“Thou speak’st aright; I am that merry wanderer of the night. I jest to Oberon, and make him smile, When I a fat and bean–fed horse beguile, Neighing in likeness of a filly foal: And sometimes lurk I in a gossip’s bowl, In very likeness of a roasted crab; And, when she drinks, against her lips I bob, And on her wither’d dewlap pour the ale. The wisest aunt, telling the saddest tale, Sometime for three–foot stool mistaketh me; Then slip I from her bum, down topples she, And ‘tailor,’ cries, and falls into a cough; And then the whole quire hold their hips, and laugh; And waxen in their mirth, and neeze, and swear, A merrier hour was never wasted there.” His usual exclamation in this play is Ho, ho, ho! “Ho, ho, ho! Coward, why com’st thou not?” So in _Grim, the Collier of Croydon_:— “Ho, ho, ho! my masters! No good fellowship! Is Robin Goodfellow a bugbear grown, That he is not worthy to be bid sit down?” In the song printed by Peck, he concludes every stanza with Ho, ho, ho! “If that the bowle of curds and creame were not duly set out for Robin Goodfellow, the frier, and Sisse the dairymaid, why, then, either the pottage was so burnt to next day in the pot, or the cheeses would not curdle, or the butter would not come, or the ale in the fat never would have good head. But if a Peter–penny, or an housle–egge were behind, or a patch of tythe unpaid, then ’ware of bull–beggars, spirits,” etc. This frolicsome spirit thus describes himself in Jonson’s masque of _Love Restored_: “Robin Goodfellow, he that sweeps the hearth and the house clean, riddles for the country maids, and does all their other drudgery, while they are at hot–cockles; one that has conversed with your court spirits ere now.” Having recounted several ineffectual attempts he had made to gain admittance, he adds: “In this despair, when all invention and translation too failed me, I e’en went back and stuck to this shape you see me in of mine own, with my broom and my canles, and came on confidently.” The mention of his broom reminds us of a passage in another play, _Midsummer Night’s Dream_, where he tells the audience— “I am sent with broom before, To sweep the dust behind the door.” He is likewise one of the _dramatis personæ_ in the old play of _Wily Beguiled_, in which he says— “Tush! fear not the dodge. I’ll rather put on my flashing red nose, and my flaming face, and come wrap’d in a calf–skin, and cry _Bo, bo_! I’ll pay the scholar, I warrant thee.”—(Harsnet’s _Declaration_, London, 1604, 4to.) His character, however, in this piece, is so diabolical, and so different from anything one could expect in Robin Good–fellow, that it is unworthy of further quotation. He appears, likewise, in another, entitled _Grim, the Collier of Croydon_, in which he enters “in a suit of leather close to his body; his face and hands coloured russet colour, with a flail.”