Puck

The maids of a well-run Elizabethan farmhouse knew the rule: scour the hearth, set a bowl of cream on the warm stone, and go to bed without looking back. In the small hours something crossed the threshold. The quern turned by itself, malt and mustard ground fine in the dark, the broom hissed across the flagstones while the house slept. By morning the work was done, the cream was gone, and under the eaves a low laugh, ho ho ho, was already fading.

That was Puck on a good night. The English have called him Robin Goodfellow, Hobgoblin, Hob and plain Puck, and before he was a character he was a category. The Old English puca was a common word for a goblin or demon, with cousins scattered across the map: Old Norse puki, Welsh pwca, Cornish Bucca, Irish puca. Which language coined him first is still argued, though the Germanic forms are the older ones on record. The medieval English used the word for something far worse than a prankster. Langland’s Piers Plowman speaks of “hell’s pouke” and of souls held fast in the pouke’s pinfold, a devil’s holding pen with no comedy about it at all.

Then England changed its mind about him. By the reign of Elizabeth the hell-devil had shrunk into a farm spirit who worked for dairy goods. Reginald Scot, cataloguing his country’s bugbears in The Discoverie of Witchcraft in 1584, recorded that grandmothers’ maids once set out a bowl of milk for Robin Goodfellow as payment for grinding malt and mustard and sweeping the house at midnight. Scot thought the whole business a childish delusion. He also wrote it down carefully, which is why we still have it.

What Puck looked like depended on who was telling it. The pamphlet printers of the early seventeenth century sold him as a shaggy little man with short horns and the legs of a goat, a broom over one shoulder and a ring of dancers capering round him. Shakespeare’s fairies know him by his works rather than his face. He lists his own repertoire with some pride: a filly foal to tease a fat horse, a roasted crab apple lurking in an old gossip’s bowl of ale, bobbing against her lip so the drink slops down her withered neck, a three-legged stool that slides out from under an aunt in the middle of her saddest story and drops her on the floor. On other nights he goes as horse, hound, hog, headless bear and running fire, herding intruders through bog and briar until dawn.

The fullest account of where he came from was printed in 1628, in a penny pamphlet called Robin Goodfellow, His Mad Pranks and Merry Jests. There Robin is a half-blood, the son of Oberon the fairy king and a country girl, a boy so given to mischief that he ran away from home young. His fairy father found him anyway, and instead of punishing him granted him the power to take whatever shape he pleased, a gift Robin spent freely on knaves, misers and anyone foolish enough to walk home drunk. Each prank ends the same way, with the same laugh rolling out of the dark: ho ho hoh.

Shakespeare took this village prankster and gave him the best seat in the play. In A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Puck is Oberon’s jester and errand-runner, the “shrewd and knavish sprite” who boasts he can put a girdle round about the earth in forty minutes. Sent to fetch the juice of a magic flower and charm a disdainful Athenian’s eyes, he anoints the wrong Athenian, and four lovers spend the night chasing each other through the wood in a knot of misdirected passion. His masterpiece is simpler. He finds a weaver named Bottom rehearsing a play among the trees and quietly replaces the man’s head with a donkey’s. Titania, the fairy queen, wakes under the love-charm, sees the ass-headed weaver glowing in the moonlight, and dotes on him while Puck watches from the shadows. Lord, what fools these mortals be, he reports, and it is hard to build a case against him.

Three centuries later Kipling dug him out of a Sussex hillside in Puck of Pook’s Hill and called him the oldest Old Thing in England, which by then was roughly true. Few beings have run so long an arc: devil, hobgoblin, jester, national mascot.

His powers stayed constant through every demotion. He changes shape at will, animal, object or flame. He moves with absurd speed and works unseen, a full night’s labour of grinding, threshing and sweeping done between midnight and cockcrow. Out of doors he is a misleader, borrowing lights and voices so that night walkers follow him off the path, then leaving them mired while he laughs at their harm.

His limits are just as old. He can be bought with a bowl of cream. He answers to flattery, doing kindnesses for those who call him sweet Puck and Goodfellow, and turns spiteful where he is mocked or the house is kept slovenly. He is a creature of darkness in the mildest sense, doing his work by night and quitting the field at dawn. And he shares the strange clause of the English household spirits: pay him honest wages of clothes instead of cream and he takes offence and leaves forever. Shakespeare, who knew all this, still trusted him with the last word of the play. The old devil of Piers Plowman steps forward, asks the audience to pardon the shadows, and promises to mend. The audience always does, and he never mends.

Frequently Asked Questions

Is Puck the same as Robin Goodfellow?

Yes. Puck and Robin Goodfellow are two names for the same trickster sprite of English folklore. Puck began as a common noun, the Old English puca, meaning a goblin or demon, while Robin Goodfellow arose as a flattering nickname meant to keep the spirit friendly, and by Shakespeare’s time the two names had merged into one figure who is called both in A Midsummer Night’s Dream.

What does Puck do in A Midsummer Night’s Dream?

Puck serves as jester and errand-runner to Oberon, the fairy king. He fetches the magic love-juice flower, mistakenly charms the wrong Athenian lover’s eyes, gives the weaver Bottom a donkey’s head so that the enchanted queen Titania falls in love with him, and speaks the play’s closing apology to the audience.

Is Puck good or evil?

Neither reliably. In medieval England the word pouke meant a devil, and Langland’s Piers Plowman uses it that way, but the Elizabethan Puck is a prankster rather than a menace. He misleads night travellers and pinches the lazy, yet grinds malt and sweeps the house by night for households that leave him cream and speak of him kindly.

What powers does Puck have?

Puck is a shapeshifter who appears as a horse, hound, hog, headless bear, fire, a stool, or a crab apple floating in a drink. He is also supernaturally fast, boasting in Shakespeare’s play that he can circle the earth in forty minutes, and he misleads travellers at night with borrowed lights and voices while doing invisible housework before dawn.

How do you get on Puck’s good side?

Leave out a bowl of cream or milk and speak of him with respect, using names like sweet Puck or Robin Goodfellow. Households that did so traditionally found their malt ground and floors swept by morning, but a gift of clothes ends his service forever, a quirk Puck shares with the brownie and other English household spirits.

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