The following passage from a writer of the present day proves that in some places the idea of Puck as a spirit haunting the woods and fields is still retained. "The peasantry," says Mr. Allies,[369] "of Alfrick and those parts of Worcestershire, say that they are sometimes what they call _Poake-ledden_, that is, that they are occasionally waylaid in the night by a mischievous sprite whom they call Poake, who leads them into ditches, bogs, pools, and other such scrapes, and then sets up a loud laugh and leaves them quite bewildered in the lurch." This is what in Devon is called being _Pixy-led_. We may observe the likeness here to the Puck of Shakspeare and Drayton, who were both natives of the adjoining county. A further proof perhaps of Puck's rural and extern character is the following rather trifling circumstance. An old name of the fungus named _puffball_ is _puckfist_, which is plainly Puck's-fist, and not _puff-fist_ as Nares conjectured; for its Irish name is _Cos-a-Phooka_, or Pooka's-foot, _i.e._, Puck's-foot. We will add by the way, that the Anglo-Saxon [Old English: Wulfes-fist], Wolf's-fist, is rendered in the dictionaries toadstool, mushroom, and we cannot help suspecting that as wolf and elf were sometimes confounded, and wolf and fist are, in fact, incompatible terms, this was originally [Old English: Ælfes-fist] Elf's-fist, and that the mushrooms meant were not the thick ugly toadstools, the "grislie todestooles," of Spenser, but those delicate fungi called in Ireland _fairy-mushrooms_, and which perhaps in England also were ascribed to the fairies.[370] So much then for Puck; we will now consider some other terms. * * * * * Robin Goodfellow, of whom we have given above a full account, is evidently a domestic spirit, answering in name and character to the Nisse God-dreng of Scandinavia, the Knecht Ruprecht, _i.e._, Robin of Germany. He seems to unite in his person the Boggart and Barguest of Yorkshire. Hob-goblin is, as we have seen, another name of the same spirit. Goblin is the French _gobelin_, German Kobold; Hob is Rob, Robin, Bob; just as Hodge is Roger. We still have the proper names Hobbs, Hobson, like Dix, Dixon, Wills, Wilson; by the way, Hick, _i. e._ Dick, from Richard, still remains in Hicks, Hickson. Robin Hood, though we can produce no instance of it, must, we think, also have been an appellation of this spirit, and been given to the famed outlaw of merry Sherwood, from his sportive character and his abiding in the recesses of the greenwood. The hood is a usual appendage of the domestic spirit.