CHAPTER VI

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PUCK.

"Do you imagine that Robin Goodfellow--a mere name to you--conveys anything like the meaning to your mind that it did to those for whom the name represented a still living belief, and who had the stories about him at their fingers' ends? Or let me ask you, Why did the fairies dance on moonlight nights? or, Have you ever thought why it is that in English literature, and in English literature alone, the fairy realm finds a place in the highest works of imagination?" --F. S. HARTLAND.

In British Faërie there figures prominently a certain "Man in the Oak": according to Keightley, Puck, _alias_ Robin Goodfellow, was known as this "Man in the Oak," and he considers that the word _pixy_ "is evidently Pucksy, the endearing diminutive _sy_ being added to Puck like Bet_sy_, Nan_cy_, Dix_ie_".[255] It is probable that this adjectival _si_ recurring in _sw_eet, _so_oth, _su_ave, _sw_an, etc., may be equated with the Sanscrit _su_, which, as in _sw_astika, is a synonym for the Greek _eu_, meaning soft, gentle, pleasing, and propitious. When used as an affix, this "endearing diminutive" yields _spook_, which was seemingly once "dear little Pook," or "soft, gentle, pleasing, and propitious Puck". In Wales the fairies were known as "Mothers' Blessings," and although spook now carries a sinister sense, there is no more reason to suppose that "dear little Pook" was primarily malignant than to suggest that the Holy _Ghost_ was--in the modern sense--essentially _ghastly_. Skeat suggests that _ghost_ (of uncertain origin) "is perhaps allied to Icelandic _geisa_, to rage like fire, and to Gothic _us-gais-yan_, to terrify". Some may be aghast at this suggestion, others, who cannot conceive the Supreme Sprite except as a raging and consuming fury, will commend it. In the preceding