Puck

Robin Goodfellow

Puck is a mythological fairy or mischievous nature sprite. Puck is also a generalised personification of land spirits. Whilst being an aspect of Robin Goodfellow, he is also hob and Will-o'-the-wisp.

Etymology
The Old English puca is a kind of half-tamed woodland sprite, leading folk astray with echoes and lights in nighttime woodlands (like the German and Dutch Weisse Frauen and Witte Wieven and the French Dames Blanches, all "White Ladies"), or coming into the farmstead and souring milk in the churn.

The Old English word occurs mainly in placenames. According to the Oxford English Dictionary, the etymology of the name Puck is "unsettled", and it is not clear whether its origin is Germanic (cf. Old Norse puki, Old Swedish puke, Icelandic puki, Frisian Puk), or Celtic (Welsh pwca[1] and Irish púca). Etymology Online is in favour of puck being the English cognate of the Norse puki (and thus the other Germanic variants of puck) and also related to the English word pug. One inference would surmise that a theoretical Proto-Indo-European original for both is earlier than the linguistic split.

According to Paul Devereux, the names of various creatures from Celtic folklore, including the Irish, púca, Welsh, "pwca" or "pwca", could be from the same Celtic family as the term "pixies" (in Cornwall, "Piskies"), however "piskie" could be related to the Swedish word "pyske" meaning "small fairy".

Other likely names:

• Bosworth and Toller list only "púcel" (puucel) in Old English.
• In Friesland, there is a 'Puk'.
• In old German, the 'putz' or 'butz' is a being not unlike the original English Puck.
• In Icelandic a 'Púki' is a little devil. 'Púkinn' with the definite article suffix "-inn", "The Puck", means the Devil.
• The 'Puk' (or the Draug) in Norwegian is a water sprite, a supernatural being of evil power.
• In modern Cornwall folklore are Buccas, good and bad.

The folklore of Puck was magisterially assembled by William Bell, in two volumes that appeared in 1852 that have been called a "monument to nineteenth-century antiquarianism gone rampant."

Since, if you "speak of the Devil" he will appear, Puck's euphemistic "disguised" name is "Robin Goodfellow" or "Hobgoblin", in which "Hob" may substitute for "Rob" or may simply refer to the "goblin of the hearth" or hob. The name Robin is Middle English in origin, deriving from Old French Robin, the pet form for the name Robert (which had cognates in the Old English Hrodberht and Old German Rodbert or Hrodebert, all derived from the Proto-Germanic hrôdberxtas. See Robert). The earliest reference to "Robin Goodfellow" cited by the Oxford English Dictionary is from 1531. After Meyerbeer's successful opera Robert le Diable (1831), neo-medievalists and occultists began to apply the name Robin Goodfellow to the Devil, with appropriately extravagant imagery.

If you had the knack, Puck might do minor housework for you, quick fine needlework or butter-churning, which could be undone in a moment by his knavish tricks if you fell out of favor with him. "Those that Hob-goblin call you, and sweet Puck, / You do their work, and they shall have good luck" said one of William Shakespeare's fairies. Shakespeare's characterization of "shrewd and knavish" Puck in A Midsummer Night's Dream may have revived flagging interest in Puck.

According to Brewer's Dictionary of Phrase and Fable (1898):

[Robin Goodfellow is a] "drudging fiend", and merry domestic fairy, famous for mischievous pranks and practical jokes. At night-time he will sometimes do little services for the family over which he presides. The Scots call this domestic spirit a brownie; the Germans, kobold or Knecht Ruprecht. Scandinavians called it Nisse Goddräng. Puck, the jester of Fairy-court, is the same.