*Ø* Blogmanac | June 16 | A midsummer night’s imp

Watch out, watch out, there are imps about! Charles Kightly in his The Perpetual Almanack of Folklore (Thames and Hudson, 1987) tells us that the red-stalked Herb Robert (Geranium robertianum) now blooms around English houses. (In North America, however, it is a noxious weed.) Herb Robert is also known as Death-come-quickly, Robin's eye, Robin hood, Robin-i'-th'-hedge, Stinking Bob, Stinker Bobs and Wren flower.

Weed or not, beware how you treat it, for it is Robin Goodfellow's flower and he might direct a snake to bite you, especially if you destroy it.


Robin Goodfellow is an English imp, a trickster from the woods. As a forest dweller, he symbolises the pagan (wood-dwelling) pre-Christian peoples who the Church worked hard at converting from their wicked ways. Robin is a cognate of the famous European Green Man (a name coined by Lady Raglan in 1939 for a medieval image usually found in churches), and of Robin Hood. The English sometimes called him Puck, frequently representing him as a goat, while the Irish knew similar fantastic beings as Pooka. In Killorglin, County Kerry, Ireland annually on August 10-12, a goat is still the mascot of the ancient Puck’s Fair. We will recall that the forest-dwelling Pan of classical times, and satyrs like him, are part goat.

Shakespeare portrays him in Midsummer Night’s Dream as Puck. An engraving from Robin Goodfellow, His Mad Pranckes and Merry Jests (1639) shows him with cloven hooves and a prominent erection, surrounded by a coven of witches. Brewer’s Dictionary of Phrase and Fable describes Robin Goodfellow thus:

A ‘drudging fiend,’ and merry domestic fairy, famous for mischievous pranks and practical jokes. At night-time he will sometimes do little services for the family over which he presides. The Scotch call this domestic spirit a brownie; the Germans, kobold or Knecht Ruprecht. The Scandinavians called it Nissë God-dreng. Puck, the jester of Fairy-court, is the same.

Puck is the British Isles version of the lusty pagan Pan whose erotic appetites so disgusted the Christian authorities. In the Inquisition’s infamous Malleus Maleficarum (‘Hammer of the Witches’), of 1486, by the monks Heinrich Kramer and James Sprenger, Part 1, Question 3 deals with the origins of ‘familiar spirits’. It concludes ...

Satyrs are they who are called Pans in Greek and Incubi in Latin. And they are called Incubi from their practise of overlaying, that is debauching. For they often lust lecherously after women, and copulate with them; and the Gauls name them Dusii, because they are diligent in this beastliness.

For those who fear this forest imp, putting out a cup of milk for Robin Goodfellow is one way his impishness might be placated. Reginald Scot, in Discovery of Witchcraft, 1584, wrote:

Your grandam's maids were wont to set a bowl of milk before him … for grinding of malt or mustard, and sweeping the house at midnight. He would chafe exceedingly, if the maid of the goodwife of the house, having compassion of his nakedness, laid any clothes for him. For in that case he sayeth. "What have we here? Hempen, Hampen, here will I never more tread nor stampen.

Our last word today goes to the Bard, who wrote of Puck:

Either I mistake your shape and making quite,
Or else you are that shrewd and knavish sprite
Call'd Robin Goodfellow; are you not he
That frights the maidens of the villagery;
Skim milk, and sometimes labour in the quern
And bootless make the breathless housewife churn;
And sometime make the drink to bear no barm;
Mislead night wanderers, laughing at their harm?
Those that Hobgoblin call you, and sweet Puck,
You do their work, and they should have good luck.
A Midsummer Night's Dream ii. 1
William Shakespeare, 1594

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