and surviving in Spenser; but there are countless analogous forms:
_puckle_, _pixy_, _pisgy_, in English, and perhaps (through Welsh) _bug_,
the old word for _bugbear_, _bogy_, _bogle_, etc.; _puki_ in Icelandic;
_pickel_ in German; and many more.[37]

We may note here the euphemistic tendency to call powerful spirits by
propitiatory names. Just as the Greeks called the Furies "Eumenides," the
benevolent ones, so is Robin called Good-fellow; the ballad of _Tam
Lin_[38] refers to them as "gude neighbours"; the Gaels[39] term a fairy "a
woman of peace"; and Professor Child points out the same fact in relation
to the neo-Greek nereids.[40] Hence also "_sweet_ puck."[41] The names of
the four attendant fairies, Peaseblossom, Cobweb, Moth, and Mustard-seed,
are Shakespeare's invention, chosen perhaps to typify grace, lightness,
speed, and smallness.

The _literary_ sources on which Shakespeare, in writing of fairies,
probably drew--or those, at least, on which he could have drawn--can be
shortly stated. We have already mentioned Scot's _Discovery of Witchcraft_
(1584); this was no doubt the chief source of information regarding Puck or
Robin Goodfellow, as well as of the fairies themselves. Shakespeare was
doubtless also familiar with the treatment accorded to the fairy-world by
Chaucer[42] and Spenser[43] and with the many tales of supernatural beings
in romances like _Huon of Bordeaux_ and others of the Arthurian cycle.
There is also a black-letter tract concerning Robin Goodfellow,[44] but no
one has yet proved that this pamphlet was in print before 1628, the date of
the earliest surviving edition. Ultimately, however, this matters little,
because the tract is evidently drawn largely from oral traditions about
Robin, and so has a source common with that of much of Shakespeare's
fairy-lore.