And winking mary-buds begin
To ope their golden eyes;
With every thing that pretty bin,
My lady sweet arise!
Indeed, the whole country about here is poetic ground: everything
is associated with the idea of Shakespeare. Every old cottage
that I saw I fancied into some resort of his boyhood, where he
had acquired his intimate knowledge of rustic life and manners,
and heard those legendary tales and wild superstitions which he
has woven like witchcraft into his dramas. For in his time, we
are told, it was a popular amusement in winter evenings "to sit
round the fire, and tell merry tales of errant knights, queens,
lovers, lords, ladies, giants, dwarfs, thieves, cheaters,
witches, fairies, goblins, and friars."*
* Scot, in his "Discoverie of Witchcraft," enumerates a of these
fireside fancies: "And they have so fraid us with host
bull-beggars, spirits, witches, urchins, elves, hags, fairies,
satyrs, pans, faunes, syrens, kit with the can sticke, tritons,
centaurs, dwarfes, giantes, imps, calcars, conjurors, nymphes,
changelings, incubus, Robin-goodfellow, the spoorne, the mare,
the man in the oke, the hell-waine, the fier drake, the puckle,
Tom Thombe, hobgoblins, Tom Tumbler, boneless, and such other
bugs, that we were afraid of our own shadowes.
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