The name "Puck" was formerly applied to the whole race of fairies, and not to any individual sprite--_puck_, or _pouke_, being an old word for devil, in which sense it is used in the "Vision of Piers Plowman:"
"Out of the poukes pondfold No maynprise may us fecche."
The Icelandic _puki_ is the same word, and in Friesland and Jutland the domestic spirit is called Puk by the peasantry. In Devonshire, Piskey is the name for a fairy, with which we may compare the Cornish Pixey. In Worcestershire, too, we read how the peasantry are occasionally "poake-ledden," that is, misled by a mischievous spirit called _poake_. And, according to Grose's "Provincial Glossary," in Hampshire they give the name of Colt-pixey to a supposed spirit or fairy, which, in the shape of a horse, neighs, and misleads horses into bogs. The Irish, again, have their Pooka,[8] and the Welsh their Pwcca--both words derived from Pouke or Puck. Mr. Keightley[9] thinks, also, that the Scottish _pawkey_, sly, knowing, may belong to the same list of words. It is evident, then, that the term Puck was in bygone years extensively applied to the fairy race, an appellation still found in the west of England. Referring to its use in Wales, "there is a Welsh tradition to the effect that Shakespeare received his knowledge of the Cambrian fairies from his friend Richard Price, son of Sir John Price, of the Priory of Brecon." It is even claimed that Cwm Pwcca, or Puck Valley, a part of the romantic glen of the Clydach, in Breconshire, is the original scene of the "Midsummer-Night's Dream."[10]
[8] See Croker's "Fairy Legends of South of Ireland," 1862, p. 135.
[10] Wirt Sikes's "British Goblins," 1880, p. 20.
Another of Puck's names was Robin Goodfellow, and one of the most valuable illustrations we have of the "Midsummer-Night's Dream" is a black-letter tract published in London, 1628, under the title of "Robin Goodfellow: His Mad Pranks, and Merry Jests, full of honest mirth, and is a fit medicine for melancholy."[11] Mr. Halliwell-Phillipps,[12] speaking of Robin Goodfellow, says, "there can be no doubt that in the time of Shakespeare the fairies held a more prominent position in our popular literature than can be now concluded from the pieces on the subject that have descended to us." The author of "Tarlton's News out of Purgatory," printed in 1590, assures us that Robin Goodfellow was "famosed in every old wives chronicle for his mad merry pranks;" and we learn from "Henslowe's Diary" that Chettle was the writer of a drama on the adventures of that "merry wanderer of the night." These have disappeared; and time has dealt so harshly with the memory of poor Robin that we might almost imagine his spirit was still leading us astray over massive volumes of antiquity, in a delusive search after documents forever lost; or, rather, perhaps, it is his punishment for the useless journeys he has given our ancestors, misleading night-wanderers, "and laughing at their harm."[13] He is mentioned by Drayton in his "Nymphidia:"