THE ELIZABETHAN FAIRIES

ROBIN GOODFELLOW 223
he occupied the unique position of the national practical
joker whose presence furnished an excuse for any un-
toward domestic accident and connoted every mad prank
and merry jest that could be devised.
Yet, in spite of his position and fame, he could more
easily be included among the fairies, especially the fairies
created by Shakespeare, than most of the native spirits,
for beyond the fact that he was a walking spirit, nothing
definite seems to have been known in the 16th century
concerning his race or his original name.'"
The term, Goodfellow, was not a family name, nor a
proper name, but a propitiatory term bestowed upon him,
in accordance with a universal belief that such compli-
mentary appellations, as good fellow and good neighbor,
would propitiate any anger and render the spirit ad-
dressed both agreeable and kind.
When he first came into literary mention, he was ap-
parently already so well known as an individual hero that
any identification of him or enumeration of his character-
istics was considered superfluous. This is at once ob-
vious in the earliest record of the name Robin Good-
fellow, which occurred in a letter of William Paston to
Sir John Paston, May, 1489. Here, commenting on the
anonymity and lack of authenticity of an unofficial procla-
mation of rebellion, William Paston added significantly,
"And thys is in the name of Mayster Hobbe Hyrste,
Robyn Godfelaws brodyr he is, as I trow." l1
lo See Sidgwick, Sources M Analogues, p. 38.
l1 The Paston Letters, Gairdner ed., 1900-1901, Vol. 111, p. 362.
A similar use of " Robin Goodfellow" to denote lack of authen-
ticity and authority, or a fabrication or joke, is to be found in Gabriel
Harvey's Pierces Supererogation or A New Prayse of the Old Asse,
1593, Grosart ed., 1884-1885, Vol. 11, p. 53: " Robin Good-fellow
the meetest Autor for Robin Hoodes Library." Cf. also Memoirs of
The Life and Times of Sir Christopher Hatton by Sir Nicholgs