"
[Footnote 1: For instance, an eye without a head.--Ibid.]
[Footnote 2: The Tempest, II. ii. 10.]
[Footnote 3: Ibid. I. ii. 198.]
[Footnote 4: A Midsummer Night's Dream, II. i. 39; III. i. 111.]
[Footnote 5: I. ii. 301-318.]
[Footnote 6: III. iii. 53.]
[Footnote 7: IV. i. 166.]
52. Puck's favourite forms seem to have been more outlandish than
Ariel's, as might have been expected of that malicious little spirit. He
beguiles "the fat and bean-fed horse" by
"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 withered dewlap pour the ale.
The wisest aunt, telling the saddest tale,
Sometime for three-foot stool[1] mistaketh me;
Then slip I from her, and down topples she."
And again:
"Sometime a horse I'll be, sometime a hound,
A hog, a headless bear, sometime a fire;
And neigh, and bark, and grunt, and roar, and burn,
Like horse, hound, hog, bear, fire, at every turn."[2]
With regard to this last passage, it is worthy of note that in the year
1584, strange news came out of Somersetshire, entitled "A Dreadful
Discourse of the Dispossessing of one Margaret Cowper, at Ditchet, from
a Devil in the Likeness of a Headless Bear."[3]
[Footnote 1: A Scotch witch, when leaving her bed to go to a sabbath,
used to put a three-foot stool in the vacant place; which, after charms
duly mumbled, assumed the appearance of a woman until her
return.
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