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The horse doth ease
If he be ridden,
The feast doth please
If guests be bidden.
The bucket drawes

The water for thee,
The rose when pluckt
Is then most worthy.

So is the maiden

In mine eyes,

Who loves and marryes
Ere she dyes."

"The New Balow," (i. e., Lullaby) is an Anglicised modernization of a Scottish song called "Lady Anne Bothwell's Lament.' Who the lady was, is left to conjecture. The Roxburghe version is by no means an improvement upon the "Lament," as given by Percy; but we refer to it for the sake of one verse not in the original.

"If I were near those fatal bounds

Where he lay groaning in his wounds,

Repeating, as he pants for breath,

Her name, that wounds more deep than death.
O, then, what woman's heart so strong

Would not forget the greatest wrong.'

Truly there is no human love like the love of woman! As usual, love has led us astray, and encroached sadly upon our time and space, to the exclusion of much that is old and excellent, e. g., "The complaint of a lover for the sake of his mistress," being the song of Willow Willow, introduced by Shakspere in the tragedy of Othello;* "The constancy of true love," being the story of Pyramus and Thisbe; the "Woody queristers," in which

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4. By an easy transition, (alas, how easy!) we pass from love

*A MS. copy of this song, with the music, of the date of 1600, is in the British Museum.-Add. MSS., 15,117, fol. 18.

and courtship to marriage, et cetera, and here we find about 130 different compositions, some "flat" and "stale," and most, if not all, "unprofitable." They belong to a period distinguished, so far as England was concerned, by nothing great, and little that was good; and with this remark we beg to dismiss them.

5. SEA SONGS.-Under this class we have not brought seafights, those being referred to the historical ballads. The fifteen we have observed in the collection are of a comparatively late period, and contain nothing to tempt a comparison with the productions of Dibdin, with one exception by Martin Parker— "Neptune's raging fury; or, the gallant seaman's sufferings”– "You gentlemen of England

That lives at home at ease," &c.,

a fine black-letter broadside.

6. The moral and descriptive ballads amount to about 170; and here we place those which paint marriage in its proper colours, and also religious exhortations, of which there are several very excellent. We cannot begin better than by the "Careful wife's good counsel."

"Kind husband, if you mean to thrive,
Some other ways you must contrive,
And not consume and waste your store;
It will be hard to work for more:
Therefore be ruled by me, I pray,
Save something for a rainy day.

Behold, we see the painfull bee
Lays up, by his industry,

A stock to serve in winter cold,

And so should man 'gainst he grows old.

And therefore, kind husband, now I pray,

Lay up against a rainy day."

Our readers have had a specimen of "pretty comparisons" in love; they will not object to an application of "comparisons" to morality. The date is about 1630.

"A DISCOURSE OF MAN'S LIFE.

"Comparing him to things that quickly passe,
As bubble, shuttle, blossome, streame, and grasse.
Man's life is like the grasse that's newly sprung,
Or like unto a tale that's new begun,

Or like the bird which wee do see to-day,
Or like the pearlie dew that is in May.

The grasse is wither'd, and the tale is ended,
The bird is flown, and up the dew ascended.
Even such is man, who liveth by his breath-

Is here, now there, still subject unto death," &c.

We would gladly give the whole of the following quaint but powerful piece, but our space is too limited :

"DEATH'S UNCONTROLLABLE SUMMONS.
"In slumber and sleep my senses fail'd,
Hey ho, hey ho, then slept I;
The bright sun rais'd a mist withall,
Eclipsed in the darksome sky.
An antient father stood by me,
Hey ho, hey ho, hollow eyes;
A foul, deformed wight was he,

I thought my youth did him despise."

The dreamer asks this antient father his name.

"Young youth, quoth he, I tell to thee,

Hey ho, hey ho, thy thread is spun,

My name is Death, I come for thee,

Hey ho, hey ho, thy glass is run," &c.

