"Which soon he taketh by the stalk,
About his head he lets it walk,
Nor doth he any creature balk,
But lays on all he meeteth."
A somewhat slangy passage, methinks, to have been penned by Michael Drayton, Esquire.
After many adventures and misadventures the miserable monarch encountered Puck, "which most men call Hobgoblin.[1] Of him our poet asserts—
"This Puck seems but a dreaming dolt,
Still walking like a ragged colt.
And oft out of a wood doth bolt,
Of purpose to deceive us.
And leading us to make us stray,
Long winters nights out of the way;
And when we stick in mire and clay.
Hob doth with laughter leave us."
Puck[2] was "in this country in Shakespeare's days a generic name applied to the whole race of fairy"; but Hobgoblin—Hob and Rob being rustic abbreviations of Robert—seems to have been thought peculiarly appropriate to Robin Goodfollow, although it was not always exclusively reserved for him. "Nevertheless and notwithstanding" I should like to suggest that hobin, the M.E. word which gave a name for the wooden steeds of nursery stables, provided a prefix for this goblin of equine presence. Gervase of Tilbury's[3] Grant, the "yearling foal" which appeared about sunset or "otherwhen," and ran about the streets when any danger was impending, may have been in the pedigree of Hobgoblin.
Oberon made Puck his confidant, and this servant to command engaged to bring the lady to her lord; forthwith
