THE ELIZABETHAN FAIRIES

ROBIN GOODFELLOW 237
Goodfellow. His sense of humor and his propensity for
jokes were always in evidence, as was his laugh. He
never outgrew his strength and breadth of body, or the
lubberliness of his figure, which caused him more than
once to be taken for a performing bear. His wearing
apparel was never standardized. He could not refrain
from good-natured meddling in human affairs, nor could
he resist the allurements of a bowl of cream and white
bread.
Thanks to these unfailing attributes and the atmos-
phere of affection and amusement, sometimes fearful,
which surrounded him, he became for all time, but more
especially in the 16th century, a universally recognized
member of English country life and an accepted figure in
literature and on the stage, where his existence was re-
ferred to as frequently and as casually as that of the
moon or the stars. To laugh like Robin Goodfellow be-
came a proverb which was in evidence as late as the 19th
~entury.~' The saying, " Robin Goodfellow has been
with you " had taken on, by the middle of the 16th cen-
tury, a proverbial significance also, in allusion to the vic-
tim of a practical joke or a person who had been visited
with some annoyance, as may be seen in Harman's A
Caueat or Warening for Commen curse tor^,^^ and in
several of Tyndale's works." In the Apophthegms of
Francis Bacon can be read the statement:
Sir Fulke Grevill had much and private access to Queen Eliza-
beth, which he used honourably, and did many men good; yet he
would say merrily of himself; That he was like Robin Goodfellow;
For when the maids spilt the milkpans, or kept any racket, they
63 Robert Forby, The Vocabulary of East Anglia, 1830, Vol. 11, p.
431.
64 E. E. T, S. ed., 1869, p, 30.
65 Expos. of the c st Epistle of St. John, p. 139; Obedience of a
Christ. Man, p. 321.