from mental doubt. "I love true lovers, honest men, good fellowes, good
huswives, good meate, good drinke, and all things that good is, but
nothing that is ill," declares Robin Goodfellow;[1] and this jovial
materialism only reflects the state of mind of the folk who were not
unwilling to believe that this lively little spirit might be seen of
nights busying himself in their houses by the dying embers of the
deserted fire.

[Footnote 1: Hazlitt, Fairy Mythology, p. 182.]

114. Such seems to have been the condition of England immediately before
the period of the great Reformation. But with the progress of that
revolution of thought the condition changes. The one true and eternal
creed, as it had been deemed, is shattered for ever. Men who have
hitherto accepted their religious convictions in much the same way as
they had succeeded to their patrimonies are compelled by this tide of
opposition to think and study for themselves. Each man finds himself
left face to face with the great hereafter, and his relation to it.
Terrible doctrines are formulated, and press themselves with remorseless
vigour upon his understanding--original sin, justification by faith,
eternal damnation for even honest error of belief,--doctrines that throw
an atmosphere of solemnity, if not gloom, about national thought, in
which no fairy mythology can flourish. It is no longer questions of
material ease and gain that are of the chief concern; and consequently
the fairies and their doings, from their own triviality, fall far into
the background, and their place is occupied by a countless horde of
remorseless schemers, who are never ceasing in their efforts to drag
both body and soul to perdition.

115. But it is in the towns, the centres of interchange of thought, of
learning, and of controversy, that this revolution first gathers power;
the sparsely populated country-sides are far more impervious to the new
ideas, and the country people cling far longer and more tenaciously to
the dying religion and its attendant beliefs. The rural districts were
but little affected by the Reformation for years after it had triumphed
in the towns, and consequently the beliefs of the inhabitants were
hardly touched by the struggle that was going on within so short a
distance. We find a Reginald Scot, indeed, complaining, half in joke,
half in sarcasm, that Robin Goodfellow has long disappeared from the
land;[1] but it is only from the towns that he has fled--towns