The Sources and Analogues of 'A Midsummer-Night's Dream'/Queen Mab

by Frank Sidgwick

Queen Mab

Satyr

This is Mab, the mistress fairy,

That doth nightly rob the dairy,

And can hunt or help the churning

As she please without discerning.

........................

She that pinches country wenches

If they rub not clean their benches,

And with sharper nails remembers

When they rake not up their embers;

But if so they chance to feast her,

In a shoe she drops a tester.

........................

This is she that empties cradles,

Takes out children, puts in ladles;

Trains forth midwives in their slumber,

With a sieve the holes to number,

And then leads them from her boroughs

Home through ponds and water-furrows.

........................

She can start our franklins' daughters,

In her sleep, with shrieks and laughters,

And on sweet St. Anna's night

Feed them with a promised sight—

Some of husbands, some of lovers,

Which an empty dream discovers.

BEN JONSON, masque of A Satyr (1603).