Note 5 — Chapter II
Reading edition
This ballad will be found in the second volume of "Bishop Percy's Reliques of Ancient English Poetry, page 405." And it will no doubt be recollected by the reader that the celebrated Sterne makes this tune to be the favourite air of Uncle Toby in "Tristram Shandy." In speaking of this ballad, Bishop Percy remarks, that "the following rhymes, slight and insignificant as they now may seem, had once a more powerful effect than either the Philippic of Demosthenes or Cicero; and contributed not a little towards the great revolution in 1688."