Puck in popular culture

In English folklore, Puck is a mythological fairy or mischievous nature sprite. Puck is also a generalized personification of land spirits. In more recent times, the figure of Robin Goodfellow is identified as a puck. The Old English "puca" is a kind of half-tamed woodland sprite, leading folk astray with echoes and lights in nighttime woodlands (like the German and Dutch "Weisse Frauen" and "Witte Wieven" and the French "Dames Blanches," all "White Ladies"), or coming into the farmstead and souring milk in the churn. Puck has appeared many times in popular culture.

Puck's most famous appearance is in William Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream.

As Robin Goodfellow, Puck appears in a roughly contemporaneous Elizabethan play, Grim the Collier of Croydon (1600). It is unknown how Shakespeare's Puck appeared on the stage; but the figure in Grim was costumed "in a suit of leather close to his body; his face and hands coloured russet-coloured, with a flail."

Puck is the story-framer in Puck of Pook's Hill (1906) and Rewards and Fairies (1910) short story cycles by Rudyard Kipling.

In Susanna Clarke's short story "The Ladies of Grace Adieu," Robin Goodfellow appears as a mischievous yet caring servant to Auberon.

...
Wikipedia