scovery of Witchcraft_
(1584); this was no doubt the chief source of information regarding Puck or
Robin Goodfellow, as well as of the fairies themselves. Shakespeare was
doubtless also familiar with the treatment accorded to the fairy-world by
Chaucer[42] and Spenser[43] and with the many tales of supernatural beings
in romances like _Huon of Bordeaux_ and others of the Arthurian cycle.
There is also a black-letter tract concerning Robin Goodfellow,[44] but no
one has yet proved that this pamphlet was in print before 1628, the date of
the earliest surviving edition. Ultimately, however, this matters little,
because the tract is evidently drawn largely from oral traditions about
Robin, and so has a source common with that of much of Shakespeare's
fairy-lore.

Minor allusions, chiefly, to Robin Goodfellow, he may have met with in
various works[45] published before the assumed date of the play; but these,
again, add nothing which Shakespeare could not have learned just as well
from the superstitions of his day. What these were, and how he handled
them, we must now proceed to discuss.

In approaching a subject such as fairy-lore, it is necessary to prepare the
mind of the reader to go back to days not merely pre-Christian but even
pre-national. Our fairies can no more justly be called English than can our
popular poetry. Folk-lore--the study of the traditional beliefs and customs
of the common people--is a science invented centuries too late;[46] for
lack of evidence, it is largely theoretical. But it teaches its students
continually to look further afield, and to compare the tales, ballads,
superstitions, rites, and mythologies of one country with those of another.
The surprising results thus obtained must not make us think that one
country has borrowed from another; we must throw our minds back to a common
ancestry and common creeds. "The attempt to discriminate modern national
characteristics in the older stratum of European folk-lore is not only idle
but mischievous, because it is based upon the unscientific assumption that
existing differences, which are the outcome of comparatively recent
historical conditions, have always existed." These are the wise words of a
sound folk-lorist,[47] and should be laid to heart by all who take up the
study.

We cannot begin to investigate the origins of the fairy superstition in the
cradle of the world; we must be content to realise that there was a creed
concerning supernatural b