The Toothless Bride. LITTLE need be written about this coarse "relation of a wealthy old Woman," except the one word of excuse for it that can be advanced. Money-marriages, marriages de convenance, actually take place among us, and with equally repulsive disparities of age. They are seen frequently now-a-days, as they were in France before the first Revolution; and are scarcely less offensive, where the worn-out rake of a bridegroom is nearly four times the age of the girl whom money and rank buy to his arms from her willing parents. No wonder is it, therefore, that social scandals are notorious, and the Divorce Courts crowded with applicants. We know of no other copy of this ballad save the one before us. It is dated 1705. The tune mentioned, "An Old Woman Poor and Blind," was a favourite at the time for "pleasant and comical relations" of this sort. Another ballad to the same tune will be found on I. 92 of the Bagford Collection. In Mr. Wm. Chappell's invaluable Popular Music of the Olden Time, pp. 551553, the music is given, accompanying the words "Jack met his mother all alone" (Roxburghe Coll., iii. 499). The original words, however, belong to "The Old Woman's Wish" (perhaps intended as a parody on Dr. Walter Pope's excellent "Old Man's Wish," "When I live to grow old, for I find I go down," 1684), which, with the music, appears in Tom D'Urfey's Pills to Purge Melancholy, 1719, v. 29, beginning: "As I went by an Hospital I heard an Old Woman cry, Kind Sir, quoth she, be kind to me, And grant to me those joys, That belong to Woman-kind, And the Fates reward your Love, To an Old Woman Poor and Blind, etc. Compare Pills to Purge Melancholy, v. 22; vi. 124, for songs to the same tune. Choyce Drollery, 1656, p. 88, and Roxb. Coll., I. 308, 336, give instances of young men overlooking physical deformities in the bride, for the sake of her money. [Bagford Collection, I. 79.] The Toothless Bride; Dr, The Wonton Did Woman: Being a pleasant and comical Relation of a Wealthy old Woman, of above Fourscore Pears of Age, near Fleet-street, that Married a poung Man not above Twenty, because he played so sweetly on her old Instrument. With the pleasant Particulars of their Courtship, Marriage, and comical Humours of the Wedding Night. TO THE TUNE OF, The Old Woman Poor and Blind. To Wed with me is no Disgrace, You YOU wanton Wives, that are grown Old, It is as True, as e're you knew, You'll smile when you hear the rest, An Ancient Dame of Fourscore Years, That she would again be Wed. 8 She had old Organs of her own, But wanted a Man to Play; Quoth she, 'tis known, they're Musty grown, I'll use 'em without delay; 12 66 The Saint turned Sinner. "He that buys land, buys many stones; He that buys good ale, seldom buys aught else." (Schoolmaster Byrcm: adaptation of older song.) STUDENTS of old literature, desirous of knowing the social 66 6. But life of bygone times, must take the rough with the smooth, the chaff with the grain, among these ballads. In a song beginning "Bryng us in no browne bread, for that is made of bran," -which is preserved in a manuscript collection of carols, said to have been written in the latter half of the fifteenth century, -one jovial lover of "Good Ale" records manifold objections to solid food, and gives reasons for the continuous rejection: even Falstaff's "but one half-pennyworth of bread to this intolerable deal of Sack!" would have been too much for the songster. Bryng us in no beef," he writes, "for there is many bones;' Bryng us in no eggs, for there are many shells," etc. Like Christophero Sly in his demands, he will have nothing but ale: a pot o' the smallest ale!" Among the rest of the viands, he lays an embargo on that dainty meat, the final morsels of which, in later days, Trotty Veck beheld eaten by Sir Peter Laurie and Joseph Hume (under disguise of Alderman Cute and Mr. Filer) on a door-step near the Church-tower. 'Bryng us in no trypes, for thei be seldom clene," says the rhymester: bryng us in good ale!" (Percy Soc., vol. xxiii. p. 63.) We fear that almost every valuable collection of old ballads, old plays, or old poems, must be acknowledged to be similarly open to objection, occasionally, with the Tripe eaten during the Wars of the Roses. And we additionally fear that we have got into a bundle of them, such as are "seldom clean," at this part of the Bagford Broadsides. But we need not destroy the usefulness of the reprint by any mutilation or excision. So long as canting hypocrites sin grossly, like the Puritanical time-servers, when sanctity became a cloak and religion a trade, there must always be some coarseness in popular exposures of their foul practices. Molière himself refuses to be refined in phrase and tender-hearted in the flagellating of a Tartuffe. The writer of the present ballad was a poor follower of Molière, it is true, and very probably was one who took advantage of the occasion to gird at the preachers and professors of religion, as though all were false. But as no worse enemies of a good cause exist, than those who |