Those that Hobgoblin call you and sweet Puck ...

All Hail!

In A Midsummer Night's Dream, beside the elf-queen and the elf-king, we also find Robin Goodfellow or Puck, even “the Puck” (see end of Act 5 scene 1), Act 2 scene 1:

FAIRY. Either I mistake your shape and making quite,

Or else you are that shrewd and knavish sprite

Call'd Robin Goodfellow: …

...

Those that Hobgoblin call you and sweet Puck,

You do their work, and they shall have good luck:

Are not you he?

PUCK. Thou speak'st aright;

I am that merry wanderer of the night.

Robin Goodfellow is a truefast follower of the elf-king.  Thus in Act 2 scene 1 Robin Goodfellow sayeth:

 I jest to Oberon and make him smile

And he would seem to be his forerunner or beadle, even as the “fairy” he talketh to in Act 2 scene 1 is the forerunner of the “elf-queen” (Shakespeare calleth her “the fairy queen”):

FAIRY.   ...

And I serve the fairy queen,

...

PUCK.    ...

But, room, fairy! here comes Oberon.

FAIRY. And here my mistress. Would that he were gone!

The ásatrúarfólk might like to think of Beyla (Lokasenna 55 to 56) and Byggvir (Lokasenna 43 to 46) who in the foreword to Lokasenna are called “þjónustumenn Freys” “Freyur's thaining-men (=serving men)” and Skírnir “skósveinn Freys” (see foreword to Skírnismál), Freyur's shoe-swain (but Gylfaginning 34 calleth him “sendimaðr Freys” “Frey's boder”) here.

In Act 5 scene 1, I mark Robin Goodfellow nameth himself a fairy (“we fairies”):

PUCK.  Now the hungry lion roars,

And the wolf behowls the moon;

Whilst the heavy ploughman snores,

All with weary task fordone.

Now the wasted brands do glow,

Whilst the screech-owl, screeching loud,

Puts the wretch that lies in woe

In remembrance of a shroud.

Now it is the time of night

That the graves all gaping wide,

Every one lets forth his sprite,

In the church-way paths to glide:

And we fairies, that do run

By the triple Hecate's team,

From the presence of the sun,

Following darkness like a dream,

Now are frolic: not a mouse

Shall disturb this hallow'd house:

I am sent with broom before,

To sweep the dust behind the door.

But we can see here that anybody out at night and becoming laught (=caught) up in this would have much to tell in the morning, even as the men and women do in Shakespeare's play.  And might not some others gain something by doing this, so that they might become witches?

Hob and Robin are shortenings of Robert. The more fulsome Robert was once a name for the Devil (see “Wenest þu...” (incipit) Lincoln, Cathedral Library 132 line 13: Þow sire robert, with his cloke, Wold þe helpe... þe werre þu schust fare. R. H. Robbins, Secular Lyrics of the XIVth and XVth Centuries (1952; other outlaying 1955). lf. 105).   Belike goodfellow is to be thought of in this light, or at least goodman is so booked in Scotland (thus Hugo Arnot The History of Edinburgh (1779) lf.80: “Farmers left a part of their lands perpetually untilled... ; this spot was dedicated to the Devil, and called the Goodman's Croft.”).  And puck or pouke is another name for the Devil in Visio Willelmi de Petro Ploughman (“helle pouke” - passus 13 line 161, hell is “poukes pondfolde” - passus 16 line 164, these from B-text Laud handwrit 581; but in Cambridge Trinity College Bookhouse handwrit R.3.14 “þe pouke to reisen” - passus 16 line 161, and “þe pouk ... sire princeps huius mundi” - passus 10 line 62).  In short Robin, Robert, Goodfellow and Puck are all names for the Devil, a devil, or for anything the new belief might deem to be a devil, such as an old god or those elves or wights under them.

It must be marked here that Hob, Robin, Robert, Goodfellow and Puck were all at times brooked either for an house-elf, or for that elf or wight deemed to be behind those wandering lights seen at night which of old were truly called “candelæ nympharum” “candles of the elf-ladies” (see de gestis Herwardi incliti militis cap. 29 and there, as everywhere, much formenged with the so-called “saint Elmo's fires”).  And some of what Robin Goodfellow sayeth of himself in A Midsummer Night's Dream is witterly swayed by this.  But all these names were also brooked for an elf or wight who is much more akin to the Romans' faunus and the Greeks' satyr (σάτυρος) and which Shakespeare mostly had in mind when he was writing A Midsummer Night's Dream.  Thus Thomas Nash The Terrors of the Night (1594):

“The Robin Goodfellows, elves, fairies, hobgoblins of our latter age, which idolatrous former days and the fantastical world of Greece ycleped fawns, satyrs, dryads & hamadryads, did most of their merry pranks in the night.”

Thomas Nash it should here be marked, was the first husband of William Shakespeare's daughter's daughter Elizabeth Hall (born to Susanna Shakespeare and Doctor John Hall).

