The Sources and Analogues of 'A Midsummer-Night's Dream'/The Mad Merry Pranks of Robin

by Frank Sidgwick

The Mad Merry Pranks of Robin Good-fellow

(To the Tune of Dulcina.)

From Oberon, in fairy land,

The king of ghosts and shadows there,

Mad Robin I, at his command,

Am sent to view the night-sports here.

What revel rout

Is kept about,

In every corner where I go,

I will o'ersee

And merry be,

And make good sport, with ho, ho, ho!

More swift than lightning can I fly

About this airy welkin soon,

And, in a minute's space, descry

Each thing that's done below the moon,

There's not a hag

Or ghost shall wag,

Or cry, ware Goblins! where I go,

But Robin I

Their feats will spy,

And send them home, with ho, ho, ho!

Whene'er such wanderers I meet,

As from their night-sports they trudge home;

With counterfeiting voice I greet

And call them on, with me to roam

Thro' woods, thro' lakes,

Thro' bogs, thro' brakes;

Or else, unseen, with them I go,

All in the nick

To play some trick

And frolic it, with ho, ho, ho!

Sometimes I meet them like a man;

Sometimes an ox, sometimes a hound;

And to a horse I turn me can,

To trip and trot about them round.

But if, to ride,

My back they stride,

More swift than wind away I go,

O'er hedge and lands,

Thro' pools and ponds

I whirry, laughing ho, ho, ho!

When lads and lasses merry be,

With possets and with junkets fine;

Unseen of all the company,

I eat their cakes and sip their wine;

And, to make sport,

I sniff and snort;

And out the candles I do blow:

The maids I kiss;

They shriek—Who's this?

I answer nought but ho, ho, ho!

Yet now and then, the maids to please,

At midnight I card up their wool;

And while they sleep and take their ease,

With wheel to threads their flax I pull.

I grind at mill

Their malt up still;

I dress their hemp, I spin their tow,

If any wake,

And would me take,

I wend me, laughing ho, ho, ho!

When house or hearth doth sluttish lie,

I pinch the maidens black and blue;

The bed-clothes from the bed pull I,

And lay them naked all to view.

'Twixt sleep and wake,

I do them take,

And on the key-cold floor them throw:

If out they cry,

Then forth I fly,

And loudly laugh out ho, ho, ho!

When any need to borrow ought,

We lend them what they do require:

And for the use demand we nought;

Our own is all we do desire.

If to repay

They do delay,

Abroad amongst them then I go,

And, night by night,

I them affright

With pinchings, dreams, and ho, ho, ho!

When lazy queans have nought to do,

But study how to cog and lie;

To make debate and mischief too,

'Twixt one another secretly:

I mark their gloze,

And it disclose,

To them whom they have wrongéd so:

When I have done,

I get me gone,

And leave them scolding, ho, ho, ho!

When men do traps and engines set

In loop-holes, where the vermin creep,

Who from their folds and houses, get

Their ducks and geese, and lambs and sheep;

I spy the gin,

And enter in,

And seem a vermin taken so;

But when they there

Approach me near,

I leap out laughing ho, ho, ho!

By wells and rills, in meadows green,

We nightly dance our heydeguys;

And to our fairy king and queen

We chant our moon-light minstrelsies.

When larks 'gin sing,

Away we fling;

And babes new-born steal as we go,

And elf in bed

We leave instead,

And wend us laughing, ho, ho, ho!

From hag-bred Merlin's time have I

Thus nightly revell'd to and fro:

And for my pranks men call me by

The name of Robin Good-fellow.

Fiends, ghosts, and sprites,

Who haunt the nights,

The hags and goblins do me know;

And beldames old

My feats have told;

So Vale, Vale; ho, ho, ho!

A black-letter broadside, XVIIth cent.

This broadside is found in various editions in the larger collections (Roxburghe Coll., I. 230; Pepys, I. 80; also in the Bagford); the text here given is Percy's collation (as printed in his Reliques) of one or two of the above. The tune of Dulcina was famous; it may be seen in Chappell's Popular Music, 142.