Page:The Folk-Lore Journal Volume 3 1885.djvu/163

Rh combat. Then was Mab moved; and she hied her to "the Queen of Shades" to ask her to end the quarrel. The champions met, and so similar were their equipments "that a man would almost swear that either had been either." Oberon had Tomalin for his second and Pigwiggen had Tom Thum; "their furious steeds began to neigh"—imagine neighing earwigs;—but staves were placed in rest until an oath had been administered that, on their knightly faith and troth, the combatants would have no recourse to magic arts, but try the cause with simple open arms. A fearful fight ensued. The reader is breathless as to the upshot of it, when Proserpina appears, a dea ex machinâ, bearing a bag of Styx fog and a bottle of Lethe water. She empties her poke over the champions, and bewilders them even as Puck bewildered Demetrius and Lysander. Then she persuades them to drink of her flask; and this is no sooner done than all memory of the casus belli fades from the minds of Oberon and Pigwiggen and from those of their henchmen, who have but just tasted of the potent water. Mab and her maidens do not even sip, and all the laugh is on their side. Oberon scored in the matter of Nick Bottom; but here he is undeniably befooled! Now, to quote Drayton's parting words,

And thus he leaves his readers feasting to the end of time.