Chapter 15

Amonges patriarkes and prophetes,Pleying togideres,

and asks him what was there,

Golding also must have understood Pooke in the sense of devil, when in the ninth book of his translation of Ovid,unauthorised however by the original, he applies it to the Chimæra,

The country where Chymæra, that samepookeHath goatish body, lion's head and brist, and dragon's tayle.

Spenser employs the word, and he clearly distinguishes it from hob-goblin:

Ne let housefires nor lightnings helpless harms,Ne let thepouke[363]nor other evil sprites,Ne let mischievous witches with their charms,Ne lethob-goblins, names whose sense we see not,Fray us with things that be not.—Epithalamion, v. 340.

These terms are also distinguished in the poem named The Scourge of Venus:

And that they may perceive the heavens frown,Thepoukesandgoblinspull the coverings down.

In Ben Jonson's play of The Devil is an Ass, the unlucky fiend who gives origin to its name is called Pug, and in the same author's Sad Shepherd the personage named Puck-hairy is, as Gifford justly observes, "not the Fairy or Oriental Puck, though often confounded with him."[364]In truth, it is first in Shakespeare that we find Puck confounded with the House-spirit, and having those traits of character which are now regarded as his very essence, and have caused his name Pug to be given to the agile mischievous monkey, and to a kind of little dog.

We will now discuss the origin of this far-famed appellation and its derivation.

In the Slavonic tongues, which are akin to the Teutonic,Bôgis God, and there are sleights of etymology which would identify the two terms; the Icelandic Puki is an evil spirit, and such we have seen was the English Pouke, which easily became Puck, Pug, and Bug; finally, in Friesland theKobold is called Puk, and in old German we meet with Putz or Butz as the name of a being not unlike the original English Puck.[365]The Devonshire fairies are called Pixies, and the Irish have their Pooka, and the Welsh their Pwcca, both derived from Pouke or Puck. From Bug comes the Scottish Bogle, (which Gawin Douglas expressly distinguishes from the Brownie) and the Yorkshire Boggart.[366]The Swedish language has the termsspöka,spöke; the Danishspöge,spögelse, the German,spuken,spuk, all used of spirits or ghosts, and their apparitions. Perhaps the Scottishpawkey, sly, knowing, may belong to the same family of words. Akin to Bogle was the old English term Puckle, noticed above, which is still retained in the sense of mischievous, as in Peregrine Pickle and Little Pickle. It has been conjectured[367]thatPicklehäring, the German term for zany or merry-andrew, may have been properlyPicklehärin,i.e.the hairy sprite, answering to Jonson's Puck-hairy, and that he may have worn a vesture of hair or leaves to be rough like the Brownie and kindred beings.

From Bug also come Bugbear, and Bugleboo, or Bugaboo. They owe their origin probably to the Ho! Ho! Ho! given to Puck or Robin Goodfellow, as it was to the Devil (i.e., Pouke) in the Mysteries. Bull-beggar may be only a corruption of Bugbear.[368]

The following passage from a writer of the present day proves that in some places the idea of Puck as a spirit haunting the woods and fields is still retained. "The peasantry,"says Mr. Allies,[369]"of Alfrick and those parts of Worcestershire, say that they are sometimes what they callPoake-ledden, that is, that they are occasionally waylaid in the night by a mischievous sprite whom they call Poake, who leads them into ditches, bogs, pools, and other such scrapes, and then sets up a loud laugh and leaves them quite bewildered in the lurch." This is what in Devon is called beingPixy-led. We may observe the likeness here to the Puck of Shakspeare and Drayton, who were both natives of the adjoining county.

A further proof perhaps of Puck's rural and extern character is the following rather trifling circumstance. An old name of the fungus namedpuffballispuckfist, which is plainly Puck's-fist, and notpuff-fistas Nares conjectured; for its Irish name isCos-a-Phooka, or Pooka's-foot,i.e., Puck's-foot. We will add by the way, that the Anglo-Saxonold english Wulold english feold english s-old english fiold english sold english t,Wolf's-fist, is rendered in the dictionaries toadstool, mushroom, and we cannot help suspecting that as wolf and elf were sometimes confounded, and wolf and fist are, in fact, incompatible terms, this was originallyÆlold english feold english s-old english fiold english sold english tElf's-fist, and that the mushrooms meant were not the thick ugly toadstools, the "grislie todestooles," of Spenser, but those delicate fungi called in Irelandfairy-mushrooms, and which perhaps in England also were ascribed to the fairies.[370]

So much then for Puck; we will now consider some other terms.

