masque
of "Love Restored."[15]

[11] This is reprinted in Hazlitt's "Fairy Tales, Legends, and
Romances, illustrating Shakespeare and other English Writers,"
1875, p. 173.

[12] "Illustrations of the Fairy Mythology of the
Midsummer-Night's Dream," printed for the Shakespeare Society,
p. viii.

[13] See Brand's "Pop. Antiq.," 1849, vol. ii. pp. 508-512.

[14] Thoms's "Three Notelets on Shakespeare," p. 88.

[15] See Nares's Glossary, vol. ii. p. 695.

Another epithet applied to Puck is "Lob," as in the "Midsummer-Night's
Dream" (ii. 1), where he is addressed by the fairy as

"Thou lob of spirits."[16]

With this we may compare the "lubber-fiend" of Milton, and the following
in Beaumont and Fletcher's "Knight of the Burning Pestle" (iii. 4):
"There is a pretty tale of a witch that had the devil's mark about her,
that had a giant to be her son, that was called Lob-lye-by-the-Fire."
Grimm[17] mentions a spirit, named the "Good Lubber," to whom the bones
of animals used to be offered at Manseld, in Germany. Once more, the
phrase of "being in," or "getting into Lob's pound," is easy of
explanation, presuming Lob to be a fairy epithet--the term being
equivalent to Poake-ledden or Pixy-led.[18] In "Hudibras" this term is
employed as a name for the stocks in which the knight puts Crowdero:

"Crowdero, whom in irons bound,
Thou basely threw'st into _Lob's pound_."

[16] Mr. Dyce considers that Lob is descriptive of the contrast
between Puck's square figure and the airy shapes of the other
fairies.

[17] "Deutsche Mythologie," p. 492.

[18] See Keightley's "Fairy Mythology," pp. 318, 319.

It occurs, also, in Massinger's "Duke of Milan" (iii. 2), where it means
"behind the arras:"

"Who forc'd the gentleman, to save her credit,
To marry her, and say he was the party
Found in Lob's pound."

The allusion by Shakespeare to the "Will-o'-the-Wisp," where he speaks
of Puck as "sometime a fire," is noticed elsewhere, this being one of
the forms under which this fairy was supposed to play his midnight
pranks.

Referring, in the next place, to the several names of Shakespeare's
fairies, we may quote from "The Merry Wives of Windsor" (iv. 3), where
Mrs. Page speaks of "urchins, ouphes, and fairies"--urchin having been
an appellation for one class of fairies. In the "Maydes' Metamorphosis"
of Lyly (1600), we find fairies, elves, and urchi