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 out ho, ho, ho!

  When any need to borrow ought,
      We lend them what they do require: 
  And for the use demand we nought;
      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 heydeguys;
  And to our fairy king and queen
      We chant our moon-light 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!

  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,
          Who haunt the nights,
      The hags and goblins do me know;
          And beldames old
          My feats have told;
      So Vale, Vale; ho, ho, ho!

A black-letter broadside, XVIIth cent.

* * * * *

QUEEN MAB

Satyr
  This is Mab, the mistress fairy,
  That doth nightly rob the dairy,
  And can hunt or help the churning
  As she please without discerning.
  . . . . . . 
  She that pinches country wenches
  If they rub not clean their benches,
  And with sharper nails remembers
  When they rake not up their embers;
  But if so they chance to feast her,
  In a shoe she drops a tester.
  . . . . . . 
  This is she that empties cradles,