Nightmare. 'Tis I that do steal children, and in the
place of them leave changelings. Sometimes I also steal milk and cream, and
then with my brothers, Patch, Pinch, and Grim, and sisters Sib, Tib, Lick,
and Lull, I feast with my stolen goods: our little piper hath his share in
all our spoils, but he nor our women fairies do ever put themselves in
danger to do any great exploit.

What Gull can do, I have you shown;
I am inferior unto none.
Command me, Robin, thou shalt know,
That I for thee will ride or go:
I can do greater things than these
Upon the land, and on the seas."

THE TRICKS OF THE FAIRY CALLED GRIM

"I walk with the owl, and make many to cry as loud as she doth hollo.
Sometimes I do affright many simple people, for which some have termed me
the Black Dog of Newgate. At the meetings of young men and maids I many
times am, and when they are in the midst of all their good cheer, I come
in, in some fearful shape, and affright them, and then carry away their
good cheer, and eat it with my fellow fairies. 'Tis I that do, like a
screech-owl cry at sick men's windows, which makes the hearers so fearful,
that they say, that the sick person cannot live. Many other ways have I to
fright the simple, but the understanding man I cannot move to fear, because
he knows I have no power to do hurt.

My nightly business I have told,
To play these tricks I use of old:
When candles burn both blue and dim,
Old folk will say, Here's fairy Grim.
More tricks than these I use to do:
Hereat cried Robin, _Ho, ho, hoh!_"

THE TRICKS OF THE WOMEN FAIRIES TOLD BY SIB

"To walk nightly, as do the men fairies, we use not; but now and then we go
together, and at good housewives' fires we warm and dress our fairy
children. If we find clean water and clean towels, we leave them money,
either in their basins or in their shoes; but if we find no clean water in
their houses, we wash our children in their pottage, milk, or beer, or
whate'er we find: for the sluts that leave not such things fitting, we wash
their faces and hands with a gilded child's clout, or else carry them to
some river, and duck them over head and ears. We often use to dwell in some
great hill, and from thence we do lend money to any poor man or woman that
hath need; but if they bring it not again at the day appointed, we do not
only punish them with pinching, but also in their goods, so that they never
thrive till they have paid us.

Tib an