in the Low 
 Countries, which forms the subject of the interesting 
 paper entitled " Who was Will, my Lord of Leicester's 
 jesting Player?" communicated by him to the first 
 volume of the Shakespeare Society's Papers ; and to 
 which Letter, dated Utrecht, the 24th March, 1586, 1 
 shall have occasion hereafter to refer. I remember 
 that the mutual communication of the point raised in 
 that paper and my opinion took place in the same con- 
 versation one was consequent upon the other ; but 
 whether I stated my opinion that Shakespeare had 
 seen military service in consequence of Mr. Bruce's 
 drawing my attention to Sidney's allusion to " Will, 
 my Lord of Leicester's player," or he directed my 
 attention to the passage in Sidney, on hearing my 
 conviction that Shakespeare must have been a soldier, 
 because I found his plays so horribly " stufTd with 
 epithets of war," I do not now recollect, nor is it 
 material to the present inquiry. 
 
 The impression then made upon my mind has been 
 deepened by subsequent consideration, and I trust 
 before this paper is concluded that I shall convince 
 my readers that Shakespeare has succeeded in des- 
 cribing all the "pride, pomp, and circumstance of 
 glorious war" with such unrivalled skill, because, 
 as Pope says, 
 
 44 He best can paint them who has felt them most.* 1 
 
Was Shakespeare ever a Soldier? 117 
 
 And here I may remind my readers that if Shake- 
 speare served in the army, he is by no means the only 
 poet of his age who did so. Aubrey tells us that 
 Ben Jonson " went into the Lowe Countreys, and 
 spent some time (not very long) in the armie, not 
 to the disgrace of it, as you may find in his Epi- 
 grammes." " Gascoyne, Churchyard, Whetstone, 
 Rich, and others" are enumerated by Mr. Collier 
 (" Poetical Decameron," ii. 141) as among the phalanx 
 of poets who united their endeavours under Elizabeth 
 to free the Low Countries from the weight of the 
 Spanish yoke : while the probability that Donne was 
 engaged in military operations under Prince Maurice 
 is shown not only by Marshall's portrait of him, but 
 by the epigrams attributed to him, and which form 
 the subject of Mr. Yeowell's communication to " N. 
 & Q," 2 nd S. iv. 49. 
 
 But, it may be asked, do the known facts of Shake- 
 speare's life admit the possibility of his having ever 
 encountered " the grappling vigour and rough frown 
 of war?" 
 
 Let us see how far they are consistent with the 
 supposition that he may have accompanied or fol- 
 lowed the Earl of Leicester to the Low Countries. 
 Leicester sailed from Harwich on the 4th, and landed 
 at Flushing on the 10th December, 1585. He re- 
 turned on 3rd December, 1586. 
 
 Now all that we know with certainty with respect 
 to Shakespeare at this period is, that his twins, Ham- 
 net and Judith, were born in February, 1585 ; and 
 from that date until 1589, when we find him a sharer 
 in the Blackfriars Theatre, nothing is really known 
 as to where or how he was engaged. 
 
 It is clear, then, that it is quite possible that Shake- 
 
118 Was Shakespeare ever a Soldier? 
 
 speare may have followed in Leicester's train. I 
 think the passage in Sidney's Letter converts that 
 possibility into something more than a probability. 
 Let the reader judge for himself. The Letter, which 
 is addressed to Secretary Walsyngham, Sidney's 
 father-in-law, is dated "at Utrecht this 24th of 
 March, 1586," and besides sentences which, as Mr. 
 Bruce remarks, " seem to contain something like a 
 foreshadowing of several of Shakespeare's noblest 
 passages/' contains the following allusion, as I be- 
 lieve, to Shakespeare : 
 
 "I wrote to yow a Letter by Will, my lord of 
 Lester's jesting plaier, enclosed in a letter to my wife, 
 and I never had answer thereof. Hit contained 
 something to my lord of Lester and council, that 
 som wai might be taken to stay my ladi there. I 
 since divers tymes have writt to know whether you 
 had receaved them, but yow never answered me that 
 point. I since find that the knave deliver 'd the letters 
 to my ladi of Lester, but whether she sent them yow 
 or no I know not, but earnestly desire to do, because 
 I dout there is more interpreted thereof." 
 
