THE ELIZABETHAN FAIRIES

ROBIN GOODFELLOW 253
travels. If one lose his company by chance, these devils will call
him by his name, and counterfeit voices of his companions to
seduce him.13"
These, then are the qualities, attributes and exploits
which went to make up the character and personality of
Robin Goodfellow as he was known in the 16th and 17th
centuries.
Had he been allowed to remain in the customs of the
country and in the tales of the folk, untouched by literary
fancy or literary phrase, he would no doubt still be found,
the identical Robin Goodfellow portrayed in Scot's Dis-
covery of Witchcraft, haunting the countryside, drink-
ing cream and lending a gay and good-natured hand to
domestic affairs. But he could not survive the literary
and dramatic vogue he enjoyed after A Midsummer
Night's Dream, and the fact that instead of being pre-
sented as an individual hero in his own right, he was
either numbered among the members of a particular
race of spirits as a fairy, or devil, or familiar spirit, or
his name of Puck or Robin Goodfellow and a number
of his characteristics were given to characters who were
represented as fairies, or devils, or familiar spirits.
As has been noted, he owed his literary career and his
classification as a fairy, as a puck, and as Hobgoblin,
to Shakespeare who put him on the stage for the first
time in his history as Puck, in company with the diminu-
tive fairies of A Midsummer Night's Dream. To his
position and associations here can be traced the beginning
of two features, at least, which marked many of his
later appearances in literature and in drama, both of
which tended to diminish his prestige and his reality:
138 Burton, Anat. of Mel., Vol. I, pp. 222-223. Cf. also Nashe,
Terr. of the Night, Vol. I, p. 347; Corbet, Iter Boreale, p. 579; and
Drayton, Nimphidia, Stanza 37.