Robin Goodfellow, of whom we have given above a full account, is evidently a domestic spirit, answering in name and character to the Nisse God-dreng of Scandinavia, the Knecht Ruprecht,i.e., Robin of Germany. He seems to unite in his person the Boggart and Barguest of Yorkshire.

Hob-goblin is, as we have seen, another name of the same spirit. Goblin is the Frenchgobelin, German Kobold; Hob is Rob, Robin, Bob; just as Hodge is Roger. We still have the proper names Hobbs, Hobson, like Dix, Dixon, Wills, Wilson; by the way, Hick,i. e.Dick, from Richard, still remains in Hicks, Hickson.

Robin Hood, though we can produce no instance of it, must, we think, also have been an appellation of this spirit, and been given to the famed outlaw of merry Sherwood, from his sportive character and his abiding in the recesses of the greenwood. The hood is a usual appendage of the domestic spirit.

Roguery and sportiveness are, we may see, the characteristics of this spirit. Hence it may have been that the diminutives of proper names were given to him, and even to the Ignis Fatuus, which in a country like England, that was in general dry and free from sloughs and bog-holes, was mischievous rather than dangerous.[371]But this seems to have been a custom of our forefathers, for we find the devil himself called Old Nick, and Old Davy is the sailor's familiar name for Death.

In the Midsummer Night's Dream the fairy says to Puck "Thou Lob of spirits;" Milton has thelubber-fiend, and Fletcher says,[372]"There is a pretty tale of a witch that had a giant to be her son that was called Lob Lie-by-the-fire." This might lead us to suppose thatLob, whenceloby(looby),lubbard,lubber,[373]and adding the diminutivekin, Lubberkin, a name of one of the clowns in Gay's Pastorals, was an original name of some kind of spirit. We shall presently see that the Irish name of the Leprechaun is actually Lubberkin. As to the origin of the name we have little to say, but it may have had a sense the very opposite of the present one oflubber, and have been connected with the verbto leap.[374]Grimm[375]tells of a spirit named the GoodLubber, to whom the bones of animals used to be offered at Mansfield in Germany; but we see no resemblance between him and our Lob of spirits; we might rather trace a connexion with the French Lutin, Lubin.[376]The phrase ofbeing inorgetting into Lob's Pound(like the "Pouke's pondfold,") is easy of explanation, if we suppose Lob to be a sportive spirit. It is equivalent to beingPoake-leddenorPixy-led.

Wight, answering to the GermanWicht, seems to have been used in the time of Chaucer for elf or fairy, most probably for such as haunted houses, or it may have had the signification ofwitch, which is evidently another form of it. In the Miller's Tale the carpenter says,

I crouchè thee from elvès and fromwights.

And

Jesu Crist, and Seint Benedight,Blisse this house from every wickedwight![377]

Urchin is a term which, likeelfand such like, we still apply to children, but which seems formerly to have been one of the appellations of the fairies. Reginald Scott, as we have seen, places it in his list, and we find it in the following places of the poets:—

UrchinsShall for the vast of night that they may workAll exercise on thee.—Tempest, i. 2.His spirits hear me,And yet I needs must curse; but they'll not pinch.Fright me withurchin-shows, pitch me i' the mire,Nor lead me like a fire-brand in the darkOut of my way, unless he bid 'em.—Ib.ii. 2.Likeurchins, ouphs, and fairies.Merry Wives of Windsor, iv. 4.Elves,urchins, goblins all, and little fairyes.Mad Pranks, etc., p. 38.Great store of goblins, fairies, bugs, nightmares,Urchins, and elves, to many a house repairs.Old Poem, in Brand, ii. 514.Trip it, littleurchinsall.Maid's Metamorphosis.Helping allurchin-blastsand ill-luck signs,That the shrewd meddling elfe delights to make.Comus, 845.

UrchinsShall for the vast of night that they may workAll exercise on thee.—Tempest, i. 2.

His spirits hear me,And yet I needs must curse; but they'll not pinch.Fright me withurchin-shows, pitch me i' the mire,Nor lead me like a fire-brand in the darkOut of my way, unless he bid 'em.—Ib.ii. 2.

