Note 53 — II. HISTORIES.
Reading edition
The song exhibits numerous marks of antiquity. "Picks up a pin" was originally, no doubt, "pulls at the pin." The word "garret" here appears to correspond to the Scandinavian "high-loft," the upper part and living-room of an ancient house. The third verse is a very ancient ballad commonplace—
Shee's as soft as any silk, And as white as any milk.
"Ballad of Kinge Adler," in the Percy MS.
Instead of "Water, water, wild-flowers," as printed on the next page, we find in Philadelphia, "Lily, lily, white-flower," which may have been the original, and reminds us of the refrains of certain ballads. In Yorkshire, England, "Willy, willy, wall-flower."
A specimen of the quintessence of absurdity is the following street-song:
Swallow, swallow, weeping About a willow tree, All the boys in Fiftieth Street Are dying down below; Excepting —— —— His love he can't deny, For he loves —— —— And she loves him beside, etc.
Notwithstanding the vulgarity of these stanzas, and of others which are employed for the same purpose, the practice which they illustrate—namely, the adaptation of a ballad to the dance by uniting with it a game-rhyme—is no doubt ancient. We have other examples in the numbers which follow.