3-101-387 - "Royal Academy of Arts, London"/Heritage Images

Robin Goodfellow, 1842. Illustrated poem. 'When house or harth doth sluttish lye, I pinch the maidens black and blue; The bed-clothes from the bed pull I, And lay them naked all to view. 'Twixt sleepe and wake, I do them take, And on the key-cold floor them throw: If out they cry, Then forth I fly, And loudly laugh out, ho, ho, ho! When any need to borrowe ought, We lend them what they do require: And for the use demand we nought; Our owne is all we do desire. If to repay, They do delay, Abroad amongst them then I go, And, night by night, I them affright With pinchings, dreames, and ho, ho, ho! When lazie queans have nought to do, But study how to cog and lye; To make debate and mischief too, 'Twixt one another secretlye I mark their gloze, And it disclose, To them whom they have wronged so; When I have done, I get me gone, And leave them scolding, ho, ho, ho! When men do traps and engins set In loop holes, where the vermine creepe, Who from their foldes and houses, get Their duckes and geese, and lambes and sheepe: I spy the gin, And enter in, And seeme a vermine taken so; But when they there Approach me neare, I leap out laughing, ho, ho, ho!' From "The Book of British Ballads, S. C. Hall (ed.) [London: Jeremiah How, 1842-1844] vol. I, p. 89.