Likeurchins, ouphs, and fairies.Merry Wives of Windsor, iv. 4.

Elves,urchins, goblins all, and little fairyes.Mad Pranks, etc., p. 38.

Great store of goblins, fairies, bugs, nightmares,Urchins, and elves, to many a house repairs.Old Poem, in Brand, ii. 514.

Trip it, littleurchinsall.Maid's Metamorphosis.

Helping allurchin-blastsand ill-luck signs,That the shrewd meddling elfe delights to make.Comus, 845.

Urchin is a hedgehog, as Stevens has justly observed,[378]and in these lines of Titus Andronicus (ii. 3.)

A thousand fiends, a thousand hissing snakes,Ten thousand swelling toads, as manyurchins,

it probably has this sense. We still call theechinus marinusthe Sea-urchin. Still as we have no analogy, but rather the contrary, for transferring the name of an animal to the elves, we feel inclined to look for a different origin of the term as applied to these beings. The best or rather only hypothesis we have met with[379]is that which finds it in the hitherto unexplained wordOrcneasin Beówulf, which may have beenOrcenas, and if, as we have supposed,[380]the Anglo-Saxons sometimes pronouncedcbeforeeandiin the Italian manner, we should have, if needed, the exact word. We would also notice the old Germanurkinde, which Grimm rendersnanus.[381]

We now come to the poets.

In Beówulf, an Anglo-Saxon poem, supposed not to belater than the seventh century, we meet with the following verse,

"Eotenas, and Ylfe,And Orcneas."

The first of these words is evidently the same as the Iötunn or Giants of the northern mythology; the second is as plainly its Alfar, and we surely may be excused for supposing that the last may be the same as its Duergar.

Layamon, in the twelfth century, in his poetic paraphrase of Wace's Brut,[382]thus expands that poet's brief notice of the birth of Arthur:—

"Ertur son nom; de sa bunteAd grant parole puis este."

If we have made any discovery of importance in the department of romantic literature, it is our identification of Ogier le Danois with the Eddaic Helgi.[383]We have shown among other points of resemblance, that as the Norns were at the birth of the one, so the Fées were at that of the other. With this circumstance Layamon was apparently acquainted, and when he wished to transfer it to Arthur asthe Norns were no longer known and the Fees had not yet risen into importance, there only remained for him to employ the Elves, which had not yet acquired tiny dimensions. Hence then we see that the progress was Norns, Elves, Fées, and these last held their place in the subsequent Fairy tales of France and Italy.

These potent Elves are still superior to the popular Fairies which we first met with in Chaucer.

Yet nothing in the passages in which he speaks of them leads to the inference of his conceiving them to be of a diminutive stature. His notions, indeed, on the subject seem very vague and unsettled; and there is something like a confusion of the Elves and Fairies of Romance, as the following passages will show:—

The Wife of Bathes Tale is evidently a Fairy tale. It thus commences:

In oldè dayès of the king Artoúr,Of which that Bretons speken gret honoúr,All was this lond fulfilled of faërie;[384]The Elf-quene with her joly compagnie,Danced ful oft in many a grenè mede.This was the old opinion as I rede;I speke of many hundred yeres ago.But now can no man see non elvès mo,For now the gretè charitee and prayéresOf limitoures, and other holy freres,That serchen every land and every streme,As thikke as motès in the sonnè-beme,Blissing halles, chambres, kichenès, and boures,Citees and burghès, castles highe, and toures,Thropès[385]and bernès, shepenes and dairiés,This maketh that there ben no faëries;For there as wont to walken was an elf,There walketh now the limitour himself,In undermelès,[386]and in morweninges,And sayth his matines and his holy thinges,As he goth in his limitatioun.Women may now go safely up and down;In every bush and under every treeThere is none other incubus but he,And he ne will don hem no dishonoúr.

The Fairies therefore form a part of the tale, and they are thus introduced:

The day was come that homward must he turne;And in his way it happed him to ride,In all his care, under a forest side,Wheras he saw upon a dancè goOf ladies foure and twenty, and yet mo:Toward this ilke dance he drow ful yerne,In hope that he som wisdom shuldè lerne;But certainly, er he came fully there,Yvanished was this dance, he n'iste not wher;No creäture saw he that barè lif,Save on the grene he saw sitting a wif,A fouler wight ther may no man devise.

