The Pranks of Robin Goodfellow
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’er see,
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 lassies 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 sneeze 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 I, ho, ho, ho!
When any need to borrow aught
We lend them what they do require,
And for the use demand we naught
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 wronged 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 hey-day guise;
And to our fairy King and Queen
We chant our moonlight 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!
Whereas my fellow-elves and I
In circled ring do trip around;
If that our sports by any eye
Do happen to be seen or found;
If that they
No words do say,
But mum continue as they go,
Each night I do
Put groat in shoe,
And wind out laughing, ho, ho, ho!
From hag-bred Merlin’s time have I
Thus nightly revelled to and fro;
And for my pranks men call me by
The name of Robin Goodfellow.
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!
With the last line of his song Robin Goodfellow disappeared off the stool so quickly that even his fellow-fairies were unable to see where he went, and at one moment heard him singing his farewell “Vale, Vale,” from the furthermost part of the fairy ring, and in the next instant, his laughing “ho, ho, ho!” came from the back of King Oberon’s throne. The whole fairy realm took up this laughing “ho, ho, ho!” and when it quieted down, there on the stool was sitting a Swedish troll who, without any preface, began telling a story of