When house or hearth doth sluttish lie, I pinch the maidens black and blue; The bed-clothes from the bed pull I, And lay them naked all to view. 'Twixt sleep and wake, I do them take, And on the key-cold floor them throw: If out they cry, Then forth I fly, And loudly laugh out ho, ho, ho! When any need to borrow ought, We lend them what they do require: And for the use demand we nought; Our own is all we do desire. If to repay They do delay, Abroad amongst them then I go, And, night by night, I them affright With pinchings, dreams, and ho, ho, ho! When lazy queans have nought to do, But study how to cog and lie; To make debate and mischief too, 'Twixt one another secretly: I mark their gloze, And it disclose, To them whom they have wronged so: When I have done, I get me gone, And leave them scolding, ho, ho, ho! When men do traps and engines set In loop-holes, where the vermin creep, Who from their folds and houses, get Their ducks and geese, and lambs and sheep; I spy the gin, And enter in, And seem a vermin taken so; But when they there Approach me near, I leap out laughing ho, ho, ho! By wells and rills, in meadows green, We nightly dance our heydeguys; And to our fairy king and queen We chant our moon-light minstrelsies. When larks 'gin sing, Away we fling; And babes new-born steal as we go, And elf in bed We leave instead, And wend us laughing, ho, ho, ho! From hag-bred Merlin's time have I Thus nightly revell'd to and fro: And for my pranks men call me by The name of Robin Good-fellow. Fiends, ghosts, and sprites, Who haunt the nights, The hags and goblins do me know; And beldames old My feats have told; So _Vale, Vale_; ho, ho, ho! _A black-letter broadside, XVIIth cent._ * * * * * QUEEN MAB