 After showing that there were four persons to 
 whom Sidney may have referred, as Will, my Lord 
 of Leicester's jesting player, namely, William John- 
 son, William Sly, William Kempe, (whom he be- 
 lieves to have been the "Will" alluded to), and 
 William Shakespeare, Mr. Bruce expresses his con- 
 viction that Sir Philip Sidney never would have 
 applied to Shakespeare the terms "jesting player" 
 and " knave," even " allowing that the latter word 
 might not be used in the modern offensive sense." 
 
 "Now that Shakespeare was a light-hearted, frolic- 
 some man is clear from the deer-stealing; that he was 
 
Was Shakespeare ever a Soldier? 119 
 
 witty in conversation is to be inferred from his daugh- 
 ter's epitaph; that he was termed 'Will Shakespeare' 
 is certain ; but I must at once express my own con- 
 viction that Sir Philip Sidney never could have ap- 
 plied to him the terms ' jesting player' and < knave,' 
 even allowing that the latter word might not be used 
 in the modern offensive sense. Shakespeare's ear- 
 liest works bear upon them the stamp of a mind far 
 too contemplative and refined for its possessor ever 
 to have been regarded as a jester or buffoon; besides 
 which, the only traces that we have of him as an 
 actor are in old Adam and the Ghost in Hamlet, 
 certainly not humorous characters." 
 
 Mr. Bruce's opinion, that Shakespeare was not 
 alluded to by Sidney is, it is obvious, mainly founded 
 on his belief that Sidney could not and would not 
 have designated Shakespeare as "knave" or "jest- 
 ing." One word as to the epithet " knave." This, 
 which our great dramatist himself makes Brutus 
 apply to Lucius- 
 
 " Gentle knave, good night :" 
 
 and Anthony to Eros 
 
 "My good knave, Eros" 
 
 Sidney might without offence apply to Shakespeare, 
 who was then, be it remembered, not the genius 
 which the world now recognises, but the young fel- 
 low of two-and-twenty, a youth of promise indeed, 
 but one whom Sidney perhaps knew best from his 
 late deer-stealing peccadillo, as a roystering youngster 
 with a nimble wit, a stout heart, and a ready hand. 
 
 But all who know my friend Mr. Bruce are aware 
 of his great reverence, if I may so term it, for Shake- 
 
120 Was Shakespeare ever a Soldier? 
 
 speare a reverence which renders it almost impos- 
 sible for him to conceive that Sidney, or indeed any- 
 body, could apply to that mighty genius the epithets 
 "knave" and "jesting player" while, as he shares 
 Johnson's " great contempt for that species of wit 
 puns," he is naturally disinclined to believe that 
 Shakespeare's conversation was ever so marked or 
 marred by the use of them as to earn for him the 
 character of a "jesting" spirit 
 
 I, on the other hand, have no doubt that of Shake- 
 speare himself, whose whole mind was " quippish," 
 it might almost be said, " not a word with him but a 
 jest," and that his conversation, like his writings, was 
 " full of odd quirks and remnants of wit;" and I feel 
 sure that those who remember Johnson's remark, 
 " that a quibble was to him the fatal Cleopatra for 
 which he lost the world, and was content to lose it," 
 will admit that I have some grounds for my belief. 
 Besides, have we not Aubrey's report of his " very 
 ready, pleasant, and smooth wit?" and does not 
 Fuller, in his admirable account of his wit combats 
 with Ben Jonson, speak especially of " the quickness 
 of his wit and invention." I think, therefore, that 
 at two-and-twenty he might deserve to be called " a 
 jesting player." 
 
 I will now quote the passage in which Mr. Bruce 
 then proceeds to show how great is the probability 
 that the Earl of Leicester's players accompanied him 
 into the Low Countries ; and then, albeit unwilling 
 to believe that Shakespeare could have been the 
 "jesting player" and "knave" referred to by Sidney, 
 he asks, " was not Shakespeare probably with them ?" 
 
 " He left Stratford after the birth of his twins, 
 who were baptized in the month of February, 1585. 
 