It will be seen that we have not, in general, stopped to say whether any ballad from which we give an extract has or has not been printed in any other form. We have more than one reason for this omission; one is that it would be a bold thing to say of any composition so short as a ballad, that it has never been printed, for such pieces not unfrequently lurk in very outof-the-way places;-take the well-known example of the "Notbrowne mayde," which was first printed in Arnold's "Statutes of London," and introduced between "The composicyon betwayne y Marchaunts of england and the towne of Antwarp for the costis of there Marchaundysys," and "The reckenynge to bey wares in flaunders." Another reason is, that the fact of being or not being printed elsewhere, does not affect the nature of the contents of the collection, although it certainly does the rarity of the pieces. The following, for example, has been printed in "Alison's Howres recreation in Musicke," printed in 1606, and also in Chappel's Collection of National English Airs, printed in 1840. We doubt if one in twenty of our readers ever heard of either of these works. It is much more deserving of mention that the song is thus referred to in Hudibras, canto 3, b. 10:

"This any man may sing or say

I' th' ditty call'd What if a day.""

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"What if a day, or a month, or a year,
crown thy delights

with a thousand wisht contentings?
Cannot the chance of a night or an hour
cross thy delights

with as many sad tormentings? Fortune in her fairest birth

are but blossoms dying, Wanton pleasures, doting mirth, are but shadows flying;

All our joys are but toys,

idle thoughts deceiving,

None hath power of an hour,

in our lives bereaving.

What if a smile, or a beck, or a look,

feed thy fond thoughts

with many a sweet conceiving?

May not that smile, or that beck, or that look,
tell thee as well

they are but vain deceiving?
Why should beauty be so proud,
in things of no surmounting?
All her wealth is but a shrowd
of a rich accounting;
Then in this repose no bliss,

which is so vain and idle,

Beauties, flowers, have their hours,

Time doth hold the bridle.

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that in a trice

on suddain is rehearsed.

Hopes are changed, and thy thoughts are crost,

will nor skill prevaileth,

Though we laugh and live at ease,

change of thoughts assaileth;

Though a while, fortune smile,

and her comforts crowneth, Yet at length, fails her strength, and in fine she frowneth."

We must content ourselves with simply referring to Nicol

VOL. VI. NO. XI.

D

Burn's beautiful descriptive ballad, entitled "Leader Haughs and Yarrow," from which we had intended to give an extract, notwithstanding the fact that it is referred to even in Gazetteers. It will be found reprinted in Chambers' Scottish Songs, p. 305, with a notice of the author, of whom it is much to be regretted that so little is known.

7. DRINKING, HUMOROUS AND SATIRICAL BALLADS.—This class, like the preceding, is about 170 in number.

Leather bottles appear to have gone out with James II., and like that monarch not to have resigned their empire without a struggle on the part of their adherents. Witness "A Song in praise of the leather bottèl."

"Then what do you say to those cans of wood?

In faith they are and cannot be good;

For when a man he doth them send
To be filled with ale, as he doth intend,
The bearer falleth down by the way,
And on the ground the liquor doth lay;
And then the bearer begins to ban,

And swears it is long of the wooden can;
But had it been in a leather bottèl,
Although he had fallen, yet all had been well,
And I wish in heaven his soul may dwell,
That first devised the leather bottèl.

Then what do you say to those glasses fine?
Yes, they shall have no praise of mine,
For when a company they are set,

For to be merry, as we are met,
Then if you chance to touch the brim,
Down falls the liquor and all therein;
tablecloth be never so fine,

If your
There lies your beer, ale, or wine:
It may be for a small abuse,

A young man may his service lose :

But had it been in a leather bottel,

And the stopper in, then all had been well.

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Then when this bottle doth grow old
And will good liquor no longer hold,
Out of the side you may take a clout

Will mend your shoes when they're worn out;
Else take it and hang it on a pin,

It will serve to put many odd trifles in,

As hinges, awls, and candle ends,

For young beginners must have such things."

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