Note 106 — SIR THEODORE MARTIN.
Reading edition
The reference here and in a subsequent verse is to a song very popular at the time:
'All round my hat I vears a green villow, All round my hat for a twelvemonth and a day, And if any van should arsk you the reason vy I vears it, Say, all for my true love that's far, far away. ''Twas agoin of my rounds on the streets I first did meet her, 'Twas agoin of my rounds that first she met my heye, And I never heard a voice more louder nor more sweeter, As she cried, "Who'll buy my cabbages, my cabbages who'll buy?"'
There were several more verses, and being set to a very taking air, it was a reigning favourite with the 'Social Chucksters' of the day. Even scholars thought it worth turning into Latin verse. I remember reading in some short-lived journal a very clever version of it, the first verse of which ran thus:
'Omne circa petusum sertum gero viridem Per annum circa petasum et unum diem plus. Si quis te rogaret, cur tale sertum gererem, Dic, "Omne propter coroulum qui est inpartibus."'
Allusions to the willow, as an emblem of grief, are of a very old date. 'Sing all, a green willow must be my garland,' is the refrain of the song which haunted Desdemona on the eve of her death (Othello, Act IV., Scene 3). That exquisite scene, and the beautiful air to which some contemporary of Shakespeare wedded it, will make 'The Willow Song' immortal.