Was Shakespeare ever a Soldier? 121 
 
 He is next traced as an important member of Lord 
 Leicester's company of players, in 1589. He must 
 have been in the company some considerable time, or 
 he could not have attained the station which he held. 
 Now the Earl was appointed to the command in the 
 Low Countries in September, 1585, and immediately 
 afterwards sent out letters to his friends and retainers, 
 requesting them to accompany him thither. From 
 Warwickshire, and especially from the neighbour- 
 hood of his domain at Kenilworth, his 500 men were 
 in great part procured. One 'John Arden,' who was 
 recommended to the earl's service by his relative and 
 confidential servant Mr. Thomas Dudley,* and 
 another, ' Thomas Ardern,' who was f Clarcke Comp- 
 troller,^ were probably relatives of Shakespeare, and 
 ' Miles Comes,' or, as he is afterwards termed, 'Miles 
 Combes,'J was probably his neighbour. It was just 
 about the time of the stir which this incident created 
 in Warwickshire, that Shakespeare's father attained 
 the lowest depth of his poverty, and that Shakespeare 
 himself left his native town. The incidents may be 
 altogether unconnected ; but a young man of an ex- 
 citable temperament, encumbered by an imprudent 
 marriage and domestic difficulties one to whom 
 neither the world of Stratford nor its law was 
 friendly was of all persons the most likely to be 
 affected by the general commotion around him. The 
 departure of friends and neighbours would be to him 
 
 * Galba, c. viii. fo. 106. t Ibid -> fo - 108 - 
 
 I Ibid., fo. 106. In the same MS. list of Leycester's ser- 
 vants, we find under the head of " Musiconer," the following 
 names : " Thomas Cole, William Bainton, James Wharton, 
 William Edgley, William Black, Jo, the harper, Walter, the 
 boye." No players are mentioned. 
 
122 Was Shakespeare ever a Soldier? 
 
 a temptation and an example. They marshalled him 
 the way that he should go; and although seeking 
 distinction in other fields, stirred him up to find an 
 arena for the exercise of that power which he must 
 have felt within him. This consideration would lead 
 to a conclusion very consonant with all we know of 
 his biography ; that he left home a little earlier than 
 has been usually supposed. There may be nothing 
 in it, but I point it out as a subject for investigation 
 to those who feel an interest in such questions, and 
 who have greater facilities for pursuing the necessary 
 inquiries than I at present possess." 
 
 This was published in 1844, but by that time my 
 leisure had passed away, and I could not accept the 
 friendly challenge. It is only the circumstance of 
 my having accidentally come across some of the 
 notes which I then made on the subject of Shake- 
 speare's " military acquirements," just after reading 
 Lord Campbell's evidence of his "legal acquire- 
 ments," that has induced me to undertake my present 
 task of showing that, like George Gascoigne, who 
 had also served in the Low Countries, Shakespeare 
 might have adopted for his motto, " Tarn Marti tarn 
 Mercurio." 
 
 But before I proceed to point out some of those 
 passages in Shakespeare's writings which, as I con- 
 tend, prove that at some time Shakespeare had seen 
 
 "The hand of Mars 
 Beckoning with fiery truncheon his retire," 
 
 let me remind the reader that the fact of his having 
 served under Leicester would go far to explain how 
 he gained much of that familiarity with other things 
 for which his writings are remarkable. 
 
Was Shakespeare ever a Soldier ? 123 
 
 Thus, what he had observed when on shipboard, 
 while on his way to the Low Countries and back 
 (and let me point to a line in " Coriolanus " as an 
 evidence of that observation 
 
 " As weeds before a vessel under sail, 
 So men obey'd, and fell below his stem,") 
 
 may well have furnished him with that knowledge 
 of seamanship discoverable in many of his plays, a 
 knowledge which can only be acquired by those who 
 go down to the sea in ships. His familiarity with 
 the good points of a horse, and he is admitted to 
 have described them with a skill which no other poet 
 has ever attained to, so that when he talks of 
 horses, we see them 
 
 " Printing their proud hoofs i' the receiving earth," 
 
 was probably acquired where "the army of the 
 Queen had got the field." And we may here add, 
 that if, as has been supposed from the allusions in 
 his 37th and 89th Sonnets, he was lame 
 
 " Made lame by Fortune's dearest spite " 
 
 the accident may well have happened to him while 
 sharing in some of those encounters from witnessing 
 which, as I believe, he acquired that knowledge of 
 military matters of which his writings contain such 
 abundant evidence. 
 
