The Sources and Analogues of A Midsummer-Night’s Dream

The Mad Merry Pranks of Robin Good-Fellow

(To the Tune of Dulcina.)

From Oberon, in fairy land,
    The king of ghosts and shadows there,
Mad Robin I, at his command,
    Am sent to view the night-sports here.
        What revel rout
        Is kept about,
    In every corner where I go,
        I will o’ersee
        And merry be,
    And make good sport, with ho, ho, ho!

More swift than lightning can I fly
    About this airy welkin soon,
And, in a minute’s space, descry
    Each thing that’s done below the moon,
        There’s not a hag
        Or ghost shall wag,
  Or cry, ware Goblins! where I go,
        But Robin I
        Their feats will spy,
  And send them home, with ho, ho, ho!

Whene’er such wanderers I meet,
    As from their night-sports they trudge home;
With counterfeiting voice I greet
    And call them on, with me to roam
        Thro’ woods, thro’ lakes,
        Thro’ bogs, thro’ brakes;
    Or else, unseen, with them I go,
        All in the nick
        To play some trick
    And frolic it, with ho, ho, ho!

Sometimes I meet them like a man;
    Sometimes an ox, sometimes a hound;
And to a horse I turn me can,
    To trip and trot about them round.
        But if, to ride,
        My back they stride,
    More swift than wind away I go,
        O’er hedge and lands,
        Thro’ pools and ponds
    I whirry, laughing ho, ho, ho!

When lads and lasses merry be,
    With possets and with junkets fine;
Unseen of all the company,
    I eat their cakes and sip their wine;
        And, to make sport,
        I sniff and snort;
    And out the candles I do blow:
        The maids I kiss;
        They shriek—Who’s this?
    I answer nought but ho, ho, ho!

Yet now and then, the maids to please,
    At midnight I card up their wool;
And while they sleep and take their ease,
    With wheel to threads their flax I pull.
        I grind at mill
        Their malt up still;
    I dress their hemp, I spin their tow,
        If any wake,
        And would me take,
    I wend me, laughing ho, ho, ho!

When house or hearth doth sluttish lie,
    I pinch the maidens black and blue;
The bed-clothes from the bed pull I,
    And lay them naked all to view.
        ’Twixt sleep and wake,
        I do them take,
    And on the key-cold floor them throw:
        If out they cry,
        Then forth I fly,
    And loudly laugh out ho, ho, ho!

When any need to borrow ought,
    We lend them what they do require:
And for the use demand we nought;
    Our own is all we do desire.
        If to repay
        They do delay,
    Abroad amongst them then I go,
        And, night by night,
        I them affright
    With pinchings, dreams, and ho, ho, ho!

When lazy queans have nought to do,
    But study how to cog and lie;
To make debate and mischief too,
    ’Twixt one another secretly:
        I mark their gloze,
        And it disclose,
  To them whom they have wrongéd so:
    When I have done,
    I get me gone,
  And leave them scolding, ho, ho, ho!

When men do traps and engines set
    In loop-holes, where the vermin creep,
Who from their folds and houses, get
    Their ducks and geese, and lambs and sheep;
        I spy the gin,
        And enter in,
    And seem a vermin taken so;
        But when they there
        Approach me near,
    I leap out laughing ho, ho, ho!

By wells and rills, in meadows green,
    We nightly dance our heydeguys;
And to our fairy king and queen
    We chant our moon-light minstrelsies.
        When larks ’gin sing,
        Away we fling;
    And babes new-born steal as we go,
        And elf in bed
        We leave instead,
    And wend us laughing, ho, ho, ho!

From hag-bred Merlin’s time have I
    Thus nightly revell’d to and fro:
And for my pranks men call me by
    The name of Robin Good-fellow.
        Fiends, ghosts, and sprites,
        Who haunt the nights,
    The hags and goblins do me know;
        And beldames old
        My feats have told;
    So Vale, Vale; ho, ho, ho!

A black-letter broadside, XVIIth cent.