And winking mary-buds begin
To ope their golden eyes;
With every thing that pretty bin,
My lady sweet arise!
Indeed the whole country about here is poetic ground: every thing is
associated with the idea of Shakspeare. Every old cottage that I
saw, I fancied into some resort of his boyhood, where he had
acquired his intimate knowledge of rustic life and manners, and
heard those legendary tales and wild superstitions which he has
woven like witchcraft into his dramas. For in his time, we are told,
it was a popular amusement in winter evenings "to sit round the
fire, and tell merry tales of errant knights, queens, lovers, lords,
ladies, giants, dwarfs, thieves, cheaters, witches, fairies,
goblins, and friars."*
* Scot, in his "Discoverie of Witchcraft," enumerates a host of
these fireside fancies. "And they have so fraid us with
bull-beggars, spirits, witches, urchins, elves, hags, fairies, satyrs,
pans, faunes, syrens, kit with the can sticke, tritons, centaurs,
dwarfes, giantes, imps, calcars, conjurors, nymphes, changelings,
incubus, Robin-good-fellow, the spoorne, the mare, the man in the oke,
the hell-waine, the fier drake, the puckle, Tom Thombe, hobgoblins,
Tom Tumbler, boneless, and such other bugs, that we were afraid of our
own shadowes.
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