But this Oberon of _Huon of Bordeaux_ is mortal, and is not pictured as being abnormal in stature, any more than Mider. Shakespeare's Oberon and Mider are invisible (or can make themselves so), both have supernatural powers, and both are immortal. The question of the _size_ conventionally attributed to the fairies is of importance, because it shows that a confusion existed between the fays of romance with the elves of folk-superstition. Elves and their numerous counterparts in all European countries and elsewhere--we have just given a list of names which can easily be extended--are above all things _small_; they also are earth-dwellers, living in hills or underground chambers, and originally, perhaps, were supposed to be mischievous by nature. But even in Shakespeare's day, it would be impossible to say that fairies were benevolent and elves malevolent; the two kinds and their respective characteristics were already confused. Robin Goodfellow, the Puck, or Hobgoblin, is however essentially mischievous. In a book contemporary with our play we find:-- "Think me to be one of those _Familiares Lares_ that were rather pleasantly disposed than endued with any hurtful influence, as Hob Thrust, Robin Goodfellow, and suchlike spirits, as they term them, of the buttery, famoused in every old wives' chronicle for their mad merry pranks."[84] But four years later, as we have seen,[85] Nashe confounds elves with fairies in deriving all alike from fauns and dryads. Robin is "mad-merry," "jocund and facetious," "a cozening idle friar or some such rogue" [in origin], and so forth--simply described by Shakespeare as a "shrewd and knavish sprite." The forms of mischief in which he delights are described in _A Midsummer-Night's Dream_, II. i. 33-57, and all these "gests" may be found in the contemporary Robin Goodfellow literature;[86] though we have observed that some of the functions attributed to Queen Mab in Mercutio's famous speech[87] belong rightly to Robin.[88] Thus we see--to take into consideration but a few points of the myth--that the fairy-superstition and the elf-superstition were melted together in the popular pre-Shakespearean mind, and that Shakespeare himself, making a new division of the characteristics of the two, yet re-welded the whole into one realm by putting the Puck in subjection under the fairy king. The main characteristics of Shakespeare's fairies, then, may be summarised shortly:--[89] They are a community under a king and queen, who hold a court; they are very small, light, swift, elemental; they share in the life of nature; they are fond of dancing and singing; they are invisible and immortal; they prefer night, and midnight is their favourite hour; they fall in love with mortals, steal babies and leave changelings, and usurp the function of Hymen in blessing the marriage-bed. Oberon, "king of shadows," can apparently see things hidden from Puck.[90]