Note 1023 — THE Old Wiues Tale.
Reading edition
Chappell gives the song in Popular Music of the Olden Time, p. 216. Three Merry Men is quoted in Westward Hoe, and in Barry's Ram Alley (sung by Smallshanks: see note, Hazlitt-Dodsley, X. 298), as well as in Twelfth Night; and it is parodied by the musical cook in The Bloody Brother. Chappell is somewhat daring when he takes these words from the Old Wives' Tale as the original; lines 3 and 4 look like a parody.