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, 75 They do delay, Abroad amongst them then I go, And night by night, I them affright With pinchings, dreames, and ho, ho, ho! 80
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, 85 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! 90
When men do traps and engins set In loop-holes, where the vermine creepe, Who from their foldes and houses, get Their duckes and geese, and lambes and sheepe: I spy the gin, 95 And enter in, And seeme a vermine taken so; But when they there Approach me neare, I leap out laughing, ho, ho, ho! 100
By wells and rills,[417] in meadowes greene, We nightly dance our hey-day guise;[418] And to our fairye king, and queene, We chant our moon-light minstrelsies. When larks 'gin sing, 105 Away we fling; And babes new borne steal as we go, And else in bed, We leave instead, And wend us laughing, ho, ho, ho! 110
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, 115 Who haunt the nightes, The hags and goblins do me know; And beldames old My feates have told; So _Vale, Vale_; ho, ho, ho! 120
[416] [Ver. 61. this begins the second part in the Roxburghe copy.]
[418] [a misprint for heydegies=rustic dances. The word occurs in Lily's _Endymion_, 1591, and in Wm. Bulleyn's _Dialogue_, 1564, where the minstrel daunces "Trenchmore" and "Heie de gie."--_Chappell._]
We have here a short display of the popular belief concerning _Fairies_. It will afford entertainment to a contemplative mind to trace these whimsical opinions up to their origin. Whoever considers, how early, how extensively, and how uniformly, they have prevailed in these nations, will not readily assent to the hypothesis of those, who fetch them from the east so late as the time of the Croisades. Whereas it is well known that our Saxon ancestors, long before they left their German forests, believed the existence of a kind of diminutive demons, or middle species between men and spirits, whom they called _Duergar_ or _Dwarfs_, and to whom they attributed many wonderful performances, far exceeding human art. Vid. Hervarer Saga Olaj Verelj. 1675. Hickes' Thesaur., &c.