_Sat._ Not so nimbly as your feet, When about the cream-bowls sweet You and all your elves do meet.

(_Here he came hopping forth, and mixing himself with the Fairies, skipped in, out, and about their circle, while they made many offers to catch him._)

_This is Mab, the mistress Fairy, That doth nightly rob the dairy; And can hurt or help the churning As she please_, without discerning.

_1st Fai._ Pug, you will anon take warning.

_Sat._ _She that pinches country wenches, If they rub not clean their benches, And, with sharper nail, remembers When they rake not up their embers; But if so they chance to feast her, In a shoe she drops a tester._

_2d Fai._ Shall we strip the skipping jester?

_Sat._ _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 burrows, Home through ponds and water-furrows.[401]

_1st Fai._ Shall not all this mocking stir us?

_Sat._ She can start our Franklin's daughters In her sleep with shouts and laughters; And on sweet St. Anna's[402] night Feed them with a promised sight, Some of husbands, some of lovers, Which an empty dream discovers.

_1st Fai._ Satyr, vengeance near you hovers.

At length Mab is provoked, and she cries out,

Fairies, pinch him black and blue.

Now you have him make him rue.

_Sat._ O hold, mistress Mab, I sue!

Mab, when about to retire, bestows a jewel on the Queen, and concludes with,

_Utter not, we you implore, Who did give it, nor wherefore._ And whenever you restore Yourself to us you shall have more.

Highest, happiest queen, farewell, But, beware you do not tell.

The splendid Masque of Oberon, presented in 1610, introduces the Fays in union with the Satyrs, Sylvans, and the rural deities of classic antiquity; but the Fay is here, as one of them says, not

The coarse and country fairy, That doth haunt the hearth and dairy;

it is Oberon, the prince of Fairy-land, who, at the crowing of the cock, advances in a magnificent chariot drawn by white bears, attended by Knights and Fays. As the car advances, the Satyrs begin to leap and jump, and a Sylvan thus speaks:--

Give place, and silence; you were rude too late-- This is a night of greatness and of state; Not to be mixed with light and skipping sport-- A night of homage to the British court, And ceremony due to Arthur's chair, From our bright master, Oberon the Fair, Who with these knights, attendants here preserved In Fairy-land, for good they have deserved Of yond' high throne, are come of right to pay Their annual vows, and all their glories lay At 's feet.

Another Sylvan says,

Stand forth, bright faies and elves, and tune your lay Unto his name; then let your nimble feet Tread subtile circles, that may always meet In point to him.

In the Sad Shepherd, Alken says,

There in the stocks of trees white fays[403] do dwell, And span-long elves that dance about a pool, With each a little changeling in their arms!

The Masque of Love Restored presents us "Robin Good-fellow, he that sweeps the hearth and the house clean, riddles for the country maids, and does all their other drudgery, while they are at hot-cockles," and he appears therefore with his _broom_ and his _canles_.

In Fletcher's Faithful Shepherdess we read of

A virtuous well, about whose flowery banks The nimble-footed fairies dance their rounds, By the pale moonshine; dipping oftentimes Their stolen children, so to make them free From dying flesh and dull mortality.

And in the Little French Lawyer (iii. 1), one says, "You walk like Robin Goodfellow all the house over, and every man afraid of you."

In Randolph's Pastoral of Amyntas, or the Impossible Dowry, a "knavish boy," called Dorylas, makes a fool of a "fantastique sheapherd,"

Jocastus, by pretending to be Oberon, king of Fairy. In Act i., Scene 3, Jocastus' brother, Mopsus, "a foolish augur," thus addresses him:--

_Mop._ Jocastus, I love Thestylis abominably, The mouth of my affection waters at her.

_Jo._ Be wary, Mopsus, learn of me to scorn The mortals; choose a better match: go love Some fairy lady! Princely Oberon Shall stand thy friend, and beauteous Mab, his queen, Give thee a maid of honour.

_Mop._ How, Jocastus?

Marry a puppet? Wed a mote i' the sun?

Go look a wife in nutshells? Woo a gnat, That's nothing but a voice? No, no, Jocastus, I must have flesh and blood, and will have Thestylis: A fig for fairies!

Thestylis enters, and while she and Mopsus converse, Jocastus muses.

At length he exclaims,

_Jo._ It cannot choose but strangely please his highness.

_The._ What are you studying of Jocastus, ha?

_Jo._ A rare device; a masque to entertain His Grace of Fairy with.

_The._ A masque! What is't?

_Jo._ An anti-masque of fleas, which I have taught To dance corrantos on a spider's thread.

And then a jig of pismires Is excellent.

_Enter_ DORYLAS. _He salutes_ MOPSUS, _and then_

_Dor._ Like health unto the president of the jigs.

I hope King Oberon and his joyall Mab Are well.

_Jo._ They are. I never saw their Graces Eat such a meal before.

_Dor._ E'en much good do't them!

_Jo._ They're rid a hunting.

_Dor._ Hare or deer, my lord?

_Jo._ Neither. A brace of snails of the first head.