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Over tables, stools, and shelves,
We trip it with our fairy elves.

And, if the house be foul
With platter, dish, or bowl,
Up stairs we nimbly creep,

And find the sluts asleeep:

There we pinch their armes and thighes;

None escapes, nor none espies.

But if the house be swept,
And from uncleanness kept,
We praise the houshold maid,
And duely she is paid:
For we use before we goe
To drop a tester in her shoe.

Upon a mushroomes head
Our table-cloth we spread;
A grain of rye, or wheat,
Is manchet, which we eat;

Pearly drops of dew we drink
In acorn cups fill'd to the brink.

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.

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25

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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,

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,
"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.

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,

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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.

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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;

25

Were footed in queene Maries dayes

On many a grassy playne.

But since of late Elizabeth

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