THE ELIZABETHAN FAIRIES

ROBIN GOODFELLOW 239
white bread and cream. If, however, his surroundings
or the diligence of the maids did not meet his approval,
he punished the family and servants by pinching and ex-
posure, and went laughing away.
In either case, he was a plain country spirit and fre-
quented the fields and woods and dairies and cottages of
plain country folk. Never was he known to take up his
residence in castles or palaces, or to ally himself volun-
tarily with lords or ladies. " Are these your court
sports? " he is represented as blurting out in the masque
of Love Restored. "Would I had kept me to my
gambols o' the country still, selling of fish, short service,
shoeing the wild mare, or roasting of robin-redbreast."
This contempt for polite society and joy in rustic com-
pany were among his most enduring and most individual
traits, and ones which he never lost, whether he appeared
as a folk spirit or folk hero, or was represented in litera-
ture as a fairy or as a devil. The most significant in-
stance of his passion for rustic society is to be found in
Grim, the Collier of Croydon, where, though playing the
r6le of a devil, he escapes from the high society to which
he was sent, to live among the country folk, remarking,
These silken girls are all too fine for me:
My master shall report of those in hell,
Whilst I go range amongst the country-maids,
To see if home-spun lasses milder be
Than my curs'd dame, and Lacy's wanton wife.
Thus therefore will I live betwixt two shapes.T1
Though this statement and that of Love Restored may
have been written to satirize court ladies and court
sports, they kept true to the traditional characteristic of
Robin Goodfellow.
7O Jonson, Morley ed., p. 167.
71 Iv, I, 11. 5-10.