These ladies bear a great resemblance to the Elle-maids of Scandinavia. We need hardly inform our readers that this "foul wight" becomes the knight's deliverer from the imminent danger he is in, and that, when he has been forced to marry her, she is changed into a beautiful young maiden. But who or what she was the poet sayeth not.

In the Marchantes Tale we meet the Faerie attendant on Pluto and Proserpina, their king and queen, a sort of blending of classic and Gothic mythology:

for to tellThe beautee of the gardin, and the wellThat stood under a laurer alway grene;Ful often time he Pluto, and his queneProserpina, and alle hir faërie[387]Disporten hem, and maken melodieAbout that well, and daunced, as men told.

Again, in the same Tale:

And so befel in that bright morwe tide,That, in the gardin, on the ferther side,Pluto, that is the king of Faërie,And many a ladye in his compagnie,Folwing his wif, the quene Proserpina,Which that he ravisshed out of Ethná,While that she gadred floures in the mede,(In Claudian ye may the story rede,How that hire in his grisely carte he fette);This king of Faërie adoun him setteUpon a benche of turvès, fresh and grene.

In the conversation which ensues between these august personages, great knowledge of Scripture is displayed; and the queen, speaking of the "sapient prince," passionately exclaims—

I setè nat of all the vilanieThat he of women wrote a boterflie;I am a woman nedès moste I speke,Or swell unto that time min hertè breke.

Some might suspect a mystery in the queen's thus emphatically styling herself a woman, but we lay no stress upon it, as Faire Damoselle Pertelote, the hen, who was certainly less entitled to it, does the same.

In the Man of Lawes Tale the word Elfe is employed, but whether as equivalent to witch or fairy is doubtful.

This lettre spake, the quene delivered wasOf so horríble a fendliche creätúre,That in the castle, non so hardy was,That any whilè dorste therein endure.The mother was anelfeby áventure,Y come, by charmès or by sorcerie,And everich man hateth hire compagnie.[388]

The Rime of Sir Thopas has been already considered as belonging to romance.

It thus appears that the works of manners-painting Chaucer give very little information respecting the popular belief in Fairies of his day. Were it not for the sly satire of the passage, we might be apt to suspect that, like one who lived away from the common people, he was willing to represent the superstition as extinct—"But now can no man see non elves mo." The only trait that he gives really characteristic of the popular elves is their love of dancing.

In the poets that intervene between Chaucer and the Maiden Reign, we do not recollect to have noticed anything of importance respecting Fairies, except the employment, already adverted to, of that term, and that of Elves, bytranslators in rendering the LatinNymphæ. Of the size of these beings, the passages in question give no information.

But in Elizabeth's days, "Fairies," as Johnson observes, "were much in fashion; common tradition had made them familiar, and Spenser's poem had made them great." A just remark, no doubt, though Johnson fell into the common error of identifying Spenser's Fairies with the popular ones.

The three first books of the Faerie Queene were published in 1590, and, as Warton remarks, Fairies became a familiar and fashionable machinery with the poets and poetasters. Shakspeare, well acquainted, from the rural habits of his early life, with the notions of the peasantry respecting these beings, and highly gifted with the prescient power of genius, saw clearly how capable they were of being applied to the production of a species of the wonderful, as pleasing, or perhaps even more so, than the classic gods; and in the Midsummer-Night's Dream he presented them in combination with the heroes and heroines of the mythic age of Greece. But what cannot the magic wand of genius effect? We view with undisturbed delight the Elves of Gothic mythology sporting in the groves of Attica, the legitimate haunts of Nymphs and Satyrs.

Shakspeare, having the Faerie Queene before his eyes, seems to have attempted a blending of the Elves of the village with the Fays of romance. His Fairies agree with the former in their diminutive stature,—diminished, indeed, to dimensions inappreciable by village gossips,—in their fondness for dancing, their love of cleanliness, and their child-abstracting propensities. Like the Fays, they form a community, ruled over by the princely Oberon and the fair Titania.[389]There is a court and chivalry: Oberon would have the queen's sweet changeling to be a "Knight of histrain to trace the forest wild." Like earthly monarchs, he has his jester, "the shrewd and knavish sprite, called Robin Good-fellow."

