Jawnomicon

Robin Goodfellow

Also called Willy Wispe.

Robin Goodfellow is England's best-known hobgoblin, a household spirit and prankster identified in literary tradition with Puck and said to serve Oberon while alternating chores with mischief.

At a glance

Tradition
English folklore
Region
England (place of origin)
Trait family
The Hearth-Bound

Near this figure

and 6 more
  • Bocan Domestic spirit helps or harms based on treatment
  • Elves Domestic spirit helps or harms based on treatment
  • Akhlut Confuses travelers into losing their way
  • Duergar Confuses travelers into losing their way
  • Ghaddar Confuses travelers into losing their way
  • Goayr Heddagh Confuses travelers into losing their way

Traits

Read from the figure's description, which a model wrote. Open "why" for the sentence a trait came from.

Form

Behaviour

  • Domestic spirit helps or harms based on treatment
    why

    On the helpful side, he is described as completing unfinished household tasks overnight, for which servants would leave him a bowl of milk, and accounts describe him skimming milk, grinding at the quern, and otherwise assisting with kitchen labor much as a Brownie would in northern English and Scottish tradition, to which he is explicitly connected as a comparable southern English household spirit.

  • Confuses travelers into losing their way
    why

    On the mischievous side, he is said to mislead night-wanderers and laugh at their resulting misfortune, to beguile a well-fed horse by neighing like a filly to lead it astray, and to particularly enjoy playing tricks on old women, showing a taste for pranks that unsettle or embarrass rather than genuinely harm.

Utility powers

  • Shapeshifting
    why

    That pamphlet frames him as the half-fairy son of Oberon by a mortal woman, raised well by his fairy kin before running off around the age of six, at which point he is granted, through a vision and a golden scroll left by his father, the powers of shapeshifting and of obtaining whatever he wishes, on the condition that he turn them on the malicious and spend them on behalf of honest folk.

Curses

  • Mischief pranks
    why

    On the mischievous side, he is said to mislead night-wanderers and laugh at their resulting misfortune, to beguile a well-fed horse by neighing like a filly to lead it astray, and to particularly enjoy playing tricks on old women, showing a taste for pranks that unsettle or embarrass rather than genuinely harm.

Roles

Judged from the works' own entries, not from the description. Carries: the figure holds the role. Meets: the role is in its stories, held by something it meets.