ake these words:

"'Get you home, you merry lads,
Tell your mammies and your dads,
And all those that newes desire
How you saw a walking fire,
Wenches, that doe smile and lispe,
Use to call me willy-wispe.'"

[135] "New Illustrations of the Life, Studies, and Writings of
Shakespeare," vol. ii. p. 272.

Another allusion to this subject occurs in "The Tempest" (iv. 1), where
Stephano, after Ariel has led him and his drunken companions through
"tooth'd briers, sharp furzes, pricking goss and thorns," and at last
"left them i' the filthy mantled pool," reproaches Caliban in these
words: "Monster, your fairy, which you say is a harmless fairy, has done
little better than played the Jack with us"--that is, to quote Dr.
Johnson's explanation of this passage, "he has played Jack-with-a-lanthorn,
has led us about like an _ignis fatuus_, by which travellers are decoyed
into the mire."[136] Once more, when Puck, in "A Midsummer-Night's
Dream" (iii. 1), speaks of the various forms he assumes in order to
"mislead night wanderers, laughing at their harm," he says:

"Sometime a horse I'll be, sometime a hound,
A hog, a headless bear, sometime a fire."

[136] See Thoms's "Notelets on Shakespeare," p. 59.

Shakespeare, no doubt, here alludes to the will-o'-the wisp, an opinion
shared by Mr. Joseph Ritson,[137] who says: "This Puck, or Robin
Goodfellow, seems likewise to be the illusory candle-holder, so fatal to
travellers, and who is more usually called 'Jack-a-lantern,'[138] or
'Will-with-a-wisp,' and 'Kit-with-the-candlestick.'" Milton, in
"Paradise Lost" (book ix.), alludes to this deceptive gleam in the
following lines:

"A wandering fire
Compact of unctuous vapour, which the night
Condenses, and the cold environs round,
Kindled through agitation to a flame,
Which oft, they say, some evil spirit attends,
Hovering and blazing with delusive light,
Misleads th' amaz'd night-wanderer from his way
To bogs and mires, and oft through pond and pool."[139]

[137] "Fairy Mythology," edited by Hazlitt, 1875, p. 40.

[138] Among the many other names given to this appearance may
be mentioned the following: "Will-a-wisp," "Joan-in-the-wad,"
"Jacket-a-wad," "Peg-a-lantern," "Elf-fire," etc. A
correspondent of "Notes and Queries" (5th series, vol. x. p.
499) says: "The wandering meteor of the moss or fell appears t