_Puck_ is strictly not a proper name; and in the quartos and folios of _A Midsummer-Night's Dream_, Puck, Robin, and Robin Goodfellow are used indiscriminately. In no place in the text is he addressed as "Puck"; it is always "Robin"[34] (once[35] "Goodfellow" is added). In the last lines of the play he twice refers to himself as "_an_ honest Puck" and "_the_ Puck," [36] showing that the word is originally a substantive. Dr. J.A.H. Murray has very kindly allowed the slips of the _New English Dictionary_ which contain notes for the article 'Puck' to be inspected; his treatment of the word will be awaited with much interest. The earliest and most important reference is to Prof. A.S. Napier's _Old English Glosses_ (1900), 191, where in a list of glosses of the eleventh century to Aldhelm's _Aenigmata_ occurs "larbula [i. e. larvula], _puca_." Prof. Napier notes that O.E. puca, "a goblin," whence N.E. _Puck_, is a well authenticated word. Dr. Bradley suggests that the source might be a British word, from which the Irish _puca_ would be borrowed; this word _pooka_, as well as the allied _poker_, has already been treated in the _N.E.D._ _Puck_, _pouke_, we find in O.E. (Old English Miscellany, _E.E.T.S._, 76), in Piers Plowman, and surviving in Spenser; but there are countless analogous forms: _puckle_, _pixy_, _pisgy_, in English, and perhaps (through Welsh) _bug_, the old word for _bugbear_, _bogy_, _bogle_, etc.; _puki_ in Icelandic; _pickel_ in German; and many more.[37] We may note here the euphemistic tendency to call powerful spirits by propitiatory names. Just as the Greeks called the Furies "Eumenides," the benevolent ones, so is Robin called Good-fellow; the ballad of _Tam Lin_[38] refers to them as "gude neighbours"; the Gaels[39] term a fairy "a woman of peace"; and Professor Child points out the same fact in relation to the neo-Greek nereids.[40] Hence also "_sweet_ puck."[41] The names of the four attendant fairies, Peaseblossom, Cobweb, Moth, and Mustard-seed, are Shakespeare's invention, chosen perhaps to typify grace, lightness, speed, and smallness.