"Are you not he
That frights the maidens of the villagery,

* * * * *

Mislead night-wanderers, laughing at their harm?"

We have already mentioned how Queen Mab had the same mischievous humor
in her composition, which is described by Mercutio in "Romeo and Juliet"
(i. 4):

"This is that very Mab
That plats the manes of horses in the night,
And bakes the elflocks in foul sluttish hairs,
Which, once untangled, much misfortune bodes."

Another reprehensible practice attributed to the fairies was that of
carrying off and exchanging children, such being designated
changelings.[45] The special agent in transactions of the sort was also
Queen Mab, and hence Mercutio says:

"She is the fairies' midwife."

And "she is so called," says Mr. Halliwell-Phillipps, "because it was
her supposed custom to steal new-born babes in the night and leave
others in their place." Mr. Steevens gives a different interpretation to
this line, and says, "It does not mean that she was the midwife to the
fairies, but that she was the person among the fairies whose department
it was to deliver the fancies of sleeping men in their dreams, those
children of an idle brain."

[45] This superstition is fully described in chapter on _Birth_.

CHAPTER II.

WITCHES.

In years gone by witchcraft was one of the grossest forms of
superstition, and it would be difficult to estimate the extent of its
influence in this and other countries. It is not surprising that
Shakespeare should have made frequent allusions to this popular belief,
considering how extensively it prevailed in the sixteenth and
seventeenth centuries; the religious and dramatic literature of the
period being full of it. Indeed, as Mr. Williams[46] points out, "what
the vulgar superstition must have been may be easily conceived, when men
of the greatest genius or learning credited the possibility, and not
only a theoretical but possible occurrence, of these infernal
phenomena." Thus, Francis Bacon was "not able to get rid of the
principles upon which the creed was based. Sir Edward Coke, his
contemporary, the most acute lawyer of the age, ventured even to define
the devil's agents in witchcraft. Sir Thomas Browne and Sir Matthew
Hale, in 1664, proved their faith--the one by his solemn testimony in
open court, the other by his still more solemn sentence." Hence, it was
only to be expe