After her Catherine Parr, Made he queen, made he queen, Brave English baron. This lady of renown Deserved not a frown, Whilst Henry wore the crown Six royal queens you see, BALLAD XXVI. Of a wealthy Merchant, who forgetting his profit, gave his mind to pleasure.* * A MERCHANT of great riches dwelt Whose yearly traffic to the Cair, ‡ Full well suffic'd his need: [From Anthony Munday's Banquet of Daintie Conceits,' printed in 1588. It is directed to be sung after a pleasant new tune called Prima Visto.' See the Harleian Miscellany, vol. ix, p. 221.] + [Qu.-Syria?] [Perhaps, Cairo ?] 6 For, bringing precious stones from thence The profit rose so much, (By his account unto himself) This merchant, to give greater grace To jewels of such price, Both excellent and wise, To sett these stones in finest gold, (Because he should not slack his work,) This cunning workman every day And every night receiv'd his wage: *. At last it so befel; Unto the Merchant's house was brought A goodly instrument, Which, for the beauty and the sound, The workman (as his custom was) Unto his business came : When as the Merchant took the harp, And showed him the same; His skill in music being great, Demanding, if that he should play ? The Merchant was content. So sweetly did he play thereon, The Merchant says, 'he had not wrought, All day I have been here, ‹ And done what you commanded me ; My wages then is clear.' In brief, they fell so much at square, That by the judges of the town, Which was against the Merchant flat And so much he must pay The workman, as if he had wrought The Merchant scant digested this, That he so much must pay : And might have gotten twice so much If he had wrought all day. [Duty is here put for pay; according to the legal stipulation.] His folly now he doth repent, And bids such gauds, farewell! He finds more sweetness in the nut BALLAD XXVII. 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.' FAREWELL, rewards and fairies!" Good house-wives now may say: For now foul sluts in dairies Do fare as well as they ; And though they sweep their hearths no less Yet who of late for cleanliness Finds six-pence in her shoe? * [Dr. Percy observes that this humorous old song fell from the hand of the witty bishop of Norwich, and was printed in his 'Poetica Stromata,' 1648, and in the third edition of his poems, 1672. The former of these, from its internal evidence, is regarded by Mr. Gilchrist (in his own much improved edition) as published under the eye of the bishop's family. Bishop Corbet died in 1635, at the age of 52.] Lament, lament, old abbies, The fairies' lost command: * They did but change priest's babies, For love of your demains. At morning and at evening both, When Tom came home from labour, Then merrily went their tabor, Witness those rings and roundelays By which we note, the fairies Were of the old profession; * 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.' Percy. |