The luxuriant imagination of the poet seemed to exult in pouring forth its wealth in the production of these new actors on the mimic scene, and a profusion of poetic imagery always appears in their train. Such lovely and truly British poetry cannot be too often brought to view; we will therefore insert in this part of our work several of these gems of our Parnassus, distinguishing by a different character such acts and attributes as appear properly to belong to the Fairy of popular belief.

MIDSUMMER-NIGHT'S DREAM.

ACT II.—SCENE I.

Puck and a Fairy.

Puck.How now, spirit! whither wander you?Fai.Over hill, over dale,Thorough bush, thorough briar,Over park, over pale,Thorough flood, thorough fire.I do wander every where,Swifter than the moonès sphere,And I serve the Fairy-queen,To dew her orbs upon the green.The cowslips tall her pensioners be;In their gold coats spots you see.Those be rubies, fairy favours,In those freckles live their savours.I must go seek some dew-drops here,And hang a pearl in every cowslip's ear.[390]Farewell, thou lob of spirits! I'll be gone;Our queen and all her elves come here anon.Puck.The king doth keep his revels here to-night.Take heed the queen come not within his sight;For Oberon is passing fell and wroth,Because that she, as her attendant, hathA lovely boy stolen from an Indian king,—She never had so sweet a changeling;And jealous Oberon would have the childKnight of his train, to trace the forests wild;But she, perforce, withholds the loved boy,Crowns him with flowers, and makes him all her joyAnd now they never meet in grove or green,By fountain clear, or spangled star-light sheen,But they do square; that all their elves, for fear,Creep into acorn cups, and hide them there.Fai.Either I mistake your shape and making quite,Or else you are that shrewd and knavish spriteCall'd Robin Good-fellow. Are you not heThat frights the maidens of the villagery,Skims milk, and sometimes labours in the quern,And bootless makes the breathless housewife churn;And sometimes makes the drink to bear no barm;Misleads night-wanderers, laughing at their harm?Those that Hob-goblin call you, and sweet Puck,You do their work, and they shall have good luck,Are not you 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 sometimes 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,Sometimes for three-foot stool mistaketh me:Then slip I from her bum,—down topples she,Andtailorcries, and falls into a cough;And then the whole quire hold their hips and loffe,And waxen in their mirth, and neeze, and swearA merrier hour was never wasted there.

The haunts of the Fairies on earth are the most rural and romantic that can be selected. They meet

On hill, in dale, forest or mead,By paved fountain, or by rushy brook,Or on the beached margent of the sea,To dance their ringlets to the whistling wind.

And the place of Titania's repose is

A bank whereon the wild thyme blows,Where oxlips and the nodding violet grows,Quite over-canopied with lush woodbine,With sweet musk-roses, and with eglantine.There sleeps Titania, some time of the nightLull'd in these flowers with dances and delight;And there the snake throws her enamell'd skin,Weed wide enough to wrap a fairy in.

The powers of the poet are exerted to the utmost, to convey an idea of their minute dimensions; and time, with them, moves on lazy pinions. "Come," cries the queen,

Come now, a roundel and a fairy song,Then for the third part of a minute hence:Some to kill cankers in the musk-rose buds;Some war with rear-mice for their leathern wings,To make my small elves coats.

And when enamoured of Bottom, she directs her Elves that they should

Hop in his walks and gambol in his eyes;Feed him with apricocks and dewberries,With purple grapes, green figs, and mulberries.The honey-bags steal from the humble-bees,And for night-tapers crop their waxen thighs,And light them at the fiery glow-worm's eyes;To have my love to bed, and to ariseAnd pluck the wings from painted butterflies,To fan the moon-beams from his sleeping eyes.

Puck goes "swifter than arrow from the Tartar's bow;" he says, "he'll put a girdle round about the earth in forty minutes;" and "We," says Oberon—

We the globe can compass soon,Swifter than the wandering moon.

They are either not mortal, or their date of life is indeterminately long; they are of a nature superior to man, and speak with contempt of human follies. By night they revel beneath the light of the moon and stars, retiring at the approach of "Aurora's harbinger,"[391]but not compulsively like ghosts and "damned spirits."

But we (says Oberon) are spirits of another sort;I with the morning's love have oft made sport,And like a forester the groves may tread,Even till the eastern gate, all fiery red,Opening on Neptune with fair blessed beams,Turns into yellow gold his salt-green streams.

