Classic Poem

This is Mab the mistress-fairy
That doth nightly rob the dairy,
And can hurt or help the churning
As she please, without discerning:

She that pinches country wenches
If they rub not clean their benches,
And with sharper nails remembers
When they rake not up their embers;
But if so they chance to feast her,
In a shoe she drops a tester.

This is she that empties cradles,
Takes out children, puts in ladles;
Trains forth midwives in their slumber
With a sieve the holes to number;
And then leads them from her burrows
Home through ponds and water-furrows.

She can start our franklin's daughters
In their sleep with shrieks and laughters,
And on sweet Saint Anne's night
Feed them with a promised sight,
Some of husbands, some of lovers,
Which an empty dream discovers.