 One word more before I adduce the proofs that 
 Shakespeare had seen military service derivable from 
 his writings. The Lord Chief Justice, in investi- 
 gating the evidence of Shakespeare's legal knowledge, 
 had the advantage of being himself a master of the 
 art on which he was treating, while I, in discussing 
 Shakespeare's soldierly knowledge, have the disad- 
 
124 1 1 'us Shakespeare ever a Soldier? 
 
 vantage of being utterly incompetent to set a squad- 
 ron in the field, and know no more than a spinster 
 of the division of a battle. 
 
 Five-and-forty years had I lived in this happy 
 land ere I had the necessity of taking in my hands 
 a weapon of offence or defence ; and when, on the 
 memorable 10th of April, 1848, I was called upon 
 to shoulder a brown bess, I know I did so with a 
 strong feeling of apprehension, that, if unhappily 
 compelled to use it, it might peradventure prove 
 more dangerous to my Conservative friends than to 
 the noisy Chartists against whom its fire would have 
 been really directed. 
 
 My notes refer to BoswelPs edition of Malone, the 
 last variorum edition, which was published in 1821 ; 
 and I will quote them in the order in which the plays 
 are there inserted. I have no note of any soldierly 
 allusions in " The Two Gentlemen of Verona," and 
 I have only a memorandum of one such in 
 
 THE COMEDT OF ERRORS, 
 Act iv. sc, 3., where Dromeo of Syracuse speaks of 
 
 " He that sett up hi* rest to do more exploits with his mace, 
 than a morris pike.** 
 
 And in reply to Antipholus' remark, 
 
 " What ! thou meanest an officer ?" 
 replies, 
 
 ** Ay, Sir, the Serjeant of the Band. He that brings any 
 man to answer, that breaks his band," &c. 
 
 LOVE'S LABOUR'S LOST. 
 
 In the first scene of the third act, between Ar- 
 mado and Moth, we have one slight reference : 
 
Was Shakespeare ever a Soldier? 125 
 
 " Moth. As swift as lead, Sir. 
 
 Arm. Thy meaning, pretty ingenious ? 
 Is not lead a metal heavy slow ? 
 
 Moth. Minime, honest Master ; or rather, Master, no. 
 
 Arm. I say lead is slow. 
 
 Moth. . . . You are too swift, Sir, to say so : 
 Is that lead slow which is fired from a gun ? 
 
 Arm. . . . Sweet smoke of Rhetoricke, 
 
 He reputes me a cannon ; and the bullet, that's he : 
 
 I shoot thee at the swain." 
 
 But in the same act, where Biron, speaking of 
 
 " This senior-junior, giant dwarf, Dan Cupid," 
 exclaims, 
 
 " O my little heart I 
 And I to be a Corporal of his field, 
 And wear his colours like a tumbler's hoop !" 
 
 we have a direct professional allusion. Tyrwhitt 
 has shown, in a note on this passage from " Lord 
 Stafford's Letters," (vol. ii. p. 199) that a corporal of 
 the field corresponds to the aide-de-camp of the pre- 
 sent day. 
 
 Passing by the " Merchant of Venice," the " Mid- 
 summer Night's Dream," and " The Taming of the 
 Shrew," as not containing any passages calling for 
 remark, I come to 
 
 EOMEO AND JULIET. 
 
 This play presents us with two or three similes 
 drawn from military experiences of a very striking 
 character. In act iii. sc. 3, when the nurse tells 
 how Juliet 
 
 " On Romeo cries 
 And then falls down again," 
 
126 Was Shakespeare ever a Soldier? 
 
 Romeo's answer is of this character : 
 
 "As if that name 
 
 Shot from the deadly level of a gun 
 Did murder her." 
 
 In the same scene we have another passage, the 
 full force of which Steevens showed could only be 
 understood by remembering that the English soldiers 
 formerly used not even flint-locks but wmfcA-locks, 
 and consequently were obliged to carry a lighted 
 match hanging at their belts very near to the wooden 
 flask in which they kept their powder, an arrange- 
 ment necessarily productive of many accidents. 
 Shakespeare's recollection of some that he had wit- 
 nessed probably led to his placing these words in the 
 mouth of the Friar when reproving Romeo : 
 
 u Thy wit, that ornament to shape and love, 
 Mis-shapen in the conduct of them both, 
 Like powder in a tkill-ltu toldier'sjfajik, 
 Is set on fire by thine own ignorance, 
 And thou dismembered with thine own defence." 
 
