The Damosel's Last Farewell. LOVE-SIC "Here she is allow'd her virgin crants, JOVE-SICK girls, two hundred years ago, prized this melancholy ditty, as they did "The Bride's Burial" of the Roxburghe Collection, i. 59. Common to both, in printed broadsides, was the characteristic woodcut here repeated, of six white-robed maidens bringing home" the dead beauty to her last dwellingplace; bearing the coffin, with her "Virgin-crants" laid above it, the wreath of lilies, snow-drops, or jessamine, emblems of purity. Many a fair lady shed tears of sorrow, not unmingled with that self-pity which often prompts such offerings of compassion, over the fate of this hapless "Damosel;" the cruel rigour of whose parents was not slackened until too late, when she lay on her death-bed. Under all the quaint ruggedness of the ballad we can find touches of human feeling, befitting the tragedy of blighted hopes. There is no difficulty in estimating the power it held over young people, whose "course of truelove never did run smooth." Such tales as this were laid to heart, and oftentimes they kept it from becoming hard and chilled, in a world that is seldom too full of generous impulses or sympathy. Better a few sobs and tears over a Love-song, than the giddy recklessness that seeks to banish all remembrance 1 Shakespearian commentators have, according to their use and wont, done their utmost to destroy the appropriateness of words employed by the greatest of all poets, when incidentally showing us the burial of the fair Ophelia:" such a funeral-train of weeping maidens, bearing the corpse of one thus early called away, he himself had seen, no doubt, in his native glades of Warwickshire. With exception of the earliest known edition, dated 1603 (the priest's single speech in it being short, and probably mutilated), all the quarto editions of Hamlet, published during Shakespeare's lifetime, print the words "Virgin crants;" signifying her "crantz," garland, crown of flowers, or wreath, such as we see represented laid on the coffin in our woodcut. After Shakespeare's death in 1616, the four folios must needs alter this word "crants" to "Rites;" Warburton, dissatisfied, substituted "chants;" smaller men, like Edwards, 1758, and Heath, 1765 (Cambridge Shakespeare, viii. 159), blunderingly offered conjectural "grants," the former person generously giving us the alternative of "pants"!-with a ludicrous obtuseness failing to see that only married women shrewishly desire these articles, and even they covet them not after death as funeral ornaments, but during matrimonial felicity, except at a Skimmington. of one's own disappointed first affection, by entrance into a shameless round of intrigue, of coquetry, and dissipation: Mark it, Cesario, it is old and plain, The Spinsters, and the Knitters in the sun, And the Free-maids that weave their thread with bones, Do use to chaunt it. It is silly sooth, And dallies with the innocence of Love, Like the old age. A copy of this broadside is in the Pepys Collection, iii. 353. As regards the date: Josiah Deacon's time was 1684-95, but as the ballad is licensed by Sir Roger L'Estrange, who exercised the office until 1685 only, we have the time restricted to 1684-5. The tune named, "Cruel bloody Fate," is oftener referred to as "Philander." It belongs to a ballad thus variously entitled, and also as "The Maiden's Tragedy," and "The True Lover's Tragedy." The music to it, composed by Henry Purcell, is in Playford's Choice Ayres (1681), iii. 29; and in Pills, iv. 284. The words were written by Nat. Lee, for his tragedy of "Theodosius," 1680, Act v. sc. 1. Copies are in the Douce Collection, at Oxford, and Roxb. Coll., iv. 78. For several years the song continued to be popular, and suffered the usual fate of being parodied for political squibs, one version being directed against the intriguing Anthony Astley Cooper, Lord Shaftesbury, in 1682-3, "Poor Tony," the title being "Dagon's Fall." Another, upon Thomas Armstrong, begins "Ah, cruel bloody Tom! what can'st thou hope for more?"-It is entitled, "The Bully Whig; or, The Poor Whore's Lamentation," &c., in 180 Loyal Songs, 1685, p. 129. Closely connected with the Philander ballad (to which there is a sequel, 'Sitting beneath the Shade," &c, Roxb. Coll., iv. 6) is one found in Roxb. Coll., ii. 105, beginning, Ah, cruel maid, give o'er, To punish him with scorn, &c. It bears title "The Deceiver Deceived; or, The Virgin's Revenge ;" and was, like our Bagford Ballad, licensed by Sir Roger L'Estrange, between 1680 and 1685. The Grave-digger woodcut, on p. 157, very neat in the original broadside, is evidently a part of some book-illustration. [Bagford Collection, II. 46.] The True Lovers Lamentable Dverthrow; Or, The Damosels Last Farewell. Who lately Dyed with grief for the Loss of her Dearest Love, who was the joy of her Life. You Damsels all both far and near, Come to her silent Tomb, And pay to her a Pearled Tear, This may be printed, R[oger] L[e] S[trange]. [In the original are two cuts; that to the right is printed on p. 157.] Ou Parents all attend, You see what of late befell, It is to you I send these Lines my last Farewell: 4 |