In the Merry Wives of Windsor, we are introduced to mock-fairies, modelled, of course, after the real ones, but with such additions as the poet's fancy deemed itself authorised to adopt.

Act IV., Scene IV., Mrs. Page, after communicating to Mrs. Ford her plan of making the fat knight disguise himself as the ghost of Herne the hunter, adds—

Nan Page, my daughter, and my little son,And three or four more of their growth, we'll dressLike urchins, ouphes,[392]and fairies, green and white,With rounds of waxen tapers on their heads,And rattles in their hands.

Then let them all encircle him about,And,fairy-like,to-pinch[393]the unclean knight,And ask him why that hour of fairy revelIn their so sacred paths he dares to treadIn shape profane.

And

My Nan shall be the queen of all the fairies,Finely attired in a robe of white.

In Act V., Scene V., the plot being all arranged, the Fairyrout appears, headed by Sir Hugh, as a Satyr, by ancient Pistol as Hobgoblin, and by Dame Quickly.

Quick.Fairies black, grey, green, and white,You moonshine revellers and shades of night,You orphan heirs of fixed destiny,[394]Attend your office and your quality.Crier Hob-goblin, make the fairy O-yes.Pist.Elves, list your names! silence, you airy toys!Cricket, to Windsor chimneys shalt thou leap;Where fires thou findest unraked, and hearths unswept,There pinch the maids as blue as bilberry:Our radiant queen, hates sluts and sluttery.Fals.They are fairies;he that speaks to them shall die.I'll wink and couch; no man their works must eye.Pist.Where's Bead?—Go you, and where you find a maidThat, ere she sleep, has thrice her prayers said,Raise up the organs of her fantasy,Sleep she as sound as careless infancy;But those as sleep and think not on their sins,Pinch them, arms, legs, backs, shoulders, sides, and shins.Quick.About, about,Search Windsor castle, elves, within and out;Strew good luck, ouphes, on every sacred room,That it may stand till the perpetual doom,In state as wholesome as in state 'tis fit;Worthy the owner, and the owner it.The several chairs of order look you scourWith juice of balm and every precious flower;Each fair instalment, coat, and several crest,With loyal blazon evermore be blest;And nightly, meadow-fairies, look, you sing,Like to the Garter's compass,in a ring:The expressure that it bears green let it be,More fertile-fresh than all the field to see;And "Hony soit qui mal y pense" write,In emerald tufts, flowers, purple, blue, and white;Like sapphire, pearl, and rich embroidery,Buckled below fair knighthood's bending knee:Fairies use flowers for their charactery.Away—disperse!—but, till 'tis one o'clock,Our dance of custom, round about the oakOf Herne the hunter, let us not forget.Eva.Pray you, lock hand in hand, yourselves in order set,And twenty glow-worms shall our lanterns be,To guide our measure round about the tree;But stay, I smell a man of middle earth.[395]Fal.Heaven defend me from that Welsh fairy, lestHe transform me to a piece of cheese.Pist.Vile worm! thou wast o'erlook'd even in thy birth.Quick.With trial fire touch we his finger-end:If he be chaste the flame will back descend,And turn him to no pain; but if he start,It is the flesh of a corrupted heart.Pist.A trial, come.Eva.Come, will this wood take fire?Fal.Oh, oh, oh!Quick.Corrupt, corrupt, and tainted in desire:About him, fairies, sing a scornful rime;And, as you trip, still pinch him to your time.

In Romeo and Juliet the lively and gallant Mercutio mentions a fairy personage, who has since attained to great celebrity, and completely dethroned Titania, we mean Queen Mab,[396]a dame of credit and renown in Faëry.

"I dreamed a dream to-night," says Romeo.

"O then," says Mercutio:—

O then, I see Queen Mab hath been with you.She is the fairies' midwife; and she comes,In shape no bigger than an agate-stoneOn the forefinger of an alderman,Drawn with a team of little atomies,Over men's noses as they lie asleep:Her waggon-spokes made of long spinners' legs;The cover, of the wings of grasshoppers;The traces, of the smallest spider's web;The collars of the moonshine's watery beams:Her whip of cricket's bone; the lash of film:Her waggoner, a small gray-coated gnat,Not half so big as a round little wormPrick'd from the lazy finger of a maid:Her chariot is an empty hazel-nut,Made by the joiner squirrel or old grub,Time out of mind the fairies' coachmakers.

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