And if I had as mutche money in my pursse Then Butlers mayde Helen hasse.' Et sic dimissa est cum monitio, &c." (Historical Collections for Oxfordshire, MSS. XIV. Eccles. Records, fol. 263; at the Bodleian Library.) The delight with which Anne Wrigglesworth carried the verses home in her memory to the persons named, and her naïve acknowledgment of their "discredit," need no further comment than our recalling Sir Fretful Plagiary's words, that if evil things are written of us, "there is always some d- good-natured friend to come and tell us." Alice and Beatrice exchange compliments (on our p. 68), that Baillie Nicol Jarvie would call "on the North side of friendly"; and the group of Election Ballads in volume third (our pp. 741-779, 815843, 868-871, 996-1000,) furnishes the usual quantity of bitter personalities. § 5. Attempted Repression of Lampoons. Personal attacks early became subjects for the balladist, and have not wholly ceased. Hence the watchfulness of men in authority to repress such as are deemed offensive. Local magnates claim powers extending beyond the lex scripta. So recently as the 23rd of August, 1877, on the evening when the Regatta arrived from Cowes, and an unusual number of strangers were gathered on the esplanade at Weymouth, we were ourselves witness to an incident that recalled to mind the avocations and the perils of balladsingers in much earlier days. Two professional streetsingers, adventurers not native to the quiet watering-place, suddenly began to sing and sell a ballad on a recent and as reported by Brady, Clavis Calendaria. The fair was held, in the Isle of Ely, and other places, on the 17th October, the festival of the saint. Her own name of Etheldreda had been corrupted into Audrey. While Abbess of her convent, she died, A.D. 679, of a swelling in the throat, "which she considered as a particular judgment for having been in her youth much addicted to wearing fine necklaces," as Harpsfeld relates, giving her words in Latin. Necklaces of showy "tawdry" lace being bought and worn at the fair, her moral counsel had little weight among the damsels, compared with her early example. much-discussed event, a subject even then pendente lite and sub judice. We missed the first verse, but the burden (not ill chanted) ran thus: Think of the Farmer, the Dorsetshire Farmer, Who hunted with dogs a poor man from his field! There was plenty of bitter comment as well as of exact detail in the ditty, and the spirit was similar to that which shows itself in Dickens' Chimes, concerning the warfare of class against class (such as made Douglas Jerrold, in his Shilling Magazine, praise it more enthusiastically than he was wont). A momentary delay occurred, before we could retrace our steps to the crowd of listeners, seeking to invest our penny in purchase of the fluttering print. But "the woman who hesitates is lost," so alas! were we. The police had already pounced on the poor Pylades and Orestes, so soon as they began to sell their wares, and carried them off to the office, where alone they could "obtain a pass.' We never saw them more, and could not get "The Dorsetshire Farmer," though we offered half a crown. as So much for recent days. Ritson declares, "The oldest printed ballad known to be extant is that on the downfall of Thomas Lord Cromwell in 1540."-Dissertation on Anc. Songs, p. 86, ed. 1877. This is preserved in the Library of the Society of Antiquaries. It begins, "Both man and chylde is glad to here tell." The early ballads from MSS., a few of which have been transcribed and published by the Ballad Society, remain comparatively uncollected and unclassified. They are, in general, singularly devoid of merit. But the number that have been preserved must, in any case, be only a small proportion of what were produced. Even as "a jest's pro 1 The MS. drama of Respublica, dated 1552, records the first lines of songs then popular, to be sung by the characters. J. P. Collier mentions it as being in Hudson Gurney's library, 1847. Here are four of the openings, "Bring to me, and I to thee;" "Hey noney, noney, houghe for money; "The mercy of God;" and "Haye, haye, haie, haie! I will be merie while I maie." Has this play never yet been printed? Better known are the "foots of songs" sung by Moros, in W. Wager's The longer thou livest, the more Foole thou art, 1568. Two of them agree with Lancham's list, others being "Robin, lend me thy bowe, thy bowe;" "There was a Mayde come out of Kent;" "Tom a lin and his wife, and his wife's mother;" "Martin Swart and his man, sodledum, sodledum;" and one that was later quoted in King Lear by Mad-Tom Edgar, Come ouer the boorne, Besse, My little pretie Beane, Come ouer the boorne, Bease, to me. sperity lies in the ear that hears it," not in the tongue which utters it; so the fortune of a ballad being carried down for any number of years, beyond the memory of a single generation, depends on good luck, the barest chances. When printed, and thus apparently secured into (say) four hundred copies or more, each made sufficiently brave in woodcut and black-letter type to promise survival for two or three centuries, how few of them, if any, remained undestroyed at the end of the first twelvemonth! They were broadsides printed on one side, the other blank, or cancelled because of being out of favour. If popular, the chief of them were pasted on the wall in workshops or dwelling rooms, so soon as they were published. We see them thus in Hogarth's first plate of "Industry and Idleness." The next coat of whitewash annihilated them, unless indeed they had been previously overlaid and smothered by some novelty that pleased the town. If