“O then, I see, queen Mab hath been with you, She is the fairy’s midwife, and she comes In shape no bigger than an agate–stone On the fore–finger of an alderman, Drawn with a team of little atomies Athwart men’s noses as they lie asleep; Her waggon–spokes made of long spinner’s legs; The cover, of the wings of grasshoppers; The traces, of the smallest spider’s web; The collars, of the moonshine’s wat’ry beams: Her whip, of cricket’s bone; the lash, of film: Her waggoner, a small grey–coated gnat, Not half so big as a round little worm Pricked from the lazy finger of a maid: Her chariot is an empty hazel–nut, Made by the joiner squirrel, or old grub, Time out of mind the fairies’ coachmakers. And in this state she gallops night by night Through lovers’ brains, and then they dream of love! ... This is that very Mab, That plats the manes of horses in the night; And bakes the elf–locks in foul sluttish hairs, Which, once untangled, much misfortune bodes.” (_Romeo and Juliet._) Ben Jonson, in his “Entertainment of the Queen and Prince at Althrope,” in 1603, describes to come “tripping up the lawn a bevy of fairies attending on Mab their queen, who, falling into an artificial ring that was there cut in the path, began to dance around.”—(_Works_, v. 201.) In the same masque the queen is thus characterised by a satyr:— “This is Mab, the mistress fairy, That doth nightly rob the dairy, And can hurt or help the churning, (As she please) without discerning. She that pinches country–wenches If they rub not clean their benches, And with sharper nails remembers When they rake not up their embers; But, if so they chance to feast her, In a shoe she drops a tester. This is she that empties cradles, Takes out children, puts in ladles; Trains forth midwives in their slumber, With a sieve the holes to number; And thus leads them from her boroughs, Home through ponds and water–furrows. She can start our franklin’s daughters, In their sleep, with shrieks and laughters, And on sweet St. Agnes’ night Feed them with a promised sight, Some of husbands, some of lovers, Which an empty dream discovers.”