Page images
PDF
EPUB

The remainder of the tract is occupied with extracts from Herrick, the beautiful little ballad of "Robin Goodfellow," printed by Percy, and the poem on Melancholy, prefixed to the early editions of Burton's "Anatomy of Melancholy." From this last-mentioned poem Milton is supposed to have derived the hint of "Il Pensoroso.”

[graphic][merged small][merged small]

ERCY having inserted this song in his "Reliques," it is

PERCY

well known to most readers. Several copies of it are found in the poetical collections of the seventeenth century. One, hitherto unnoticed, is in MS. Ashmole 37, and another in a MS. in the Rawlinson collection. It was sung to the tune of the "Spanish Gipsy." See Thorpe's Catalogue of Manuscripts for 1831, p. 114.

Come follow, follow me,

Ye fairy elves that be
Light tripping o'er the green,

Come follow Mab, your queen :
Hand in hand we dance around,
For this place is fairy-ground.

When mortals are at rest,
And snoring in their nest,
Unheard and unespied,

Through key-holes we do glide;

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

And if the house be foul,
Or platter, dish, or bowl,
Up stairs we nimbly creep,
And find the sluts asleep;

Then we pinch their arms and thighs;
None us hears, and none us spies.

But if the house be swept,
And from uncleanness kept,
We praise the household maid,
And duly she is paid:

Every night before we go,
We drop a tester in her shoe.

Upon a mushroom's head
Our table-cloth we spread;
A grain of rye or wheat
Is the diet that we eat ;
Pearly drops of dew we drink,
In acorn cups fill'd to the brink.1

The grasshopper, gnat, and fly,
Serve for our minstrelsy;

Grace said, we dance awhile,
And so the time beguile;

And when the moon doth hide her head,
The glow-worm lights us home to bed.

1 In some copies is inserted the following stanza :—
The tongues of nightingales,
The unctuous fat of snails,
Between two muscles stew'd,
Is meat that's easily chew'd:

The brains of wrens, the beards of mice
Do make a feast of wondrous prize!

O'er tops of dewy grass
So nimbly we do pass,
The young and tender stalk
Ne'er bends as we do walk;

Yet in the morning may be seen
Where we the night before have been.

[graphic][merged small][merged small]

[From Heywood's "Hierarchie of the blessed Angels," fol. Lond. 1635, p. 574.]

F Faustus and Agrippa it is told,

OF

That in their travels they bare seeming gold
Which would abide the touch; and by the way,

In all their hostries they would, freely pay.
But parted thence, mine host thinking to find
Those glorious pieces they had left behind
Safe in his bag, sees nothing save together
Round scutes of horn and pieces of old leather.
Of such I could cite many, but I'll hie
From them, to those we call Lucifugi.

These in obscurest vaults themselves invest,
And above all things light and day detest.
In John Milesius any man may read
Of devils in Sarmatia honored,
Call'd Kottri, or Kibaldi; such as we

Pugs and hob-goblins call. Their dwellings be

X

« PreviousContinue »