Come, now a roundel and a fairy song;
Then, for the third part of a minute, hence –
Some to kill cankers in the musk-rose buds,
Some war with reremice for their leathern wings
To make my small elves coats; and some keep back
The clamorous owl that nightly hoots and wonders
At our quaint spirits. Sing me now asleep.
– William Shakespeare
A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Act 2, Scene 2. Titania instructs her attendant fairies to dance and sing her to sleep. She assigns them their work duties: kill the pests on the rosebuds, fight bats to make leather jackets for the elves from their wings, and keep an especially noisy owl away.