[Bagford Collection, I. 47.]

Devol's last Farewel:

Containing an Account of many frolicksom Intriegues and notorious Robberies which he committed: Concluding with his mournful Lamentation, on the Day of his Death.

TO THE TUNE OF, Upon the Change.
Licensed according to Order.

[This cut is to the left. The other is printed on page 16.]

You

To me, who did the Laws offend;
For now I come to let you know
What prov'd my fatal overthrow,
And brought my Glory to decay;
it was my Gang, for whom I hang,
Well-a-day, well-a-day.

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7

Unto a Duke I was a Page,
And succour'd in my tender Age,
Until the Devil did me intice,

To leave of Vertue and follow Vice;
No sooner was I led astray,

but Wickedness did me possess, Well-a-day, well-a-day.

If I my Crimes to mind shou'd call,
And lay them down before you all,
They would amount to such a Sum,
That there is few in Christendom,
So many wanton Pranks did play;

but now too late, I mourn my fate, Well-a-day, well-a-day.

Upon the Road, I do declare,

I caus'd some Lords and Ladies fair,
To quit their Coach, and dance with us;
This being done, the Case was thus,
They for their Musick needs must pay;
but now at last, those Ioaks are past,
Well-a-day, well-a-day.
Another time, I and my Gang,
We fell upon a Noble-man;
In spite of all that he could do,
We took his Gold and Silver too,
And with the same we rid away;

but being took, for death I look, Well-a-day, well-a-day.

14

21

28

35

Becaus I was a Frenchman born,
Some Persons treated me with scorn,

But being of a daring Souls,

Although my Deeds was some thing foul,
My gaudy Plumes I did display,

but now my Pride, is laid aside,

Well-a-day, &c.

I reign'd with an undaunted mind
Some years, but now at last I find,
The Pitcher that so often goes
Unto the Well, as Proverb shows,
Comes broken home at last we say;
for now I see, my Destiny,
Well-a-day, &c.

Then being brought to Iustice-hall,
Try'd, and condemn'd before them all;
Where many noble Lords did come,
And Ladies for to hear my Doom,
Then Sentence pass'd, without delay,
The Halter first, and Tybourn last,
In one Day, in one Day.

[This cut appears to the right, at beginning of the Ballad.]

London: Printed for C. Bates, in Pye-corner. [About 1669-70.]

The Bonny Scot and Yielding Lass.

HE music is given, along with the words, as of "A Scotch Song," in the 1719 edition of Tom D'Urfey's Pills to Purge Melancholy, vol. iii. p. 88. Like many other so-called "Scotch" songs, written by Englishmen and in London (with a few words in exaggerated spelling, stuck in like cloves, to spice the meat), it soon became immensely popular North of the Tweed, and long continued to re-appear in song-books published in Edinburgh, and circulated by chapmen or hawkers. Allan Ramsay, in 1725, gave it a place in his Tea-Table Miscellany, the second volume, p. 121. He was an admirer of honest Tom D'Urfey (many of whose own lyrics he reproduced in the third volume, which is almost entirely filled with English songs). He had been visited by John Gay, in Allan's little book-shop, "at the east end of the Luckenbooths," where soap-suds and poetry, easy-shaving and the music of the spheres, were always kept on hand for customers who loved the Muses or the Graces. Allan was ready for the outside of their heads or the interior. Well deserved was the favour shown by all literary strangers to genial Allan Ramsay: creator of that "Gentle Shepherd" which, more than any modern Pastoral, takes us to the breezy freshness of the hillside, and sings there the loves of his "barefoot beauties, clean and clear," while they interchange their confidence upon

"A flow'rie howm, between twa verdant braes,
Where lassies use to wash and spread their claes."

Through him, gathered from English friends and correspondents, many Anglo-Scottish songs became naturalised in the northern "Land of the mountain and the flood," and are now obstinately claimed, with all the characteristic perfervidum ingenium Scotorum, as being native to the soil, auróx@ova tovea, despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary. In a future volume we may enter fully on this subject: meanwhile, see Mr. Wm. Chappell's remarks in Roxburghe Ballads, vol. ii. p. 112, and his Popular Music, passim, especially pp. 611, 796.

"The Loving Lass and Spinning Wheel," as "The Bonny Scot and the Yielding Lass" was generally entitled, retained favour for more than a century, and indeed still holds ground. It is in The Lark, Edinburgh, 1768, p. 79. David Herd inserted it in his earlier Collection of Ancient aud Modern Scots Songs, Heroic Ballads, etc. Now first Collected into one Body, From the various Miscellanies wherein they formerly lay dispersed. Contain

BAGFORD.

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ing likewise a great number of Original Songs from Manuscripts, never before published, 1769. It there appears, in the scarce single volume, on p. 178, as the "Spinning Wheel." It is repeated in his enlarged edition of 1776, ii. 95. In 1779, it adorns St. Cecilia, C. Wilson's "Musical Miscellany," p. 233. Slight alterations were made to Scoticize the song. Thus, instead of what the General Assembly would term "the profane use of the word 'Faith ""-in verse sixth, Geud Faith!"-we find "In trouth I loved." Any impropriety in yielding up her virtue simply on account of the wooer possessing "such a charming eye!" is avoided ingenuously by an acknowledgment of his being handsome altogether:

"What lassie young and saft as I,
Cou'd sic a handsome lad deny ?"

An answer is found to the following ballad in the Roxburghe Collection, ii. 13 (not yet included in Mr. Chappell's reproduction), "An Answer to the Bonny Scot; or, the Sorrowful Complaint of the Yielding Lass." It is printed by Philip Brooksby, 1672-95, goes to the same tune, the Spinning-wheel, and begins-"Behold, I pray, what's come to pass, When twenty weeks was come and gone.'

An early critic of Sir Walter Scott's Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border (perhaps George Ellis), in January, 1803, wrote some awkward truths regarding the frequency of such accidents as these "among the pleasant cocks of hay" of many a "Yielding Lass." He declares, and not without plausibility,-"the heroines of all the romantic [Scottish Border] ballads, we believe, without exception, have the misfortune to be mothers before marriage (Edinb. Review, vol. i. p. 404). It may be noted here that in England, also, the Spinning Wheel song remained a favourite; with its delightful portraiture of rustic coquetry, the Yielding Lass preserving an outward calm and uninterrupted guidance of her fingers, as if she turned a deaf ear to her lover. In 1723 it held position in J. Roberts's London Collection of Old Ballads, ii. 241. As "The Spinning Lass" we have it on a Music Sheet. But the Bagford copy is the earliest known to us. The printer of it, E. Brooksby (not Philip Brooksby, whose time is given as 1672-95), is supposed to date so late as 1703; but the initials of the Licenser, Richard Pocock, fix the true limits, viz. 1685-88. Moreover, in this case the woodcut portrait of Charles II. further indicates the earlier date, 1685, the year wherein the King died. By 1688 the political intrigues had grown into a struggle for life between James II. and William of Orange.