Note 497 — SCENE II.

Sylvans] MS. “Silence.”—Here again Middleton borrows from Reginald Scot: “And they haue so fraied vs with bull beggers, spirits, witches, vrchens, elues, hags, fairies, satyrs, pans, faunes, sylens [sylvans], kit with the cansticke, tritons, centaurs, dwarfes, giants, imps, calcars, coniurors, nymphes, changlings, Incubus, Robin good-fellowe, the spoorne, the mare, the man in the oke, the hell waine, the fierdrake, the puckle, Tom thombe, hob gobblin, Tom tumbler, boneles, and such other bugs, that we are afraid of our owne shadowes.” Discouerie of Witchcraft, b. vii. c. xv. p. 153, ed. 1584.—Sir W. Scott, having given the above quotation from the work of his namesake, observes: “It would require a better demonologist than I am to explain the various obsolete superstitions which Reginald Scot has introduced, as articles of the old English faith, into the preceding passage. I might indeed say, the Phuca is a Celtic superstition, from which the word Pook, or Puckle, was doubtless derived; and I might conjecture, that the man-in-the-oak was the same with the Erl-König of the Germans; and that the hellwain were a kind of wandering spirits, the descendants of a champion named Hellequin, who are introduced into the romance of Richard sans Peur. But most antiquarians will be at fault concerning the spoorn, Kitt-with-the-candlestick, Boneless, and some others.” Letters on Demonology, &c., p. 174, sec. ed.—Whatever “Hellwain” may be properly, Middleton meant to express by the term some individual spirit: see p. 259, and the 3d scene of act iii.—The words with which Hecate concludes this speech, “A ab hur hus!” are also borrowed from R. Scot’s work, b. xii. c. xiv. p. 244, where they are mentioned as a charm against the toothache.