Fire-drake; a fire sometimes seen flying in the night like
a dragon. Common people think it a spirit that keepeth some treasure
hid, but philosophers affirme it to be a great unequal exhalation
inflamed betweene two clouds, the one hot, the other cold, which is the
reason that it also smoketh, the middle part whereof, according to the
proportion of the hot cloud being greater than the rest, maketh it seem
like a bellie, and both ends like unto a head and taill."[134] White,
however, in his "Peripateticall Institutions" (p. 156), calls the
fiery-dragon or fire-drake, "a weaker kind of lightning. Its livid
colors, and its falling without noise and slowly, demonstrate a great
mixture of watery exhalation in it.... 'Tis sufficient for its shape,
that it has some resemblance of a dragon, not the expresse figure."

[133] See "Notes and Queries," 5th series, vol. x. p. 499;
Brand's "Pop. Antiq.," 1849, vol. iii. p. 410; Nares's
"Glossary," vol. i. p. 309.

[134] A "fire-drake" appears to have been also an artificial
firework, perhaps what is now called a serpent. Thus, in
Middleton's "Your Five Gallants" (1607):

"But, like fire-drakes,
Mounted a little, gave a crack and fell."

Among other allusions to the will-o'-the-wisp by Shakespeare, Mr.
Hunter[135] notices one in "King Lear" (iii. 4), where Gloster's torch
being seen in the distance, the fool says, "Look, here comes a walking
fire." Whereupon Edgar replies, "This is the foul fiend,
Flibbertigibbet; he begins at curfew, and walks till the first cock."
"From which," observes Mr. Hunter, "Flibbertigibbet seems to be a name
for the will-o'-the-wisp. Hence the propriety of 'He _begins at curfew_,
and walks till the crowing of the cock,' that is, is seen in all the
dark of the night." It appears that when Shakespeare wrote, "a walking
fire" was a common name for the _ignis fatuus_, as we learn from the
story of "How Robin Goodfellow lead a company of fellows out of their
way:" "A company of young men, having been making merry with their
sweethearts, were, at their coming home, to come over a heath; Robin
Goodfellow, knowing of it, met them, and to make some pastime hee led
them up and downe the heathe a whole night, so that they could not get
out of it, for hee went before them in the shape of a _walking fire_,
which they all saw and followed till the day did appeare; then Robin
left them, and at his departure sp