was her imp, and she was sentenced to be burned, and twenty shillings went into the pockets of Master Hopkins. In this manner he made one old woman confess, because four flies had appeared in the room, that she was attended by four imps named 'Ilemazar,' 'Pyewackett,' 'Peck-in-the-crown,' and 'Grizel-Greedigut.'" It is not foreign to our subject to remark that Beelzebub, once called "prince of the devils," was the god of flies.
Once seated in her chariot, impatient Mab drove off, never waiting for her faithful attendants whose names have methinks a brevity more befitting the small-folk than three out of the four borne by the ladies-in-waiting of A Midsummer Night's Dream:
"Hop and Mop and Drap so clear,
Pip and Trip and Skip that went
To Mab their sovereign dear,
Her special maids of honour.
Fib and Tib and Pinck and Pin,
Tick and Quick and Jill and Jin,
Tit and Hit and Wap and Win,
The train that wait upon her."
Motion and mirth and smallness are, whether purposely or not, suggested by the names of Mab's "special maids of honour." Hop (an old term for dance), Trip, and Ship moved not with the sober gait of mortals; Mop[1] was probably concrete merriment, Win[2] was joy and pleasure; Drap—surely another form of drop—"so clear," and Pip go admirably with atomies. In the rest of the suite, it seems to me, that we have the insinuation of the same attributes through media just slightly less refined. We have nimble Tick, Quick, and Wap[3]; tiny Tib,[4] Pinck, Pin, Tit, and Nit; fun-loving Fib, if I be right in deducing Fib from the same root as fible-fable, a synonym, as Halliwell informs us, for nonsense, in several English dialects. Jill and Jin were
- ↑ A grimace:
"Each one, tripping on his toe,
Will be here with mop and mow."—The Tempest, act iv. sc. 1. - ↑ Wyn, O.E. joy, pleasure, delight.
- ↑ "Smartly, quickly," Var dial; Halliwell's Dictionary of Archaic and Provincial Words.
- ↑ Or Tib might be classed with Jill and Jin as a kind of generic or feminine name. I have here regarded it as tip, a point; but I make no point of that.
