Sometimes I meete them like a man;

Sometimes an ox, sometimes a hound;
And to a horse I turn me can;

To trip and trot about them round.
But if, to ride,

My backe they stride,

More swift than wind away I go,

Ore hedge and lands,

Thro' pools and ponds

I whirry, laughing, ho, ho, ho!

When lads and lasses merry be,

With possets and with juncates * fine;
Unseene of all the company,

I eat their cakes, and sip their wine;
And, to make sport,

And out the candles I do blow :
The maids I kiss ;

They shrieke-Who's this?

I answer nought, but ho, ho, ho!

Yet now and then, the maids to please,
At midnight I card up their wooll;
And while they sleepe, and take their ease,
With wheel to threads their flax I pull.

I grind at mill

Their malt up still;

I dress their hemp, I spin their tow.
If any 'wake,

And would me take,

I wend me, laughing, ho, ho, ho!

When house or harth doth sluttish lye,

I pinch the maidens black and blue; The bed-clothes from the bedd pull I, And lay them naked all to view.

* Dainties.

'Twixt sleepe and wake,

I do them take,

*

And on the key-cold floor them throw.

If out they cry,

Then forth I fly,

And loudly laugh out, ho, ho, ho!

When any need to borrowe ought,
We lend them what they do require:
And for the use demand we nought;
Our owne is all we do desire.

With pinchings, dreames, and ho, ho, ho!

When lazie queans have nought to do,

But study how to cog+ and lye;
To make debate and mischief too,
"Twixt one another secretlye:
I marke their gloze,+

And it disclose,

To them whom they have wrongèd so;
When I have done,

I get me gone,

And leave them scolding, ho, ho, ho!

When men do traps and engins set

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,

And enter in,

Very cold.

+ Cheat.

Dissimulation.

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

We chant our moonlight minstrelsies.

When larks 'gin sing,

Away we fling;

And babes new borne steal as we go,

And elfe in bed

We leave instead,

And wend us laughing, ho, ho, ho!

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 Goodfellow. 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!

THE MILK-MAID'S LIFE.

(From the Roxburgh Collection.)

OU rural goddesses,

That woods and fields possess,

Assist me with your skill, that may direct my quill,

More jocundly to express,

The mirth and delight, both morning and night,
On mountain or in dale,

Of them who choose this trade to use,
And, through cold dews, do never refuse

To carry the milking-pail.

The bravest lasses gay,

Live not so merry as they;

In honest civil sort they make each other sport,
As they trudge on their way;

Come fair or foul weather, they're fearful of neither,
Their courages never quail.

In wet and dry, though winds be high,

And dark's the sky, they ne'er deny
To carry the milking-pail.

Their hearts are free from care,

They never will despair;

Whatever them befal, they bravely bear out all,

And fortune's frowns outdare.

They pleasantly sing to welcome the spring,
'Gainst heaven they never rail;

If grass well grow, their thanks they show,
And, frost or snow, they merrily go,

Along with the milking-pail.

H H