"Terrible Robin"

[Joel S. Berson]

I think Dan Goncharoff's suggestion of Robin Goodfellow (AKA Puck) 
suffices amply.  He might be said to terrify at least some ("[he] 
That frights the maidens of the villagery", to quote the Bard), and 
certainly was a leader astray ("with echoes and lights in nighttime", 
the Bard again).  Cf. "red herring" as something misleading or false 
in the Thomas Brown quotation.

Joel

At 10/4/2014 02:16 PM, Robin Hamilton wrote:
>Might it be Aniseed (Water) Robin, so called since he sold aniseed 
>water, a.k.a. gin, in the streets of London?  A famous/notorious 
>hermaphrodite, who was around London in the 1650s and later (I 
>think) and is referred to pretty frequently, among others by Daniel 
>Defoe.  His name would probably still have been familiar in the 
>early 1700s.  I don't know whether he was ever called "terrible", 
>but he was certainly notorious.
>
>Robin Hamilton
>
>--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
>-----Original Message----- From: Joel S. Berson
>Sent: Saturday, October 04, 2014 6:23 PM
>To: ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU
>Subject: Re: "flounder", "red-herring", "magic glass", 1703 -- for the OED
>
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>Subject:      Re: "flounder", "red-herring", "magic glass", 1703 -- 
>for the OED
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>
>At 10/3/2014 11:14 PM, Dan Goncharoff wrote:
>
>>When I read Terrible Robin I think Robin Goodfellow.
>
>I also wondered (and as well about Robin Hood, who might have been
>called "terrible" by the sheriff) but lacked contemporary quotations
>for "terrible Robin" with useful context.
>
>Joel
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