And like a forester the groves may tread,
Even till the eastern gate, all fiery red,
Opening on Neptune with fair blessed beams,
Turns into yellow gold his salt-green streams.

In the Merry Wives of Windsor, we are introduced to mock-fairies, modelled, of course, after the real ones, but with such additions as the poet's fancy deemed itself authorized to adopt.

Act IV. Scene IV., Mrs. Page, after communicating to Mrs. Ford her plan of making the fat knight disguise himself as the ghost of Herne the hunter, adds

Nan Page, my daughter, and my little son,

And three or four more of their growth, we'll dress
Like urchins, ouphes *, and fairies, green and white,
With rounds of waxen tapers on their heads,
And rattles in their hands.

Then let them all encircle him about,
And, fairy-like, to pinch the unclean knight,
And ask him why that hour of fairy revel
In their so sacred paths he dares to tread
In shape profane.

* Urchin is properly a hedgehog, Fr. oursin. Ouph, Steevens complacently tells us, in the Teutonic language, is a fairy; if by Teutonic he means the German, and we know of no other, he merely showed his ignorance. Ouph is the same as oaf, formerly spelt aulf, and is formed from elf by the usual change of l into u.

And

My Nan shall be the queen of all the fairies,
Finely attired in a robe of white.

In Act V. Scene V., the plot being all arranged, the Fairy route appears, headed by Sir Hugh, as a Satyr, by ancient Pistol as Hobgoblin, and by Dame Quickly.

Quick. Fairies black, gray, green, and white,
You moonshine revellers and shades of night,
You orphan heirs of fixed destiny'
Attend your office and your quality.

Crier hob-goblin, make the fairy O-yes.

Pist. Elves, list your names! silence, you airy toys!
Cricket, to Windsor chimneys shalt thou leap;

Where fires thou findest unraked, and hearths unswept,
There pinch the maids as blue as bilberry:

Our radiant queen hates sluts and sluttery.

Fals. They are fairies; he that speaks to them shall die. I'll wink and couch: no man their works must eye.

Pist. Where's Pede ?-Go you, and where you find a maid

That, ere she sleeps, has thrice her prayers said,

Raise up the organs of her fantasy,

Sleep she as sound as careless infancy;

But those as sleep and think not on their sins,

Pinch them, arms, legs, backs, shoulders, sides, and shins. Quick. About, about,

Search Windsor castle, elves, within and out;

Strew good luck, ouphes, on every sacred room,

That it may stand till the perpetual doom,

After all the commentators have written, this line is still

unintelligible to us.