John Milton's country roots were at Forest Hill, and his fairy traditions were true to those of Oxfordshire and the surrounding counties. It is worth giving the whole fairy passage in L'Allegro in spite of its general familiarity:

With stories told of many a feat,

How Faery Mab the junkets eat,

She was pincht, and pull'd she sed,

And he by Friars Lanthorn led

Tells how the drudging Goblin swet

To ern his Cream-bowle duly set,

When in one night, ere glimps of morn,

His shadowy Flale hath thresh'd the Corn

That ten day-labourers could not end,

Then lies him down the Lubbar Fend.

And stretch'd out all the Chimney's length,

Basks at the fire his hairy strength;

And Crop-full out of dores he flings,

Ere the first Cock his Mattin rings.

'Lubbar Fend' is Milton's name for Lob-Lie-by-the-Fire, a hobgoblin who performs the usual brownie feats of threshing and cleaning, and like the brownie and many other hobgoblins is a spirit of the hearth.

Though it is a youthful poem, Milton's Puritan bias is shown in his calling Lob a fiend as well as a goblin. Some though not all Puritans identified all fairies with the lesser devils, though Baxter and Cotton Mather considered the possibility that they might be 'spiritual animals'. William Warner, in his poem Albion''s England (Chapter 21), made the ingenious suggestion that the brownie actually did no work himself, but got the housewife out of bed to do it in her sleep. All kinds of theories were brought forward in the long debate about the origin of fairies. The bleaker view is not original to the Puritans, but is to be found in such tales as St Collen and the Fairy King.

The rest of the passage is also interesting with its reference to fairy Mab and the incident of the stolen junket; at least one may presume that this is a version of the tale of 'The Brownie of Cranshaws'. 'Friar's Lanthorn' as a name of Will o' the Wisp has led to the presumption that it is attached to Friar Rush. This connection is not mentioned in the chapbook version of the tale, and has been disputed, but it may be considered as a possibility.