Puck

   Although 'Puck' is now mainly thought of as the personal name of one character in Shakespeare's Midsummer Night's Dream, it is in fact an ancient word, found both in Germanic and in Celtic languages, for a demon, 'goblin, or troublesome 'fairy. In medieval and Elizabethan English, the connections can be quite sinister; Langland calls Hell 'the poukes poundfold', and Spenser, calling down blessings on a newly married couple, prays that they may be safe from fires, lightning, witches, 'the Pouke and other evill sprights'. But Shakespeare's Puck is only a mischievous trickster who boasts of shape-changing and leading travellers astray; like a helpful domestic 'brownie he arrives at the end of the play, broom in hand, to sweep the house so that the fairies may bless it. The name 'Puck' appears in two Sussex variants of the story of the man who spies on his fairy helpers, one published in 1854 and the other in 1875. A farmer (or a carter) who realizes someone has been secretly threshing his corn (or feeding his horses) watches two small fairies toiling at these tasks until one says to the other, 'I say, Puck, I sweats, do you sweat?' The man bursts out laughing (or cursing), and the fairies rush off; he falls sick and pines away (or his horses do) (Simpson, 1973: 55-7). Also in the mid-19th century, being 'poake-led' was a dialect term in the Midlands and west of England for having lost one's way at night or feeling bewildered and confused. Briggs, 1959.