One of the most popular characters in English folklore of the last thousand years has been the faerie, goblin, devil or imp known by the name of Puck or Robin Goodfellow.

The Welsh called him Pwca, which is pronounced the same as his Irish incarnation Phouka, Pooka or Puca. These are far from his only names.
 

Parallel words exist in many ancient languages - puca in Old English, puki in Old Norse, puke in Swedish, puge in Danish, puks in Low German, pukis in Latvia and Lithuania -- mostly with the original meaning of a demon, devil or evil and malignant spirit ... Because of this similarity it is uncertain whether the original puca sprang from the imaginative minds of the Scandinavians, the Germans or the Irish.

-Gillian Edwards, Hobgoblin and Sweet Puck p.143
 

As a shape-shifter, Puck has had many appearances over the years. He's been in the form of animals, like how the Phouka can become a horse, eagle or ass. He's been a rough, hairy creature in many versions. One Irish story has him as an old man. He's been pictured like a brownie or a hobbit. In some paintings, he looks like Pan from Greek mythology. In others he looks like an innocent child. And a modern cartoon show portrays him as a silver-haired elf.

Puck used his shape-shifting to make mischief. For example, the Phouka would turn into a horse and lead people on a wild ride, sometimes dumping them in water. The Welsh Pwca would lead travels with a lantern and then blow it out when they were at the edge of a cliff. Being misled by a Puck (sometimes the legends speak of Pucks, Pookas and Robin Goodfellows in the plural) was known in the Midlands as being "pouk-ledden."

That's a lot like the phrase Pixy-led, which described a similar action on the part of the Somerset faeries known as pixies. Some believe the term Pixy is derived from Puck. Yet another expression for being lost is "Robin Goodfellow has been with you tonight." There's a reference to this at least as early as 1531.

Robin Goodfellow is one of the faeries known as hobgoblins or just hobs. Hob is a short form for the name Robin or Robert ("the goblin named Robin".) Robin itself was a medieval nickname for the devil. Robin Goodfellow was not only famous for shape-shifting and misleading travellers. He was also a helpful domestic sprite much like the brownies. He would clean houses and such in exchange for some cream or milk. If offered new clothes, he'd stop cleaning. There are stories of the Phouka and Pwca doing similar deeds.

Ironically, Reginald Scot wrote in 1584 that belief in Robin Goodfellow was not as strong as it had been a century earlier. In fact, Robin was about to get some big breaks in Renaissance show business.

There's a record for a Robin Goodfellow ballad in 1588. And a little less than a decade later, William Shakespeare gave his Puck the name and nature of the more benevolent Robin Goodfellow. However, Shakespeare's Puck is more closely tied to the fairy court than most Pucks or Robin Goodfellows. Here's a long quotation from A Midsummer Night's Dream. It's from a meeting between Puck and one of Titania's fairies. I think it sums up Robin Goodfellow's nature better than I could.
 

FAIRY
Either I mistake your shape and making quite,
Or else you are that shrewd and knavish sprite
Called Robin Goodfellow. Are not you 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-wanders, laughing at their harm?
Those that Hobgoblin call you, and sweet Puck,
You do their work, and they shall have good luck.
Are you not he?


PUCK
Thou speakest aright;
I am that merry wanderer of the night.
I jest to Oberon, and make him smile
When I a fat and bean-fed horse beguile,
Neighing in likeness of a filly foal;
And sometime 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 mistaketh me;
Then slip I from her bum, down topples she,
And 'tailor' cries, and falls into a cough;
And then the whole quire hold their hips and laugh,
And waxen in their mirth, and neeze, and swear
A merrier hour was never wasted there.


-- A Midsummer Night's Dream, Act II, scene i
 

Robin Goodfellow appeared in more plays around 1600. And there were many 17th century broadside ballads about him. Click here to see two of these ballads. In these ballads, Robin Goodfellow is the son of Oberon, the fairy king, and a mortal woman. He pulls pranks, shape-shifts into various animals and the foolish fire known as the Will O' The Wisp, gets into trouble and does the kind of thing described in Shakespeare's play. Robin's trademark laugh is "Ho Ho Ho!" One 1628 ballad song may have written by Shakespeare's drinking buddy, the great Jacobean (in the reign of James I, the king after Elizabeth I) playwright Ben Jonson.

And Ben Jonson certainly knew his tricksters. The Puck-Hairy or Robin-Goodfellow is a character in his unfinished Robin Hood play, The Sad Shepherd.

There may be a connection between Robin Hood and Robin Goodfellow. Many Pagans feel Robin Hood was originally a faerie or Pagan God. I think that case is overstated, as there is little magic in the earliest Robin Hood tales. But still, the two Robin have some things in common. Both had a penchant for giving travellers a hard time. Puck was a shape-shifter, and Robin Hood a master of disguise. And Gillian Edwards notes that the Goodfellow in Robin Goodfellow's name could either mean a boon companion or thief.  "If you were one of Hood's archers and looked upon him as a boon companion, or the Sheriff of Nottingham and pursued him as a thief, you might consider him equally well-named Robin Goodfellow." Since the Robin Goodfellow ballads appear later than the Robin Hood ones, it's possible that the faerie may have taken his name from the outlaw -- not the other way around.

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