THE ELIZABETHAN FAIRIES

ROBIN GOODFELLOW 233
in that country," and " a proper young wench." At his
christening the wine flowed so freely that "none of
them next day could remember the child's name, but the
clarke, and hee may thanke his booke for it, or else it
had been utterly lost. So much for the birth of little
Robin." 66
In Scotland, a spirit similar to Robin Goodfellow, or
Robin Goodfellow himself, under the more prosaic
name of Brownie, was cherished by the folk and per-
petuated in literature. In The Proloug of the Saxt
Buke of the translation of the Aeneid of Virgil by
Gawin Douglas, Hades is pictured " Of browneis and of
bogillis ful." 66 John Major, in his Exposition in Mat-
thew, has the following account of these spirits:
s5 Hazlitt rpt., pp. 176-177.
The uncertainty in regard to Robin Goodfellow's place in the world
of spirits can be seen in the dictionaries. In the Worlde of Wordes
of Florio, 1598, with " a hag," " an elfe," I' a ghost," "the riding
hagge, or mare," Robin Goodfellow is given as the English equivalent
of Folletto and Fantasma. In A Dictionarie of the French and Eng-
lish Tongues compiled by Cotgrave in 1611, Robin Goodfellow is
rendered as " Fantasme," " Loup-garou," I' Gobelin," " Follet " and
" Lutin: . . . a spirit which playes reakes in mens houses anights."
Note also this account of Robin Goodfellow's origin and history
from a ballad of the seventeenth century:
" Of Robin Goodfellow also,
Which was a seruant long agoe,
The Queene of Fairies doth it know,
and hindered him in fashion:
She knew not what she did her selfe,
She chang'd him like a Fairie elfe,
For all his money, goods, and pelfe,
she gull'd him."
No. 79, A Monstrous Shape, A Pepysian Garland, Black-Letter
Broadside Ba2lads of the Years 1595-1639, Rollins ed., 1922, p. 452.
66 Page 298.