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And if the house be foul,
With platter, dish, or bowl,
Up stairs we nimbly creep,
And find the sluts asleep :

There we pinch their armes and thighes;
None escapes, nor none espies

But if the house be swept,
And from uncleanness kept,
We praise the household maid,
And duly she is paid;

For we use before we goe,
To drop a tester in her shoe.

Upon a mushroom's head
Our table-cloth we spread;
A grain of rye or wheat
Is manchet which we eat;
Pearly drops of dew we drink
In acorn cups fill'd to the brink.

The brains of nightingales,
With unctuous fat of snails,
Between two cockles stew'd,

Is meat that's easily chew'd;
Tailes of wormes, and marrow of mice,
Do make a dish that's wonderous nice.

The grasshopper, gnat, and fly
Serve for our minstrelsie;
Grace said, we dance awhile,

And so the time beguile :

And if the moone doth hide her head,
The gloe-worm lights us home to bed.

On tops of dewie grasse

So nimbly we do passe,

The young and tender stalk

Ne'er bends when we do walk;

Yet in the morning may be seene
Where we the night before have beene.

Anonymous, about the year 1600.

THE MERRY PRANKS OF ROBIN GOOD-FELLOW.

From Oberon, in fairy land,

The king of ghosts and shadowes there,

Mad Robin, I, at his command,

Am sent to viewe the night-sports here.
What revell rout

Is kept about

In every corner where I go,

I will o'ersee

And merrie be,

And make good sport with ho, ho, ho!

More swift than lightning can I flye

About the aery welkin soone,

And in a minute's space descrye

Each thing that's done belowe the moone.

There's not a hag

Or ghost shall wag,

Or cry 'ware goblins! where I go,

But Robin, I,

Their feates will spy,

And send them home with ho, ho, ho!

Whene'er such wanderers I meete,

As from their night-sports they trudge home,

With counterfeiting voice I greete,

And call them on with me to roame.

Thro' woods, thro' lakes,

Thro' bogs, thro' brakes;

Or else, unseene, with them I go,

All in the nicke,

To play some tricke,

And frolick it with ho, ho, ho!

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When men do traps and engines set

In loope holes, where the vermine creepe,

Who from their foldes and houses get

Their duckes and geese, and lambes and sheepe;
I spy the gin,

And enter in,

And seeme a vermin taken so;

But when they there
Approach me neare,

I leap out laughing ho, ho, ho

By wells and rills, in meadowes green,
We nightly dance our hey-day guise;
And to our fairye kinge and queene
We chaunt our moon-lighte minstrelsies.
When larkes gin singe,

Away we flinge;

And babes new-born steale as we go,

And shoes in bed

We leave instead,

And wend us laughing ho, ho, ho!

From hag-bred Merlin's time have I

Thus nightly revell'd to and fro : And for my prankes, men call me by The name of Robin Good-Fellow. Friends, ghosts, and sprites Who haunt the nightes,

The hags and goblins do me know,

And beldames old

My feates have told,

So vale, vale, ho, ho, ho!

Anonymous-attributed to BEN JONSON, about 1600.

SLAVIC.

AN OLD BALLAD,

The maiden went for water

To the well o'er the meadow away; She there could draw no water, So thick the frost it lay.

The mother she grew angry,

She had it long to bemoan;

"O daughter mine, O daughter mine, I would thou wert a stone !"

The maiden's water-pitcher
Grew marble instantly,
And she herself, the maiden,
Became a maple tree.

There came one day two lads,

Two minstrels young they were; "We've traveled far, my brother, Such a maple we saw nowhere.

"Come let us cut a fiddle,

One fiddle for me and you, And from the same fine maple,

For each one, fiddlesticks two."

They cut into the maple

Then splashed the blood so red;

The lads fell to the ground,

So sore were they afraid.

Then spake from within the maiden : "Wherefore afraid are you?

Cut out of me one fiddle,

And for each one fiddlesticks two.

"Then go and play right sadly,
To my mother's door begone,
And sing Here is thy daughter
Whom thou didst curse to stone."

The lads they went, and sadly
Their song to play began;
The mother when she heard
Right to the window ran.

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