of omission and commission, and the devil's
parchment was soon full on both sides, and
crossed and re-crossed into the bargain.
Whiat was the devil to do? He had no more
parchment with him; he could not trust to
his memory: and he was unwilling to lose
count of a single sin. As a last resource,
he bethought himself of stretching the parchment.
Holding one end in his teeth and the
other in his claws, he tugged and tugged, and
strained and strained; but he forgot that
the material was unelastic; and presently
crack went the parchment into two pieces,
and bang went the devil's head against the
stone wall of the church. Saint Brituis burst
out into a hearty fit of laughter at the devil's
misfortune, for which he was sternly rebuked
by his chief; and, indeed, narrowly escaped
that exemplary chastisement which, as legends
tell, befel the nursery heroine Jill

            "For laughing at Jack's disaster."

When, however, St. Martin came to be
informed of the real circumstances of the case,
he immediately hailed it as a "first chop"
miracle, of which the world was running
rather short just then; and as a stock miracle
it has been retailed ever since, to the great
edification of the faithful; and as a rriiracle
you will find it in good dog Latin and in the
Lives of the Saints to this day.

You will curl up your lip, I dare say, because
I persist in stating Puck to be a goblin and
not a fairy, and in tracing him even to a
habitat among the mischievous demons of
the Romish hagiology. You will acknowledge
bim as a demon, however, when I tell you
that Odericus Vitalis alludes to him as the
devil whom St. Taurinus banished from the
quondam temple of Diana at Ebroa, the
Norman town of Evreux; that he was known
to the Normans as Gubbe, the old man, and
from thence we have the word Goblin:
"Hunc vulgus Gobelinum appellat,'' says
Odericus. The Gubbe of the Northmen was
own brother to the "Tomte-Gubbe," or "old
man of the house toft" in Sweden, known in
Saxony as the spiteful devil Hoodekin,
Hodken, or Hudken, in Norway as
"Nissegodéring," in Scotland as "Redcap," in
England as Puck; or, on a very non lucendo
principle (seeing that he was always playing
naughty tricks), as Robin Goodfellow. He
is directly charged with being a Goblin in
your own vaunted Midsummer Night's Dream,
"by one of Titania's fairies. Thus she—

"Either I mistake your shape and making quite,
Or else you are that shrewd and knavish sprite
Called Robin Goodfellow; are you not he
That fright the maids of all the villagery?
      . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Mislead night wanderers, laughing at their harm,
Those that Hobgoblin call you . . . ."

If the varlet had been a fairy, all Titania's
tribe would have known his position and
antecedents without questioning him.
Peaseblossom, Cobweb, Moth, and Mustardseed,
were fairies if you will; so were those
"minions of the moon" that came from
oxlips and nodding violets, from lush woodbine,
from sweet musk-roses and wild eglantine,
the fairies that warred with rear-mice for
their leathern wings, and killed the cankers
in the rose-buds; the small grey-coated gnats
that were Queen Mab's waggoners, the joiner
squirrels, the fairies' midwives. A figo—the
fig of Spain—for them all. Puck has nought
to do with them; and I demand that his
name, as it stands in the dramatis personæ,
of all the editions of Shakespeare, as "Puck,
or Robin Goodfellow, a fairy" shall be
expunged and altered to "Puck, a Goblin or
malicious demon."

The subject of Puck (continued the old
Magician) has detained me much longer
than I anticipated; but I felt so strongly on
the subject, that I was moved to adduce all
the evidence I could lay my hands on. It
were bootless in this stage of the argument
to demonstrate that this same Puck is the
Spanish "Duende," corresponding entirely to
the "Tomte Gubbe," which fact is attested by
Corbaruvias; and that in another part of
Spain, that Puck appears as a Frayle, or
little friar; for which you may see Calderon's
comedy of La Dama Duende. Nor is there
time here to show how Puck in Anglo-Saxon
became Pickeln and Packeln, from which
Mr. Horne Tooke tells us, in the Diversions of
Purley, we have Pack or Patch, the fool;
likewise Pickle, a mischievous boy, and the
Pickélhärin, oddly enough, though analogically
translated as Pickle-herring, the zany or
mountebank of Goëthe's Wilhelm Meister,
and who (Pickelhärin) was so called from his
leafy or hairy vestment. Ben Johnson
re-Anglicised him as the shaggy little devil
Puckhairy, while the original Puck or Pug
became Pog, Bog, and Boge in the north of
England, Bogle in Scotland, and again
returned to England as Bogey, where he dwells
in the coal cellar of the nursery-cupboard
to this day. There's a derivation for you,
Scholar! Think of your merry, spangled-winged,
sportive fairy Puck, forsooth, turning
out to be synonymous with the child-quelling,
naughty-boy-kidnapping Bogey. The monkey,
you know, acquired the name of Pug, from
his wickedness and malice; and the Pug-dog,
from his spitefulness and snappishness. Bwg
in the language of the British was a goblin;
Bog was the angry god of the Slavi. The
Anglo-Saxon Bucca and Buck, a goat, were
both derivatives of Puck, and were so called
from their skittish, savage natures; and a
goat was, if you remember, one of the
favourite incarnations of the evil one; finally,
we trace the mischievous mirth and inebriated
inspiration of Puck in the Greek word
Ba?????.

Thus far the old Magician. I had listened
with bated breath to the sage as he dwelt