66 "Now help me up, thou fine fellòwe, 'Tis time that I were gone : When I come home to Gyllian, my wife, 115 The king he tooke him up by the legge, The tanner a f ** lett fall; "Nowe marrye, goode fellowe," sayd the kyng, 66 Thy courtesye is but small." 120 When the tanner he was in the kinges sadèlle, He marvelled greatlye in his minde, But when his steede saw the cows toile wagge, 125 He stamped, and stared, and awaye he ranne, The tanner he pulld, the tanner he sweat, 130 At length the tanner came tumbling downe, "Take thy horse again with a vengeance," he sayd, 66 "With mee he shall not byde." 'My horse wolde have borne thee well enoughe, But he knewe not of thy cowe-hide. "Yet if againe thou faine woldst change, As change full well may wee, 135 By the faith of my bodye, thou jolly tannèr, I will have some boote of thee." 140 "What boote wilt thou have," the tanner replyd, "Nowe tell me in this stounde?" "No pence nor half-pence, sir, by my faye, But I will have twentye pound." "Here's twentye groates out of my purse, And twentye I have of thine; 145 And I have one more, which we will spend The king set a bugle-horne to his mouthe, And blewe both loude and shrille; 150 And soone came lords, and soone came knights, Fast ryding over the hille. "Nowe, out alas!" the tanner he cryde, "That ever I sawe this daye! Thou art a strong thiefe; yon come thy fellowes 155 "They are no thieves," the king replyde, "I sweare, soe mote I thee; But they are the lords of the north countrèy, 160 And soone before our king they came, 165 "A coller, a coller!" the tanner he sayd, 170 I trowe I shall be hang'd to-morrowe." After a coller commeth a halter; "Be not afraid, tanner," said our king; That is in the north countrie.6 175 6 This stanza is restored from a quotation of this ballad in Selden's Titles of Honour, who produces it as a good authority to prove, that one mode of creating Esquires at that time was by the imposition of a collar. His words are, "Nor is that old pamphlet of the Tanner of Tamworth and King Edward the Fourth so contemptible, but that wee may thence note also an observable passage, wherein the use of making Esquires, by giving Collars, is expressed."-Sub. Tit. Esquire; and vide in Spelmanni Glossar. Armiger. This form of creating Esquires actually exists at this day among the Sergeants at Arms, who are invested with a Collar (which they wear on Collar days) by the king himself. This information I owe to Samuel Pegge, Esq., to whom the public is indebted for that curious work the Curialia, 4to. "For Plumpton-Parke I will give thee, With tenements faire beside,— "Tis worth three hundred markes by the yeare,— 66 Gramercye, my liege," the tanner replyde; 180 XVI. As De came from the Holy Land. DIALOGUE BETWEEN A PILGRIM AND A TRAVELLER. The scene of this song is the same as in No. xiv. The pilgrimage to Walsingham suggested the plan of many popular pieces. In the Pepys Collection, vol. i. p. 226, is a kind of Interlude in the old ballad style, of which the first stanza alone is worth reprinting. "As I went to Walsingham, To the shrine with speede, Met I with a jolly palmer Now God you save, you jolly palmer; Oft have I sued to thee for love' The pilgrimages undertaken on pretence of religion were often productive of affairs of gallantry, and led the votaries to no other shrine than that of Venus.1 The following ballad was once very popular; it is quoted in Fletcher's Knight of the burning Pestle, act ii. sc. ult., and in another old play, called Hans beer-pot, his invisible Comedy, &c., 4to, 1618, act i. The copy below was communicated to the Editor by the late Mr. Shenstone, 1 Even in the time of Langland, pilgrimages to Walsingham were not unfavourable to the rites of Venus. Thus, in his Visions of Pierce Plowman, fo. 1. "Hermets on a heape, with hoked staves, Wenten to Walsingham, and her 2 wenches after." 2 i. e. their. as corrected by him from an ancient copy, and supplied with a concluding stanza. We have placed this, and Gentle Herdsman, &c., thus early in the volume, upon a presumption that they must have been written, if not before the dissolution of the monasteries, yet while the remembrance of them was fresh in the minds of the people. "As ye came from the holy land Of blessed Walsingham, O met you not with my true love As by the way ye came ?" "How should I know your true love, That have met many a one, As I came from the holy land, 5 That have both come, and gone?" 66 'My love is neither white 3 nor browne, But as the heavens faire ; There is none hath her form divine, Either in earth, or ayre.” 10 "What is the cause she leaves thee thus, As this fine morsel of heroic poetry hath generally passed for ancient, it is here thrown to the end of our earliest pieces; that such as doubt of its age may the better compare it with other pieces of genuine antiquity. For after all, there is more than reason to suspect that it owes most of its beauties (if not its own existence) to the pen of a lady, within the present century. The following particulars may be depended on. One Mrs. Wardlaw, whose maiden name was Halket (aunt to the late Sir Peter Halket, of Pitferran, in Scotland, who was killed in America, along with General Braddock, in 1755), pretended she had found this poem, written on shreds of paper, employed for what is called the bottoms of clues. A suspicion arose that it was her own composition. Some able judges asserted it to be modern. The lady did in a manner acknowledge it to be so. Being desired to show an additional stanza, as a proof of this, she produced the two last, beginning with "There's nae light," &c., which were not in the copy that was first printed. The late Lord President Forbes, and Sir Gilbert Elliot, of Minto (late Lord Justice Clerk for Scotland), who had believed it ancient, contributed to the expense of publishing the first edition, in folio, 1719. This account was transmitted from Scotland, by Sir David Dalrymple, the late Lord Hailes, who yet was of opinion that part of the ballad may be ancient, but retouched and much |