an actor in "A Midsummer-Night's
Dream," is the mischief-loving sprite, the jester of the fairy court,
whose characteristics are roguery and sportiveness. In his description
of him, Shakespeare, as Mr. Thoms points out, "has embodied almost every
attribute with which the imagination of the people has invested the
fairy race; and has neither omitted one trait necessary to give
brilliancy and distinctness to the likeness, nor sought to heighten its
effect by the slightest exaggeration. For, carefully and elaborately as
he has finished the picture, he has not in it invested the 'lob of
spirits' with one gift or quality which the popular voice of the age was
not unanimous in bestowing upon him." Thus (ii. 1) the fairy says:

"Either I mistake your shape and making quite,
Or else you are that shrewd and knavish sprite,
Call'd Robin Goodfellow: are you not he
That frights the maidens of the villagery;
Skim milk; and sometimes labour in the quern,
And bootless make the breathless housewife churn;
And sometime make the drink to bear no barm;
Mislead night-wanderers, laughing at their harm?
Those that Hobgoblin call you, and sweet Puck,
You do their work, and they shall have good luck:
Are not you he?"

The name "Puck" was formerly applied to the whole race of fairies, and
not to any individual sprite--_puck_, or _pouke_, being an old word for
devil, in which sense it is used in the "Vision of Piers Plowman:"

"Out of the poukes pondfold
No maynprise may us fecche."

The Icelandic _puki_ is the same word, and in Friesland and Jutland the
domestic spirit is called Puk by the peasantry. In Devonshire, Piskey is
the name for a fairy, with which we may compare the Cornish Pixey. In
Worcestershire, too, we read how the peasantry are occasionally
"poake-ledden," that is, misled by a mischievous spirit called _poake_.
And, according to Grose's "Provincial Glossary," in Hampshire they give
the name of Colt-pixey to a supposed spirit or fairy, which, in the
shape of a horse, neighs, and misleads horses into bogs. The Irish,
again, have their Pooka,[8] and the Welsh their Pwcca--both words derived
from Pouke or Puck. Mr. Keightley[9] thinks, also, that the Scottish
_pawkey_, sly, knowing, may belong to the same list of words. It is
evident, then, that the term Puck was in bygone years extensively
applied to the fairy race, an appellation still found in the west of
England. Referri