 I pass over the passage in scene 1, act v., 
 
 " And that the trunk may be discharged of breath 
 As violently as hasty powder fir'd 
 Doth hurry from the fatal cannon's womb," 
 
 and come to the very striking image in the third 
 scene, which was doubtless suggested to Shakespeare 
 by his own recollections : 
 
 " Thou art not conquer'd ; beauty's ensign yet 
 Is crimson in thy lips, and in thy cheeks, 
 And death's pale flag is not advanced there." 
 
 In the " Merry Wives of Windsor," we find him 
 
Was Shakespeare eve?- a Soldier? 127 
 
 placing a similar expression in the mouth of Fen- 
 ton 
 
 "I must advance the colours of my love, 
 And not retire." 
 
 As YOU LIKE IT. 
 
 The only two passages in this play would not by 
 themselves go far to support my views, but they may 
 be noted as showing how readily Shakespeare drew 
 his images from military subjects. The first is where 
 Rosalind decides on assuming male attire : 
 
 " Were it not better, 
 
 Because that I am more than common tall 
 That I did suit me all points like a man ? 
 A gallant curtle-ax upon my thigh, 
 A boar spear in my hand, and (in my heart 
 Lie there what hidden woman's fear there will) 
 We'll have a swashing and a martial outside, 
 As many other mannish cowards have, 
 And do outface it with their semblances ;" 
 
 and the next (act. iii. sc. 4), where Celia, speaking 
 of Orlando, says : 
 
 " that's a brave man ! he writes brave verses, speaks 
 brave words, swears brave oaths, and breaks them bravely 
 quite traverse athwart the heart of his lover ; as a puny filter 
 that spurs his horse but on one side breaks his staff, like a noble 
 goose." 
 
 MUCH ADO ABOUT NOTHING. 
 
 Although Benedick gives a good picture of a 
 soldier in his description of Claudio 
 
 " I have known when there was no musick with him but the 
 drum and fife, and now had he rather hear the tabor and pipe ; 
 I have known when he would have walked ten miles a- foot to 
 see a good armour ; and now will he lie ten nights awake carv- 
 ing the fashion of a new doublet. He was wont to speak 
 plain and to the purpose, like an honest man and a soldier ; 
 and now is he turned orthographer." Act ii. sc. 3. 
 
128 Was Shakespeare ever a Soldier f 
 
 Yet the military allusions in this admirable Comedy 
 are but few. Some of these, however, are so purely 
 technical that they have been left unexplained by the 
 commentators. 
 
 Thus Benedick asks Claudio how he will wear his 
 willow garland 
 
 " About your neck like an usurer's chain, or under your arm 
 like a lieutenants scarf" Act ii. so. 1. 
 
 Again, in the fifth act, sc. 2, where Benedick 
 tells Margaret " I give thee the Bucklers," we have 
 abundance of illustrations to tell us that the phrase 
 is equivalent to " I yield," but we have never a word 
 to illustrate his meaning when he says, 
 
 "You must put in the pikes with a vice," 
 
 a phrase clearly borrowed by Shakespeare from 
 the language of the camp, and which, though ob- 
 viously technical, I confess myself quite as unable 
 to explain as my predecessors.* 
 
 I am indebted to the kindness of my accomplished friend 
 Mr. Albert Way for the following able explanation. The 
 circular " bucklers'* of the sixteenth century, now called more 
 commonly targets, had frequently a central spike, or " pike " 
 usually affixed by a screw. It was probably found convenient 
 to detach this spike occasionally ; for instance, in cleaning the 
 buckler, or in case of that piece of defensive armor being 
 carried about on any occasion when not actually in use. A 
 sharp projecting spike, four or five inches long, would obviously 
 be inconvenient. As an example of the fashion of making it 
 moveable and formed with a screw to affix it to the buckler, it 
 will suffice to refer to the target of the Emperor Charles V. in 
 the Armory at Goodrich Court, figured in Skelton's Illustra- 
 tions of that Collection, vol. i. pi. 53. The date of this target 
 is about 1550. In Skelton's plate the spike with its screw is 
 represented full size ; it measures in length, the screw included, 
 
Was Shakespeare ever a Soldier? 129 
 
 HAMLET. 
 
