This Is Just A Trick Essay Research

This Is Just A Trick! Essay, Research Paper

The History of a Hobgoblin

http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Acropolis/4198/puckages.html

One of the most popular characters in English folklore of the last thousand years has been the faerie, goblin, devil or imp known by the name of Puck or Robin Goodfellow.

The Welsh called him Pwca, which is pronounced the same as his Irish incarnation Phouka, Pooka or Puca. These are far from his only names.

Parallel words exist in many ancient languages – puca in Old English, puki in Old Norse, puke in Swedish, puge in Danish, puks in Low German, pukis in Latvia and Lithuania — mostly with the original meaning of a demon, devil or evil and malignant spirit … Because of this similarity it is uncertain whether the original puca sprang from the imaginative minds of the Scandinavians, the Germans or the Irish.

-Gillian Edwards, Hobgoblin and Sweet Puck p.143

Indeed, Pouk was a typical medieval term for the devil. For example, Langland once called Hell “Pouk’s Pinfold.” And the Phouka was sometimes pictured as a frightening creature with the head of an ass. Truly a devil to behold. The Welsh Pwca also did not match our modern conception of dainty tinkerbell fairies. According to Louise Imogen Guiney, a peasant drew the Pwca as “a queer little figure, long and grotesque, and looked something like a chicken half out of his shell”.

As a shape-shifter, Puck has had many appearances over the years. He’s been in the form of animals, like how the Phouka can become a horse, eagle or ass. He’s been a rough, hairy creature in many versions. One Irish story has him as an old man. He’s been pictured like a brownie or a hobbit. In some paintings, he looks like Pan from Greek mythology. In others he looks like an innocent child. And a modern cartoon show portrays him as a silver-haired elf.

Puck used his shape-shifting to make mischief. For example, the Phouka would turn into a horse and lead people on a wild ride, sometimes dumping them in water. The Welsh Pwca would lead travels with a lantern and then blow it out when they were at the edge of a cliff. Being misled by a Puck (sometimes the legends speak of Pucks, Pookas and Robin Goodfellows in the plural) was known in the Midlands as being “pouk-ledden.”

That’s a lot like the phrase Pixy-led, which described a similar action on the part of the Somerset faeries known as pixies. Some believe the term Pixy is derived from Puck. Yet another expression for being lost is “Robin Goodfellow has been with you tonight.” There’s a reference to this at least as early as 1531.

Robin Goodfellow is one of the faeries known as hobgoblins or just hobs. Hob is a short form for the name Robin or Robert (”the goblin named Robin”.) Robin itself was a medieval nickname for the devil. Robin Goodfellow was not only famous for shape-shifting and misleading travellers. He was also a helpful domestic sprite much like the brownies. He would clean houses and such in exchange for some cream or milk. If offered new clothes, he’d stop cleaning. There are stories of the Phouka and Pwca doing similar deeds.

Ironically, Reginald Scot wrote in 1584 that belief in Robin Goodfellow was not as strong as it had been a century earlier. In fact, Robin was about to get some big breaks in Renaissance show business.

There’s a record for a Robin Goodfellow ballad in 1588. And a little less than a decade later, William Shakespeare gave his Puck the name and nature of the more benevolent Robin Goodfellow. However, Shakespeare’s Puck is more closely tied to the fairy court than most Pucks or Robin Goodfellows. Here’s a long quotation from A Midsummer Night’s Dream. It’s from a meeting between Puck and one of Titania’s fairies. I think it sums up Robin Goodfellow’s nature better than I could.

FAIRY

Either I mistake your shape and making quite,

Or else you are that shrewd and knavish sprite

Called Robin Goodfellow. Are not you he

That frights the maidens of the villagery,

Skim milk, and sometimes labour in the quern,

And bootless make the breathless housewife churn,

And sometime make the drink to bear no barm,

Mislead night-wanders, laughing at their harm.

Those that Hobgoblin call you, and sweet Puck,

You do their work, and they shall have good luck.

Are you not he.

PUCK

Thou speakest aright;

I am that merry wanderer of the night.

I jest to Oberon, and make him smile

When I a fat and bean-fed horse beguile,

Neighing in likeness of a filly foal;

And sometime lurk I in a gossip’s bowl

In very likeness of a roasted crab,

And when she drinks, against her lips I bob

And on her withered dewlap pour the ale.

The wisest aunt, telling the saddest tale,

Sometime for three-foot stool mistaketh me;

Then slip I from her bum, down topples she,

And ‘tailor’ cries, and falls into a cough;

And then the whole quire hold their hips and laugh,

And waxen in their mirth, and neeze, and swear

A merrier hour was never wasted there.

– A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Act II, scene i

Having Shakespeare as a publicist certainly did not hurt Puck or Robin Goodfellow’s career. Prio

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