Robin Good-Fellow
From Oberon, in fairye land,
The King of ghosts and shadows there,
Mad Robin I, at his command,
Am sent to view the night-sports here.
What revell rout
Is kept about,
In every corner where I go,
I will o’ersee,
And merry bee,
And make good sport, with ho, ho, ho!
More swift than lightning can I flye
About this aery welkin soone,
And, in a minute’s apace, descrye
Each thing that’s done below the moone.
There’s not a hag
Or ghost shall wag
Or cry, “’Ware Goblins!” where I go,
But Robin I
Their feates will spy,
And send them home, with ho, ho, ho!
Whene’er such wanderers I meete,
As from their night-sports they trudge home,
With counterfeiting voice I greete
And call them on with me to roame
Thro’ woods, thro’ lakes,
Thro’ bogs, thro’ brakes;
Or else, unseene, with them I go,
All in the nicke
To play some tricke
And frolicke it, with ho! ho! ho!
Sometimes I meete 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 backe 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 juncates fine,
Unseene of all the company,
I eat their cakes and sip their wine;
And, to make sport
I fart and snort,
And out the candles I do blow;
The maids I kiss;
They shrieke,—“Who’s this?”
I answer nought, but ho, ho, ho!
Yet now and then, the maids to please,
At midnight I card up their wooll;
And while they sleepe and take their ease,
With whee to threads their wax 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 harth doth sluttish lye,
I pinch the maidens black and blue;
The bed-clothes from the bedd pull I,
And lay them naked all to view.
’Twixt sleepe 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 borrowe ought,
We lend them what they do require,
And for the use demand we nought,
Our owne 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, dreames, and ho, ho, ho!
When lazie queans have nought to do
But study how to cog and lye,
To make debate and mischief too,
’Twixt one another secretlye,
I marke their gloze,
And it disclose
To them whom they have wronged so;
When I have done
I get me gone,
And leave them scolding, ho, ho, ho!
When men do traps and engins set
In loop holes, where the vermine creep,
Who from their foldes and houses get
Their ducks and geese, and lambes and sheepe,
I spy the gin,
And enter in,
And seeme a vermine taken so;
But when they there
Approach me neare,
I leap out laughing, ho, ho, ho!
By wells and rills, in meadowes greene,
We nightly dance our hey-day guise,
And to our fairye king and queene
We chant our moonlight minstrelsies.
When larks ’gin sing,
Away we fling;
And babes new borne steal as we go,
And elfe 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 nightes,
The hags and goblins do me know,
And beldames old
My feats have told,
So vale, vale; ho, ho, ho!
Old Poem.