CHAPTER IX.
PUCK; AND POETS' FAIRIES.
PUCK, as we said, is Shakespeare's fairy. There is some probability thathe found in Cwm Pwca, or Puck Valley, a part of the romantic glens ofClydach, in Breconshire, the original scenes of his fanciful _MidsummerNight's Dream_. This glen used to be crammed with goblins. There, and inmany like-named Welsh places, Puck's pranks were well-remembered by oldinhabitants. This Welsh Puck was a queer little figure, long andgrotesque, and looked something like a chicken half out of his shell; atleast, so a peasant drew him, from memory, with a bit of coal. Pwcca, orPooka, in Wales, was but another name for Ellydan; and his favorite jokewas also to travel along before a wayfarer, with a lantern held over hishead, leading miles and miles, until he got to the brink of aprecipice. Then the little wretch sprang over the chasm, shouted withwicked glee, blew out his lantern, and left the startled traveller toreach home as best he could. Old Reginald Scott must have had this sortof a Puck in mind when he put Kitt-with-the-Candlestick, whose identitytroubled the critics much, in his catalogue of "bugbears."
The very old word Pouke meant the devil, horns, tail, and all; from thatword, as it grew more human and serviceable, came the Pixy ofDevonshire, the Irish Phooka, the Scottish Bogle, and the Boggart inYorkshire; and even one nursery-tale title of Bugaboo. Oddest of all,the name Pug, which we give now to an amusing race of small dogs, is anevery-day reminder of poor lost Puck, and of the queer changes which,through a century or two, may befall a word. Puck was consideredcourt-jester, a mild, comic, playful creature:
A little random elf Born in the sport of Nature, like a weed, For simple sweet enjoyment of myself, But for no other purpose, worth or need; And yet withal of a most happy breed.
But he kept to the last his character of practical joker, and hisalliance with his grim little cousins, the Lyktgubhe and the Kludde.Glorious old Michael Drayton made a verse of his naughty tricks, whichyou shall hear:
This Puck seems but a dreaming dolt, Still walking like a ragged colt, And oft out of a bush doth bolt On purpose to deceive us; And leading us, makes us to stray Long winter nights out of the way: And when we stick in mire and clay, He doth with laughter leave us.
Shakespeare, who calls him a "merry wanderer of the night," and allowshim to fly "swifter than arrow from the Tartar's bow," was the first tomake Puck into a house spirit. The poets were especially attentive tothe offices of these house-spirits.
According to them, Mab and Puck do everything in-doors which we thinkcharacteristic of a Brownie. William Browne, born in Tavistock, in thecounty of Devon, where the Pixies lived, prettily puts it how thefairy-queen did--
----command her elves To pinch those maids that had not swept their shelves; And further, if by maiden's oversight, Within doors water was not brought at night, Or if they spread no table, set no bread, They should have nips from toe unto the head! And for the maid who had performed each thing She in the water-pail bade leave a ring.
THE WELSH PUCK.]
Herrick confirms what we have just heard:
If ye will with Mab find grace, Set each platter in its place; Rake the fire up, and get Water in ere the sun be set; Wash your pails, and cleanse your dairies; Sluts are loathsome to the fairies! Sweep your house: who doth not so, Mab will pinch her by the toe.
John Lyly, in his very beautiful _Mayde's Metamorphosis_ has thischarming fairy song, which takes us out to the grass, and the soft nightair, and the softer starshine:
By the moon we sport and play; With the night begins our day; As we dance, the dew doth fall. Trip it, little urchins all! Lightly as the little bee, Two by two, and three by three, And about go we, and about go we.
A MERRY NIGHT-WANDERER.]
What a picture of the wee tribe at their revels! Here is another, fromBen Jonson's _Sad Shepherd_:
Span-long elves that dance about a pool, With each a little changeling in her arms.
In what is thought to be Lyly's play, just mentioned, Mopso, Joculo, andPrisio have something in the way of a pun for each fairy they address:
_Mop._: I pray you, what might I call you?
_1st Fairy_: My name is Penny.
_Mop._: I am sorry I cannot purse you!
_Pris._: I pray you, sir, what might I call you?
_2nd Fairy_: My name is Cricket.
(Mr. Keightley says that the Crickets were a family of great note inFairyland: many poets celebrated them.)
_Pris._: I would I were a chimney for your sake!
_Joc._: I pray you, you pretty little fellow, what's your name?
_3rd Fairy_: My name is Little Little Prick.
_Joc._: Little Little Prick! O you are a dangerous fairy, and fright all the little wenches in the country out of their beds. I care not whose hand I were in, so I were out of yours.
Drayton, again, gives us a list of tinkling elfin-ladies' names, whichare pleasant to hear as the drip of an icicle:
Hop and Mop and Drop so clear, Pip and Trip and Skip that were To Mab their sovereign ever dear, Her special maids-of-honor:
Pib and Tib and Pinck and Pin, Tick and Quick, and Jil and Jin, Tit and Nit, and Wap and Win, The train that wait upon her!
"BY THE MOON WE SPORT AND PLAY."]
Young Randolph has an equally delightful account in the pastoral dramaof _Amyntas_, of his wee folk orchard-robbing; whose chorused LatinLeigh Hunt thus translates, roguishly enough:
We the fairies blithe and antic, Of dimensions not gigantic, Tho' the moonshine mostly keep us, Oft in orchard frisk and peep us.
Stolen sweets are always sweeter; Stolen kisses much completer; Stolen looks are nice in chapels; Stolen, stolen, be our apples!
When to bed the world is bobbing, Then's the time for orchard-robbing: Yet the fruit were scarce worth peeling, Were it not for stealing, stealing!
You will notice that Shakespeare places his Gothic goblins in the woodsabout Athens, a place where real fairies never set their rose-leaf feet,but where once sported yet lovelier Dryads and Naiads. These daintyBritish Greeks are very small indeed: Titania orders them to make war onthe rear-mice, and make coats of their leathern wings. Mercutio's QueenMab is scarce bigger than a snowflake. Prospero, in _The Tempest_,commands, besides his "delicate Ariel," all
--elves of hills, brooks, standing lakes, and groves.
The make-believe fairies in _The Merry Wives_ know how to pinchoffenders black and blue. The shepherd, in the _Winter's Tale_, takesthe baby Perdita for a changeling. So that all the Shakespeare peopleseem wise in goblin-lore.
You see that we have looked for the literature of our pretty friendsonly among the old poets, and only English poets at that; but theforeign fairies are no less charming. Chaucer and Spenser loved thebrood especially. Robert Herrick knew all about
--the elves also, Whose little eyes glow;
Sidney smiled on them once or twice, and great Milton could spare them aline out of his majestic verse. But the high-tide of their praise wasebbing already when Dryden and Pope were writing. Lesser poets than anyof these, Parnell and Tickell, wrote fairy tales, but they lack therelish of the honeyed rhymes Drayton, Lyly, and supreme Shakespeare,give us. Keats was drawn to them, though he has left us but sweet andbrief proof of it; and Thomas Hood, of all gentle modern poets, hasdone most for the "small foresters and gay." In prose the fairies are"famoused" east and west; for which they may sing their loudest canticleto the good Brothers Grimm, in Fairyland. The arts have been theirhandmaids; and some of this world's most lovable spirits have delightedto do them merry honor: Mendelssohn in his quicksilver orchestral music,and dear Richard Doyle in the quaintest drawings that ever fell,laughing, from a pencil-point.
THE ELVES WHOSE LITTLE EYES GLOW.]