 In this magnificent specimen of Shakespeare's 
 genius, we have, as I think, many traces of his brief 
 military career. His description of a Ghost, 
 
 " Armed at point exactly cap-a-pie," 
 may not be one of these ; but when he speaks of his 
 " wearing his bever up," it is clear from Bullokar 
 
 that he was correct in so describing the helmet 
 
 for "bever" was in his time used to signify that 
 part of the helmet which when up exposed the face 
 of the wearer, although, as Malone tells us, it pro- 
 perly signified that which was let down to enable the 
 wearer to drink. 
 
 When Fortinbras, at the close, directs that Ham- 
 let shall be buried with the same honours that he 
 would have received had he been slain in battle 
 
 " And for his passage, 
 The soldier's musick and the rites of war 
 Speak loudly for him," 
 
 5|- inches. "Vice" is the French vis, a screw, a word still in 
 common use, the female screw being called ecrou. Cotgrave 
 gives " vis, the vice or spindle of a presse ;" namely, a strong 
 wooden screw, such as we see in a cheese-press, a press for cider, 
 and the like. Palsgrave gives only " Vyce of a cuppe, vis ;" 
 namely, a screw in the bottom or stem, fixing its various parts 
 or ornaments together. From resemblance to a screw a wind- 
 ing or turret staircase was called a Vice, as in the Promptorium 
 Parvulorum, "Vyce, rownde grece or steyer, coclea" The 
 term is not uncommon in the Wicliffite Version, in old building 
 contracts, &c. ; for instance, that for building Fotheringay church, 
 1435. It may suffice to cite Chaucer's Dream, v. 1312, where 
 he relates how, suddenly awaking in the stillness of the night, 
 "I rise and wallet sought pace and pace, 
 
 Till I a winding staire found ; 
 
 And held the vice aye in my hond, 
 
 And upward softly so gan creepe." 
 K 
 
130 Was Shakespeare ever a Soldier? 
 
 we have probably a reminiscence of funeral honours 
 which Shakespeare himself had witnessed. But can 
 it be doubted that when he says : 
 
 u And let it work : 
 For 'tis the sport to have the engineer 
 Hoist with hit own petard." Act iii. sc. 4. 
 
 or when he speaks of Slander : 
 
 " Whose whisper o'er the world's diameter, 
 At level at the cannon to hi* blank, 
 Transports his poisoned shot" Act iv. sc 2. 
 
 that we have images drawn from his own military 
 experiences ? 
 
 Are the following less striking proofs of this? 
 
 " O my dear Gertrude, this 
 Like to a murdering piece, in many places 
 Give me superfluous death." 
 
 The "murdering piece" being in Shakespeare's 
 time a specific term for a piece of ordnance, or small 
 cannon, charged with small bullets, nails, &c., and 
 well calculated therefore to "give superfluous death." 
 
 How entirely technical is the allusion in Hamlet's 
 letter to Horatio : 
 
 44 1 have words to speak in thine ear shall make thee dumb ; 
 yet are they much too light for the bore of the matter." 
 
 Nor is the following allusion to the proving of can- 
 non one jot less so : 
 
 " Therefore this project 
 Should have a back, or second, that might hold 
 If this should blatt in proof" Act iv. sc. 7. 
 
 A few lines previously the King speaks of Laertes 
 choosing 
 
 ** A sword unbated; and in a pass of practice 
 Requite him for your father" 
 
Was Shakespeare ever a Soldier? 131 
 
 terms obviously drawn from military experience. 
 Let us hope that the following was not drawn from 
 Shakespeare's own : 
 
 " Methought I lay 
 Worse than the mutines in the bilboes." 
 
 MERRY WIVES OF WINDSOR. 
 
 The military allusions in this play are few, but 
 characteristic. Bardolph speaks of " conclusions 
 passed the carieres" and Ford, act iii. sc. 2, tells 
 us 
 
 " Why this boy will carry a letter twenty miles as easy as a 
 cannon will shoot point blank twelve score." 
 
