The Reign of King Oberon | Project Gutenberg

The pranks of Robin Goodfellow

From Oberon in fairy-land

The king of ghosts and shadows there,

Mad Robin I, at his command

Am sent to view the night sports here;

What revel rout

Is kept about,

In every corner where I go,

I will o’er see,

And merry be,

And make good sport with ho, ho, ho.

More swift than lightning can I fly

About this airy welkin soon,

And, in a minute’s space, descry

Each thing that’s done below the moon:

There’s not a hag

Or ghost shall wag,

Or cry, ware goblins, where I go;

But Robin I

Their feats will spy,

And send them home with ho, ho, ho.

Whene’er such wanderers I meet,

As from their night-sports they trudge home,

With counterfeiting voice I greet

And call them on, with me to roam

Thro’ woods, thro’ lakes,

Thro’ bogs, thro’ brakes;

Or else, unseen, with them I go,

All in the nick

To play some trick

And frolic it with ho, ho, ho.

Sometimes I meet them like a man,

Sometimes an ox, sometimes a hound;

And to a horse I turn me can,

To trip and trot about them round

But if to ride,

My back they stride,

More swift than wind away I go;

O’er hedge and lands

Thro’ pools and ponds,

I whirry, laughing ho, ho, ho.

When lads and lassies merry be,

With possets and with junkets fine,

Unseen of all the company,

I eat their cakes and sip their wine;

And to make sport,

I sneeze and snort,

And out the candles I do blow;

The maids I kiss;

They shriek—who’s this?

I answer nought but ho, ho, ho.

Yet now and then, the maids to please,

At midnight I card up their wool;

And while they sleep and take their ease,

With wheel to threads their flax I pull.

I grind at mill

Their malt up still;

I dress their hemp, I spin their tow.

If any wake,

And would me take,

I wend me laughing ho, ho, ho!

When house or hearth doth sluttish lie,

I pinch the maidens black and blue;

The bed clothes from the bed pull I,

And lay them naked all to view;

’Twixt sleep and wake

I do them take,

And on the key-cold floor them throw;

If out they cry

Then forth I fly

And loudly laugh I, ho, ho, ho!

When any need to borrow aught

We lend them what they do require,

And for the use demand we naught

Our own is all we do desire.

If to repay

They do delay

Abroad amongst them then I go

And night by night

I them affright

With pinchings, dreams, and ho, ho, ho!

When lazy queans have nought to do,

But study how to cog and lie;

To make debate and mischief too,

’Twixt one another secretly;

I mark their gloze,

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!

When men do traps and engines set

In loop holes where the vermin creep,

Who from their folds and houses get

Their ducks and geese, and lambs and sheep,

I spy the gin,

And enter in,

And seem a vermin taken so;

But when they there

Approach me near,

I leap out laughing ho, ho, ho!

By wells and rills, in meadows green,

We nightly dance our hey-day guise;

And to our fairy King and Queen

We chant our moonlight minstrelsies.

When larks ’gin sing,

Away we fling,

And babes new born steal as we go,

And elf in bed

We leave instead

And wend us, laughing, ho, ho, ho!

Whereas my fellow-elves and I

In circled ring do trip around;

If that our sports by any eye

Do happen to be seen or found;

If that they

No words do say,

But mum continue as they go,

Each night I do

Put groat in shoe,

And wind out laughing, ho, ho, ho!

From hag-bred Merlin’s time have I

Thus nightly revelled to and fro;

And for my pranks men call me by

The name of Robin Goodfellow.

Fiends, ghosts, and sprites

Who haunt the nights,

The hags and goblins do me know;

And beldames old

My feats have told,

So Vale, Vale, ho, ho, ho!

With the last line of his song Robin Goodfellow disappeared off the stool so quickly that even his fellow-fairies were unable to see where he went, and at one moment heard him singing his farewell “Vale, Vale,” from the furthermost part of the fairy ring, and in the next instant, his laughing “ho, ho, ho!” came from the back of King Oberon’s throne. The whole fairy realm took up this laughing “ho, ho, ho!” and when it quieted down, there on the stool was sitting a Swedish troll who, without any preface, began telling a story of