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Ancient Poems, Ballads, and Songs of the Peasantry of England

Note 165b — Songs.

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The common stall copies read ‘Pan,’ which not only furnishes a more accurate rhyme to ‘Nan,’ but is, probably, the true reading. About the time when this song was written, there appears to have been some country minstrel or fiddler, who was well known by the sobriquet of ‘Pan.’ Frequent allusions to such a personage may be found in popular ditties of the period, and it is evidently that individual, and not the heathen deity, who is referred to in the song of Arthur O’Bradley:—

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