FOOTNOTES.
Reading edition
‘Go fetch the sickle, to crop the nettle, That grows so near the brim; For fear it should tangle my golden locks, Or freckle my milk-white skin.’
A request so elegantly made is gallantly complied with by the treacherous knight, who, while engaged in ‘cropping’ the nettles, is pushed into the stream.
‘Many people did she kill.’
‘Fell’ is to knock down, and the meaning is that she could ‘well’ knock down, or ‘fell’ people.
‘Last New-Year’s day, as I heard say, Dick mounted on his dapple gray; He mounted high and he mounted low, Until he came to sweet Raphoe! Sing fal de dol de ree, Fol de dol, righ fol dee. ‘My buckskin does I did put on, My spladdery clogs, to save my brogues! And in my pocket a lump of bread, And round my hat a ribbon red.’
The other version is entitled Dicky of Ballyman, and a note informs us that ‘Dicky of Ballyman’s sirname was Byrne!’ As our readers may like to hear how the Somersetshire bumpkin behaved after he had located himself in the town of Ballyman, and taken the sirname of Byrne, we give the whole of his amatory adventures in the sister-island. We discover from them, inter alia, that he had found ‘the best of friends’ in his ‘Uncle,’—that he had made a grand discovery in natural history, viz., that a rabbit is a fowl!—that he had taken the temperance pledge, which, however, his Mistress Ann had certainly not done; and, moreover, that he had become an enthusiast in potatoes!
DICKY OF BALLYMAN.
‘On New-Year’s day, as I heard say, Dicky he saddled his dapple gray; He put on his Sunday clothes, His scarlet vest, and his new made hose. Diddle dum di, diddle dum do, Diddle dum di, diddle dum do.
‘He rode till he came to Wilson Hall, There he rapped, and loud did call; Mistress Ann came down straightway, And asked him what he had to say?
‘‘Don’t you know me, Mistress Ann? I am Dicky of Ballyman; An honest lad, though I am poor,— I never was in love before.
‘‘I have an uncle, the best of friends, Sometimes to me a fat rabbit he sends; And many other dainty fowl, To please my life, my joy, my soul.
‘‘Sometimes I reap, sometimes I mow, And to the market I do go, To sell my father’s corn and hay,— I earn my sixpence every day!’
‘‘Oh, Dicky! you go beneath your mark,— You only wander in the dark; Sixpence a day will never do, I must have silks, and satins, too!
‘‘Besides, Dicky, I must have tea For my breakfast, every day; And after dinner a bottle of wine,— For without it I cannot dine.’
‘‘If on fine clothes our money is spent, Pray how shall my lord be paid his rent? He’ll expect it when ’tis due,— Believe me, what I say is true.
‘‘As for tea, good stirabout Will do far better, I make no doubt; And spring water, when you dine, Is far wholesomer than wine.
‘‘Potatoes, too, are very nice food,— I don’t know any half so good: You may have them boiled or roast, Whichever way you like them most.’
‘This gave the company much delight, And made them all to laugh outright; So Dicky had no more to say, But saddled his dapple and rode away. Diddle dum di, &c.’
‘It was at the time of a high holiday.’
‘Not Pan, the god of the swains, Could e’er produce such strains.’—See ante, p. 142.
‘Down the red lane there lives an old fox, There does he sit a-mumping his chops; Catch him, boys, catch him, catch if you can; ’Tis twenty to one if you catch him or Nan.’
‘The next that comes on Is a gentleman’s son;— A gentleman’s son he was born; For mutton and beef, You may look at his teeth, He’s a laddie for picking a bone!
‘The next that comes on Is a tailor so bold— He can stitch up a hole in the dark! There’s never a ‘prentice In famed London city Can find any fault with his wark!’
O! I went into the stable, to see what I could see.
‘Hee’d a horse, too, ‘twor war than ond Tommy’s, ye see.’
‘Success to every gentleman That lives in Lincolnsheer.’
‘The gardener standing by proferred to chuse for me, The pink, the primrose, and the rose, but I refused the three; The primrose I forsook because it came too soon, The violet I o’erlooked, and vowed to wait till June.
In June, the red rose sprung, bat was no flower for me, I plucked it up, lo! by the stalk, and planted the willow-tree. The willow I must wear with sorrow twined among, That all the world may know I falshood loved too long.’
The praise of a dairy to tell you I mean, But all things in order, first God save the Queen.
The common copies print ‘God save the Queen,’ which of course destroys the rhyme.
‘For at Tottenham-court,’
which is no doubt correct, though inapplicable to a rural assembly in our days.
‘From fair Barbadoes, on the western main, Fetch sugar half-a-pound: fetch sack, from Spain, A pint: then fetch, from India’s fertile coast, Nutmeg, the glory of the British toast.’
Miscellany Poems, v. 138.
There was an old woman had three sons, Jerry and James and John: Jerry was hung, James was drowned, John was lost and never was found; And there was an end of her three sons, Jerry, and James, and John!