John Aubrey in his so-called Remaines of Gentilisme and Judaisme (Lansdowne handwrit 231 dated to 1686-87 see outlaying of James Britten, London 1881, for the Folklore Socity, lf.84):

“GEORGIC. LlB. I.

Robin Goodfellow.

Et vos, agrestum praesentia numina, Fauni,
Ferte simul fauniq. pedem Dryadesq. puellae. Georg. lib. i. [lines 10, 11.]

[… and ye Fauns
To rustics ever kind, come foot it, Fauns
And Dryad-maids together; ... (awending J. B. Greenough) ]

Vos quoq. plebs Superum, Fauni, Satiriq., Laresq.,

Fluminaq, et Nymphse, Semideumq. genus. Ovid in Ib'm. [lines 81, 82.]

[And you also, the heavenly low-folk, Fauns, Satyrs, Lares,

Waterways, Elf-ladies and the kind of half-gods]

The Fauns are accounted the Country Gods and are thought always to inhabit the woods. The first of them was "Faunus, King of ye Aborigines, the sonne of Picus, and grand-child of Saturn, who first reduced ye Inhabitants of Italy to civil life; he built houses, and consecrated woods. From him ('tis likely) comes our Robin Goodfellow.”

And later under the same heading another wording from Virgil's Georgics (see Britten's outlaying lf.86):

“GEORG. LIB. II.

…

Robin-Goodfellow, &c.

- deos qui novit agrestes,

Panaq' Sylvanumq' senem Nymphasq' sorores. [493, 494.]”

Which two lines are worth giving in full as it is something I wholeheartedly believe:

Fortunatus et ille, deos qui novit agrestis, 493

panaque Silvanumque senem Nymphasque sorores:

Blest too is he who knows the rural gods,

Pan, old Silvanus, and the sister-nymphs!

And I cannot forbear here to share with anyone wise enough to be truly reading this, the following godly rede from Euripides’ The Bacchæ:

 

Διόνυσος

 

μὴ σύ γε τὰ Νυμφῶν διολέσῃς ἱδρύματα

καὶ Πανὸς ἕδρας ἔνθ᾽ ἔχει συρίγματα. [952]

 

Dionysus

 

         But don't destroy the seats of the Nymphs and the places where Pan plays his pipes.

(see The Tragedies of Euripides, London,  1850, awent by T. A. Buckley).

'Tis the main mark of a healthy and wise folk and where it is unheeded...

But I have wandered off, and getting back we can see that in the foregoing our own Robin Goodfellow is being fully evened with Pan.

From Robin Goodfellow, his mad Prankes and merry Jests, London (1628).ᛋ

This wood-snoad (=wood-cut) is araught in the inleading by J. Payne Collier, to the The Mad Pranks and Merry Jests of Robin Goodfellow: from the edition of 1628, London (1841) lf.xx thus:

“It is only necessary to subjoin, that the tract belonging to Lord Francis Egerton has two coarse (in every sense of the word) wood-cuts, one upon the title-page of "the first part," and the other upon the title-page of "the second part." The first represents Robin Good-fellow like a satyr, with horns on his head, a broom on his shoulder, and a torch in his hand, dancing in a ring of pigmies, while Tom Thumb performs on his pipe in the right-hand corner, and a black cat sits on its haunches in the left-hand corner. ...”.

Now there doth often seem to have been a formenging of the elf-king himself with Robin Goodfellow his follower, or son, if we can believe Robin Goodfellow, his mad Prankes and merry Jests, London (1628). And it is worth marking here that in the Orphic hymn to Apollo (told as 33) lines 24 to 25 Apollo is called “...ἄνακτα/Πᾶνα...” “... kingly Pan...” whilst Pan in his hymn (told as 10) line 11 is called “κάρπιμε Παιάν” “wastom-bearing (=fruit-bearing) Pæan”, “Pæan” being another name for Apollo. Λύκειος, meaning both “wolfish” or “lightsome”, and Νόμιος, meaning both “of the herdsmen” or “of the laws”, are bynames of both Apollo and Pan (see H.G. Liddell & G. Scott A Greek–English Lexicon, Oxford: Clarendon Press (1940) under these words).  

“Πάντα γὰρ ἐν πᾶσι τὰ θεῖά ἐστιν καὶ διαφερόντως τὰ συστοιχα ἀλλήλων μετέχει καὶ ἐν ἀλλήλοις ὑφέστηκεν. ”

“For all divine natures are in all, and particularly such as are co-ordinate with each other, participate of, and subsist in each other” (awending Proclus's Commentary on Plato's Cratylus by Thomas Taylor).

