Page:Stories from Old English Poetry-1899.djvu/168

146 of the two lovers, and the wood where they were to meet.

In one of the fairy circles of this wood, near Athens, Oberon met, at eventide, his ready follower, the goblin Puck, whose merry pranks had set all the country round in an uproar. He it was who had stolen the thick cream from flowing pans; had plaited elf-locks in the tresses of the maids; had charmed the churn so that it would not yield its stores of yellow butter to the vexed housewife, and was the eager furtherer of all sorts of mischief. Now he waited to do the bidding of the angry Oberon.

The fairy king told him of a magic flower, purple in hue, which grew in rare places, known to none but himself, of which the juice, squeezed upon the sleeping eyes of lovers, should compel them to doat upon whomever their first waking glance should fall on. He would squeeze some of this fateful juice on the drowsy lids of Titania when she slept in her bower close by, and place before her some hideous monster whom her waking eyes should fix upon, and, so enchanted should love. Then the scheming Oberon would obtain Titania’s changeling while she was engrossed with this new passion, and, after that, release her from this injurious spell. Instructed how to find it, Puck sped on fleet wings after the flower.