 The most striking, however, is where Falstaff 
 describes himself when packed in the buck-basket 
 as being 
 
 " Compassed, like a good bilbo, in the circumference of a 
 peck, hilt to point, heel to head." Act iii. sc. 5. 
 
 For the simile is drawn from the flexibility of the 
 Spanish blades made at Bilboa, and which were 
 renowned for their excellence in the field. 
 
 TROILUS AND CRESSIDA. 
 
 An attentive perusal of this play alone would, I 
 think, convince any unprejudiced reader that, at some 
 period of his life, Shakespeare must have witnessed 
 the operations of war, so full is it of epithets, similes, 
 and allusions drawn from such a source. While any 
 one who admits the possibility of Shakespeare having 
 accompanied Leicester to the Low Countries will 
 probably share my belief that in pourtraying the 
 contests between the Greek and Trojan hosts, he 
 but recorded his recollections of encounters between 
 
132 Was Shakespeare ever a Soldier 9 
 
 the forces of England and the United Provinces and 
 those under the Duke of Alva. 
 
 We have the very " Prologue " armed, and telling 
 us that " our play leaps o'er the vaunt." 
 
 The "hacks on Hector's helmet," "the ward at 
 which Cressid was won't to lie," are but small mat- 
 ters compared to the picture drawn by Ulysses of 
 the distraction in the Grecian camp, and which re- 
 semble those which Shakespeare might himself have 
 witnessed in the camp of the allies 
 
 "The General's disdained 
 By him one step below ; he, by the next ; 
 The next by him beneath." 
 
 Who can doubt when Patroclus plays old Nestor, 
 
 14 And with a palsy-fumbling on his gorget, 
 Shakes in and out the rivet " 
 
 that Shakespeare drew the picture from the life ; or 
 that he had any other source for the following : 
 
 44 So that the ram, that batters down the wall, 
 For the great swing and rudeness of his poize, 
 They place before the hand that made the engine ; 
 Or those that with the fineness of their souls, 
 By reason guide his execution." Act i. sc. 3. 
 
 Nestor's message 
 
 44 Til hide my silver beard in a gold beaver, 
 And in my vantbrace put this withered brawn." 
 
 Agamemnon's comparison of Achilles 
 
 44 Like an engine 
 NotpartabW 
 
 Cassandra speaking of " notes of sally" Troilus' 
 allusion to the 
 
 44 Hand of Mars 
 Beckoning with fiery truncheon my retire" 
 
Was Shakespeare ever a Soldier 9 133 
 
 Hector's 
 
 " I like thy armour well, 
 Tllfrush it, and unlock the rivets all" 
 
 and the allusions to the wearing of "gloves" and 
 " sleeves" the threat, 
 
 " For I will throw my glove to death himself," 
 the picture, 
 
 " Or like a gallant horse fall'n in first rank, 
 Lie there for pavement to the abject rear 
 O'errun and trampled on," 
 
 and the reference to the "sticklers" who separate 
 the armies, are all redolent of the camp, and could 
 I think scarcely have been learned in any other 
 school. 
 
 I pass by 
 
 MEASUKE FOR MEASURE, 
 
 in which the allusions of this character are but scant, 
 that I may come to 
 
 OTHELLO, 
 
 which abounds with them. The space which I have 
 already occupied is, however, so very large, that I 
 must condense the passages as much as possible. 
 The well-known description of Cassio 
 
 "That never set a squadron in the field, 
 Nor the division of a battle knows 
 More than a spinster," 
 
 the distinction between "lieutenant" and "ancient" 
 the allusion to 
 
 "The curse of service, 
 
 Preferment goes by letter and affection, 
 
 Not by the old gradation," 
 
 are among many instances. 
 
134 Was Shakespeare ever a Soldier? 
 
 And 
 
 "When he's old cathiercdf 
 " I must show out a sign and flag of love" 
 " For that it stands not in such warlike brace" 
 
 " Men do their broken weapons rather use 
 Than their bare hands," 
 
 "The tyrant custom, most brave senators, 
 Hath made the flinty and steel couch of war 
 My thrice driven bed of down," 
 
 " Let housewives make a skillet of my helm," 
 
 " Cat. What an eye she hath methinks it sounds a parley 
 of provocation. 
 logo. And when she speaks, is it not an alarm to love ?" 
 
