THE ELIZABETHAN FAIRIES

224 ROBIN GOODFELLOW
In the early part of the 16th century, he was treated
as a known and accepted folk hero by William Tyndale,
who, in The Exposition of the First Epistle of St. John
and in The Obedience of a Christian Man,13 recounted
his exploits but failed to mention his race. In The Bugg-
bears of 1564 (c.),14 he was added as an English spirit,
with no further specifications - except his tide of Robin
Goodfellow - to the spirits enumerated in the Italian
original,15 and in the translation of the Popish Kingdome
of Naogeorgus by Barnabe Googe in I 570," he was cited
as an individual with neither introduction nor classi-
fication.
Not until 1584 does any attempt seem to have been
made to define or classify him. In the Discovery of
Witchcraft of that year, he was spoken of as a devil,'?
and specifically classified as a cousin of Incubus,18 and as
the English counterpart of " Virunculi terrei," who " are
Harris Nicolas, London, 1847; and The Historie of Tithes by John
Selden, 1618 ed., Chap. V, p. 51, for the use of Hobgoblin similar to
that of Hobbe Hyrste of the Paston letters.
Halliwell in his introduction to his Illus. of the Fairy Myth. of
M. N. D., p. xi, states that a story, found in a manuscript of the 13th
century in the Bodleian Library, has been pointed out by Sir Frederick
Madden as apparently introducing "Robin Goodfellow both in name
and action at that early period." The name given here is Robinet
and the characteristic represented is not the most striking or most
familiar of those attributed to Robin Goodfellow.
l2 Expositions and Notes, Parker Soc. ed., 1849, Vol. 37, p. 139.
l3 Doctrinal Treatises, Parker Soc. ed., 1848, Vol. 32, p. 321.
14For date, cf. Introd. to Early Plays from the Italian, Bond ed.,
P- 83.
l6 Page I 17.
l6 Hope ed., 1880, The third Booke, p. 33.
Scot, 1651 ed., "To the Reader," B. This reference may have
furnished the inspiration for Shakespeare's " Puck."
Scot, 1651 ed., p. 66.