But this is only so to speak, gods being laws unto themselves. It is however, not at all the best thing to say for our earthly understanding of them. Much is set under the name of Pan (see Servius' Commentary on Vergil's Ecglogues) that doth not rightfully belong there. The sooth is that Pan is not himself Apollo, but he is of the stightling (=order) of Apollo, and he can be thus understood as Apollo's underking (=viceregent) on earth. The right way to understand this is that the Lord Apollo, from beyond time and rimth (=space) where the gods abide forever, wieldeth the sun and the sun's sphere (whence many dull minds have mistaken Apollo as the sun) and thence all earthly things under the sun. Under the teaching of as above so below, there must be beings here below on earth that are as the sun and stars in the heavens above. Men and women have often been half-wittedly believed to be these beings with their kings likened to the sun.  But, needless to say, it is truly those beings that the Greeks called satyrs and nymphs, and ourselves elves or wights, to whom this title and stead truly belongeth, and it is Pan, our Robin Goodfellow, who is their king!  Thus it is Pan or Robin Goodfellow who is truly here below what the sun is in heaven above, and like the sun he hath his might, if it be lawful so to say, from Apollo. The wise reader will then see how our old lore understood the elves or wights as fallen angels, truly meaning stars here by the word angels, and how both Apollo and Pan are, so to speak, elf-kings.

But those who know their Greek myths will say how can this be when Pan is the son of Hermes and a follower of Dionysus?  I can however unknot this for them with eath. That Pan is Hermes's son stemmeth from the belief that Hermes is the foremost boder between the gods and the earth and to those that dwell upon her. When Hermes begot Pan he was on Apollo's business.  That Pan bequeameth Dionysus most of all (see Homeric hymn to Pan) and is found most often in Dionysus' band (comos κῶμος, thiasos θίασος) is down to the belief that the earthly stars, that is the satyrs and nymphs, together with Pan, follow the fritch (=dance) below of the heavenly stars above.  And for both fritches (=dances), it is the Lord Dionysus, that is the world-mind (see, among other things, Macrobius' Commentarius ex Cicerone in Somnium Scipionis Book One Chapitle XII, §12 “νοῦν ὑλικόν”), who is the leader. 

It is worth marking here, as some would blend Dionysus here with Apollo, that Apollo is the higher god, if it be lawful so to say, thus:

“ Ὅτι τὰ ὅμοια μυθεύεται καὶ ἐν τῷ παραδείγματι. ὁ γὰρ Διόνυσος, ὅτε τὸ εἴδωλον ἐνέθηκε τῷ ἐσόπτρῳ, τούτῳ ἐφέσπετο καὶ οὕτως εἰς τὸ πᾶν ἐμερίσθη. ὁ δὲ' Απόλλων συναγείρει τε αὐτὸν καὶ ἀνάγει καθαρτικός ὢν θεὸς καὶ τοῦ Διονύσου σωτὴρ ὡς ἀληθῶς, καὶ διὰ τοῦτο Διονυσοδότης ἀνυμνεῖται. ”

“The myth describes the same events as taking place in the prototype of the soul. When Dionysus had projected his reflection into the mirror, he followed it and was thus scattered over the universe. Apollo gathers him and brings him back to heaven, for he is the purifiying god and truely the saviour of Dionysus, and therefore he is celebrated as The Dionysus-Giver. ” (see leaves 80-81 The Greek Commentary On Plato's Phaedo no date, Prometheus Trust, awending by L. G. Westerink).

And it is also well worth marking here that what Androw Man in his Aberdeen law-day for witchcraft called “Christsondy”, was called “Robin” by the witches in Somerset! Thus  Joseph Glanvill in Sadducismus Triumphatus (1681) marketh that Elizabeth Style or Styles of Stoke Trister in 1664 acknowledgeth “she calls the Spirit by the Name of Robin” (relat. III, lf 73).  And “Alice Duke, alias Manning” of Wincanton “That when the Devil doth any thing for her, she calls for him by the Name of Robin, upon which he appears, and when in the Shape of a Man, she can hear him speak, but his Voice is very low.” (Relat. IV, lf . 81)  And most outstandingly of all in the words of “that rampant Hag Margaret Agar, of Brewham”:

“Farther, she saith. That on Thursday Night before Whitsunday last, about the same Place [Husseys-knap in the Forest], met Catherine Green, Alice Green, Joan Syms, Mary Warberton, Dinah and Dorothy Warberton, and Henry Walter, and being met, they called out Robin, upon which instantly appeared a little Man in Black- cloaths, to whom all made Obeysance, and the little Man put his Hand to his Hat, saying, How do ye? speaking low but big: Then all made low Obeysances to him again. ” (Relat. VI, lf. 88)

 

Now this Robin is all the more markworthy as we read in the Annales Hiberniae (Dublin, Trinity College Library, E. 3. 20) under 1325:

 “Ricardus Ledered, episcopus Ossoriensis, citavit Aliciam Ketil, ut se purgaret de heretica pravitate; quae magiae convicta est, nam certo comprobatum est, quendam demonem incubum (nomine Robin Artisson) concubuisse cum ea ...” 

“Richard Ledered (Leatherhead?) bishop of ossory, marked down Alice Kettle, to cleanse herself of dwolmen's (=heretics') misdoings; for that she is found guilty of witchcraft, as it is witter and soothed, that she slept with the wight (=demon, incubus) named Robin Artisson...”. 

Those that Hobgoblin call you and sweet Puck,

You do their work, and they shall have good luck:

Farewell.