 " And stood within the blank of his displeasure," 
 
 " Whose solid virtue 
 The tkot of accident, nor dart of chance 
 Could neither graze, nor pierce," 
 
 " It is a sword of Spain, the icebrook's temper 
 
 A better never did sustain itself 
 Upon a soldier's thigh," 
 
 show how much of Shakespeare's imagery was drawn 
 from the " tented field." 
 
 Who can doubt that from that " tented field/' and 
 the stern necessities of discipline he had there wit- 
 nessed, he learned that 
 
 " Wars must make examples 
 Out of the best" 
 
 and only repeated what he had himself heard from 
 some officer, suppressing a broil in the camp, when 
 he makes Othello exclaim 
 
 " What! in a town of war 
 Yet wild, the people's hearts brimful of fear, 
 To manage private and domestic quarrel, 
 In night, and on the court of guard and safety ! 
 *Tis monstrous." 
 
Was Shakespeare ever a Soldier ? 135 
 
 Who can doubt that it was under the inspiration 
 of having shared in the dangers and excitement of 
 a campaign, that Shakespeare put into the mouth of 
 the noble Moor his chivalrous and touching farewell 
 to military glory : 
 
 " Farewell the plumed troop and the big wars 
 That make ambition virtue ! O farewell ! 
 Farewell the neighing steed and the shrill trump, 
 The spirit-stirring drum, the ear-piercing fife, 
 The royal banner ; and all quality, 
 Pride, pomp, and circumstance of glorious war ! 
 And O you mortal engines, whose rude throats 
 The immortal Jove's dread clamours counterfeit, 
 Farewell ! Othello's occupation's gone !" 
 
 Those only know the full pathos of these words 
 who have heard them uttered by Edmund Kean. 
 
 Fortunately for my readers unluckily, perhaps, 
 for my own theory here my Notes came to an end. 
 I was interrupted by graver duties before I had time 
 to examine the Historical Plays ; otherwise I have 
 no doubt I should have found in them confirmation, 
 " strong, as holy writ," of the views which I en- 
 tertain. 
 
 But incomplete as was my examination of Shake- 
 speare's dramatic writings, I had from such exami- 
 nation gathered enough to convince me that, in dis- 
 coursing of military matters, Shakespeare was no 
 " bookish theorick ;" that " mere prattle, without 
 practice,'* was not " all his soldiership." I felt this, 
 and felt assured that time would prove it so. 
 
 That time to my Jmind came when Mrs. Green 
 published, in August, 1857, her Calendar of State 
 Papers, Domestic Series of the Reign of James /., 
 1603 1610, and in it a notice of "The names of 
 the trained soldiers within the hundred of Barlich- 
 
136 Was Shakespeare ever a Soldier ? 
 
 way, taken at Alcester the 23rd September, 1605," 
 the year of the Gunpowder Plot, before Sir Fulke 
 Greville and Sir Edward Greville, and Thomas 
 Spencer, Esq., under the command of Capt Hayles, 
 in which, under the head of Rowington, occurs the 
 name of " WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE."* 
 
 " Shakespeares," says Mr. Collier, " were un- 
 questionably numerous in Warwickshire, and in some 
 of the adjoining counties ; but we have intelligence 
 regarding no other William Shakespeare at that date, 
 in that part of the kingdom." And when it is re- 
 membered, not only that Barlichway is the hundred 
 in which Stratford-upon-Avon is situated, but that 
 Rowington figures prominently in the Shakespeare 
 pedigree, that, as appears from his will, the poet at 
 the time of his death held one copyhold tenement 
 with appurtenances, lying and being in Stratford- 
 upon-Avon in the county of Warwick, " being par- 
 cel or holden of the mannour of Rowington," I 
 think few of my readers will deny that I have suc- 
 ceeded in my endeavour to establish the fact that 
 SHAKESPEARE WAS A SOLDIER. 
 
 * "Athenamm (No. 1555), August 15th, 1857; "Collier's 
 Shakespeare" (ed. 1858), vol. i., p. 181. 
 
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