I marke their gloze,

And it disclose,

To them whom they have wronged so;

When I have done,

I get me gone,

And leave them scolding, ho, ho, ho!

When men do traps and engins set

85

90

In loop holes, where the vermine creepe,

Who from their foldes and houses, get

Their duckes and geese, and lambes and sheepe:

I spy the gin,

95

And enter in,

And seeme a vermine taken so;

But when they there

Approach me neare,

I leap out laughing, ho, ho, ho!

By wells and rills, in meadowes greene,
We nightly dance our hey-day guise;
And to our fairye king and queene

100

We chant our moon-light minstrelsies.
When larks 'gin sing,

105

From hag-bred Merlin's time have I
Thus nightly revell'd to and fro:
And for my pranks men call me by
The name of Robin Good-fellow.

Fiends, ghosts, and sprites,
Who haunt the nightes,

The hags and goblins do me know;

And beldames old

My feates have told;

So Vale, Vale; ho, ho, ho!

115

120

XXVI.

The Fairy Queen.

We have here a short display of the popular belief concerning FAIRIES. It will afford entertainment to a contemplative mind to trace these whimsical opinions up to their origin. Whoever considers how early, how extensively, and how uniformly they have prevailed in these nations, will not readily assent to the hypothesis of those who fetch them from the East so late as the time of the Croisades. Whereas it is well known that our Saxon ancestors, long before they left their German forests, believed the existence of a kind of diminutive demons, or middle species between men and spirits, whom they called Duergar or Dwarfs, and to whom they attributed many wonderful performances, far exceeding human art. Vid. Hervarer Saga Olaj Verelj. 1675. Hickes' Thesaur. &c.

This song is given (with some corrections by another copy) from a book entitled, "The Mysteries of Love and Eloquence," &c. Lond. 1648, 8vo.

COME, follow, follow me,
You, fairy elves that be:
Which circle on the greene,
Come follow Mab your queene.
Hand in hand let's dance around,
For this place is fairye ground.

When mortals are at rest,
And snoring in their nest;
Unheard, and unespy'd,
Through key-holes we do glide;
Over tables, stools, and shelves,
We trip it with our fairy elves.

པ་

5

10

The brains of nightingales,
With unctuous fat of snailes,
Between two cockles stew'd,
Is meat that's easily chew'd;

Tailes of wormes, and marrow of mice
Do make a dish, that's wonderous nice.

The grashopper, gnat, and fly,
Serve for our minstrelsie;

Grace said, we dance a while,
And so the time beguile:

And if the moon doth hide her head,
The gloe-worm lights us home to bed.

On tops of dewie grasse

So nimbly do we passe,

25

30

335

40

The young and tender stalk
Ne'er bends when we do walk:
Yet in the morning may be seen

Where we the night before have been.

45

XXVII.

The Fairies Farewell.

THIS humorous old song fell from the hand of the witty Dr. Corbet (afterwards bishop of Norwich, &c.), and is printed from his Poëtica Stromata, 1648, 12mo, (compared with a third edition of his Poems, 1672.) It is there called, "A proper new Ballad, entitled, The Fairies Farewell, or God-a-mercy Will, to be sung or whistled to the tune of The Meddow Brow, by the learned; by the unlearned, to the tune of Fortune."

The departure of Fairies is here attributed to the abolition of monkery: Chaucer has, with equal humour, assigned a cause the very reverse, in his Wife of Bath's Tale.

"In olde dayes of the king Artour,

Of which that Bretons speken gret honour,
All was this lond fulfilled of faerie;
The elf-quene, with hire joly compagnie
Danced ful oft in many a grene mede.
This was the old opinion as I rede;
I speke of many hundred yeres ago;
But now can no man see non elves mo,
For now the grete charitee and prayeres
Of limitoures and other holy freres,

That serchen every land and every streme,

As thikke as motes in the sonne beme,

Blissing halles, chambres, kichenes, and boures,
Citees and burghes, castles high, and toures,

Thropes and bernes, shepenes and dairies,

This maketh that ther ben no faeries:

For ther as wont to walken was an elf,

Ther walketh now the limitour himself,
In undermeles and in morweninges,
And sayth his Matines and his holy thinges,
As he goth in his limitatioun.

Women may now go safely up and doun,

In every bush, and under every tree,

Ther is non other incubus but he,

And he ne will don hem no dishonour."

Tyrwhitt's Chaucer, i. p. 255.

Dr. Richard Corbet, having been bishop of Oxford about three years, and afterwards as long bishop of Norwich, died in 1635, ætat. 52.

Doe fare as well as they:

And though they sweepe their hearths no less

Than mayds were wont to doe,

Yet who of late for cleaneliness

Finds sixe-pence in her shoe?

Lament, lament old Abbies,
The fairies lost command;

5

10

They did but change priests babies,

But some have chang'd your land:

And all your children stoln from thence
Are now growne Puritanes,

Who live as changelings ever since,

15

For love of your demaines.

At morning and at evening both
You merry were and glad,
So little care of sleepe and sloth,
These prettie ladies had.

When Tom came home from labour,
Or Ciss to milking rose,
Then merrily went their tabour,
And nimbly went their toes.

Witness those rings and roundelayes
Of theirs, which yet remaine;

20

20

25

25