unpopular, their doom of destruction was swifter. Fires were to be laid, and lamps or candles to be lighted. In those days paper was scarce, when there were no penny Daily News and ha'penny Echoes; so that a ballad broadside, if it failed to yield amusement, would soon burst into flame, although with no sparkling wit. The most tearful ditty might kindle a faggot. Except the accident of becoming mixed among documents, that would remain thereafter undisturbed from acorn-birth to oak-fall, one solitary chance remained of perpetuity. The ballad, which came into the world still-born, might nevertheless yield its clean unpasted back to receive a better ballad printed on it. Thus, by a Mezentian union, the dead would be fastened to There are several other ballad lists, such as those in Chettle's K. H. D., 1592; Sam. Rowland's Crew of kind Gossips, 1613; and Beaumont and Fletcher's Monsieur Thomas. Still earlier, and much too brief, is one in Wedderburn's Complaynt of Scotlande, 1549, ably re-edited for the E. E. T. Society in 1873-74, by Dr. J. A. H. Murray. Also, Laugh and Lie Down; or, the World's Folly, 1605. We need all these lists and fragments to be collected and trustworthily edited for the Ballad Society. Ordinary publishers let book-hacks scamp their work. 1 Thus Ritson quotes from Charles Cotton: And from Swift We in the country do not scorn Our walls with ballads to adorn, Of Patient Grissel and the Lord of Lorn. The ballads printed on the wall Of Joan of France and English Mall. This is Mary Ambree: see our p. 310. the living; but, more happily than in the case of human beings, both might be preserved. We have instances of this in our Bagford volumes. Mrs. Cooke's Lament, and the Fleet-Ditch travelled Porpoise survive to us by this very accident. If they had perished ("horrible thought!" says Macbeth), how poor would have been the world of literature! It seems to us remarkable that out of the three hundred and one ballads, mentioned in W. Thackeray's Bagford broadsheet, at so late a date as 1685, there certainly remain, and have been by us examined, two hundred and eighty-five or six. This is a large per-centage. Of those published before the Civil Wars began, the proportion that has perished is immensely larger. During the Great Rebellion the production of ballads was doubtless incessant, like the issue of pamphlets. They were more quickly written, more secretly printed, and more easily distributed than any pamphlets could be. They were almost always directed against the usurping government, and consequently remained unlicensed and prohibited, liable to seizure, confiscation and destruction; as their authors and printers were, if discovered, to be imprisoned, fined, and whipt. We hold a large collection of these literally fugitive broadsides, mostly in white-letter, without woodcuts or name of author and printer. But we may feel certain that for every one that remains, although often confined to a single exemplar, at least ten have utterly passed away. Some few, the mummies of song-birds, had been used to thicken the covers of books. Half a dozen others had formed the lining of an old leathern trunk, made in the year of the Restoration, a few weeks at most after Royal Oak Day. Memoranda of unpaid debts, lists of doubtful voters, or rough drafts of personal petitions and memorials, scribbled on the unprinted side or margin, have caused unique specimens to be laid up in lavender, until our greedy eyes devour them, and digest them with Estridgeian power for the Ballad Society. Still more rare than Civil-War broadsides are those published in the reign of the "Scottish Solomon," James the First. Of what remain there seldom is a duplicate. Many names of tunes attached to them clearly indicate that the 1 Even of the small remainder, sixteen, at least half the number still lurk unseen and may be hereafter identified by us. original words no longer are recoverable. The entries in the Stationers' Registers prove to demonstration the immense number of ballads that are now absolutely unknown, for which fees were paid on "allowance," or fines for the unlicensed publication. Pit falls, precipices, and quagmires lay in the path of ballad-writer and balladpublisher from earliest days. Dramatists and actors had no easy time of it, but their lot was one of safety and splendour compared to what befell the others. Queen Elizabeth (before whose time there were few such broadsides), and the men under her authority, felt no tender compunction for destruction of ballads. In Laneham's Letter from Kenilworth (already reprinted for the Ballad Society) is a list of many that escaped censure, but which seem to have been generally of "free" character. "What shall I rehearz heer what a bunch of Ballets and songs, all Some of the tunes named or implied in [? Wedderburn's, 1549] Book of Gude and Godly Ballates are the following. "Tell me now, and in what wise; "Downe, belly, downe;" "The wind blawis cald, furious and bald prototype of "Up in the morning early"); "Remember [0 thou] man; The hunt is up; "Hay trix;"" Aw my hert! this is my sang;" "Wha is at my Chamber dore? O'Widow, ar ye wauking ?"-" Till our Gude-man, till our Gude-man; Keip Faith and Love till our Gude-man!" "My lufe murnis for me, for me;" Aw my love! leif me not; " and "Johne cum Kiss me now, Johne cum Kiss me now, Johne cum Kiss me by and by, And make no more adow." The "godlifying" of this begins as follows, after repeating the ancient amatory verse: The Lord thy God I am, (Johne representis man -J. Sibbald's Chronicle of Scottish Poetry, iii. 277, 1802. We already mentioned, on p. xvII, John Hogon's "Hunt is up," of 1537, |