Over tables, stools, and shelves, And, if the house be foul And find the sluts asleeep: There we pinch their armes and thighes; None escapes, nor none espies. But if the house be swept, Upon a mushroomes head Pearly drops of dew we drink The brains of nightingales, 15 20 25 30 35 The grashopper, gnat, and fly, 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, 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. 40 45 XXVI. 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 Poetica Stromata, 1648, 12mo. (compared with the third edition of his Poems, 1672.) It is there called "A proper new Ballad, intitled, "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." 66 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, "For ther as wont to walken was an elf, "Women may now go safely up and doun, "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. FAREWELL rewards and Fairies! Good housewives now may say; For now foule sluts in dairies, Doe fare as well as they: And though they sweepe their hearths no less 5 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; They did but change priests babies, But some have chang'd your land: 10 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. 20 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 25 Were footed in queene Maries dayes On many a grassy playne. But since of late Elizabeth |