Robin Goodfellow

Robin Goodfellow, better known as Puck, is the archetypal hobgoblin of English folklore — a mischievous household and woodland sprite, neither wholly good nor truly wicked. By night he might thresh the corn, churn the butter and sweep the hearth in return for a bowl of cream left out in thanks; cross or neglect him, and he would sour the milk, tangle the horses' manes and lead benighted travellers astray with his laughter, crying 'Ho, ho, ho!'

He was the son, in some tellings, of the fairy king Oberon, and a shape-shifter who could take the form of a horse, a hare or a will-o'-the-wisp. William Shakespeare fixed his character forever in 'A Midsummer Night's Dream' (c.1595), where Puck serves Oberon and works the play's enchantments, while the chapbook 'Robin Good-Fellow, His Mad Pranks and Merry Jests' (1628) gathered his older lore. He remains the very pattern of the English trickster-fairy.