SONG.
A lamentable Ditty made upon the death of a worthy gentleman, named George Stoole, dwelling sometime on Gate-side Moor, and sometime at Newcastle, in Northumberland: with his penitent end. [c. 1610.]
To a delicate Scottish Tune.
Come you lusty Northerne lads,
That are so blith and bonny,
Prepare your hearts to be full sad,
To heare the end of Georgy.
Heigh-ho, heigh-ho my bonny love,
Heigh-ho, heigh-ho my honny;
Heigh-ho, heigh-ho my owne deare love,
And God be with my Georgie.
When Georgie to his triall came,
A thousand hearts were sorry,
A thousand lasses wept full sore,
And all for love of Georgie.
Heigh-ho, heigh-ho my bonny love,
Heigh-ho, &c.
Some did say he would escape,
Some at his fall did glory:
But these were clownes and fickle friends,
And none that loved Georgy.
Heigh-ho, &c.
Might friends have satisfied the law,
Then Georgie would find many:
Yet bravely did he plead for life,
If mercy might be any.
Heigh-ho, &c.
But when this doughty carle was cast,
He was full sad and sorry:
Yet boldly did he take his death,
So patiently dyde Georgie.
Heigh-ho, &c.
As Georgie went up to the gate,
He tooke his leave of many:
He tooke his leave of his laird’s wife,
Whom he lov’d best of any.
Heigh-ho, &c.
With thousand sighs and heavy looks,
Away from thence he parted,
Where he so often blithe had beene,
Though now so heavy hearted.
Heigh-ho, &c.
He writ a letter with his owne hand,
He thought he writ it bravely:
He sent it to New-castle towne,
To his beloved lady.
Heigh-ho, &c.
Wherein he did at large bewaile,
The occasion of his folly:
Bequeathing life unto the law,
His soule to heaven holy.
Heigh-ho, &c.
Why, lady, leave to weepe for me,
Let not my ending grieve ye:
Prove constant to the man you love,
For I cannot relieve yee.
Heigh-ho, &c.
Out upon thee, Withrington,
And fie upon thee, Phoenix:
Thou hast put downe the doughty one,
That stole the sheepe from Anix.
Heigh-ho, &c.
And fie on all such cruell carles,
Whose crueltie’s so fickle,
To cast away a gentleman
In hatred for so little.
Heigh-ho, &c.
I would I were on yonder hill,
Where I have beene full merry:
My sword and buckeler by my side
To fight till I be weary.
Heigh-ho, &c.
They well should know that tooke me first,
Though whoops be now forsaken:
Had I but freedome, armes, and health,
I’de dye ere I’de be taken.
Heigh-ho, &c.
But law condemns me to my grave,
They have me in their power;
There’s none but Christ that can me save,
At this my dying houre.
Heigh-ho, &c.
He call’d his dearest love to him,
When as his heart was sorry:
And speaking thus with manly heart,
Deare sweeting, pray for Georgie.
Heigh-ho, &c.
He gave to her a piece of gold,
And bade her give’t her bairns:
And oft he kist her rosie lips,
And laid him into her armes.
Heigh-ho, &c.
And coming to the place of death,
He never changed colour,
The more he thought he would look pale,
The more his veines were fuller.
Heigh-ho, &c.
And with a cheereful countenance,
(Being at that time entreated
For to confesse his former life)
These words he straight repeated.
Heigh-ho, &c.
I never stole an ox or cow,
Nor ever murdered any:
But fifty horse I did receive
Of a merchant’s man of Gory.
Heigh-ho, &c.
For which I am condemn’d to dye
Though guiltlesse I stand dying:
Deare gracious God, my soule receive,
For now my life is flying,
Heigh-ho, &c.
The man of death a part did act,
Which grieves me tell the story;
God comfort all are comfortlesse,
And did so well as Georgie.
Heigh-ho, heigh-ho, my bonny love,
Heigh-ho, heigh-ho my bonny;
Heigh-ho, heigh-ho, mine own true love,
Sweet Christ receive my Georgie.
EPITAPH
ON
WILLIAM BELL,
LATE A RESIDENT ON GATESHEAD FELL.
By Samuel Barras.
Here lies the corpse of William Bell,
The great good man of Gateshead Fell:
Zealous in his Master’s cause,
A strict observer of his laws:
He liv’d by faith, and not by sight:
With full assurance took his flight,
Unto that sweet delicious coast,
Where hope is in fruition lost.
AN EXCELLENT BALLAD
On the Sickness, Death, and Burial, OF ECKY’s MARE;
Which was made and composed by the late ancient and famous Northern poet, Mr Bernard Rumney, a musician, or country fidler, who lived and died at Rothbury, being about one hundred years old at the time of his death.
Wold you please to hear of a sang of dule,
Of yea sad chance and pittifow case,
Makes the peur man powt through many a pule,
And leuk on mony an unkend face?
Between the Yule but and the Pasch,
In a private place, where as I lay,
I heard ane sigh, and cry, alas!
What shall I outher dea or say?
A man that’s born of a middle-yeard wight,
For wealth or pelth can no be secure;
For he may have enough at night,
And the next morn he may be fow peur.
I speak this by a Northumberland man,
The proverb’s true proves by himself;
Since the horse-couping he began,
He had great cause to crack of wealth.
Of galloways he was well stockt,
What some part first, what some part last;
But I’ll no speak much to his praise,
For some of them gat o’re lang a fast.
Some of them gat a shrowish cast,
Which was nae teaken of much pelth;
But yet he hopes, if life dea last,
To see the day to crack of welth.
But aye the warst cast still comes last,
He had nae geuds left but a Mear,
There was mair diseases did her attend
Nor I can name in half a year.
If Markham he himself was here,
A famous farrier although he be,
It wad set aw his wits astear
To reckon her diseases in their degree.
But her sicknesses we’ll set aside,
Now tauk we of the peur man’s cost,
And how she lev’d, and how she died,
And how his labour aw was lost.
In the winter-time she took a hoast,
And aw whilk while she was noe weell;
But yet her stomach ne’er was lost,
Although she never had her heal.
Now for her feud she went so yare,
An the fiend had been a truss of hey,
She wad a swallowed him and mickle mare,
Bequeen the night but an the dey.
The peur man cries out Armyes aye,
I see that she’s noe like to mend,
She beggers me with haver and hey,
I wish her some untimous end.
Nae sooner pray’d, but as soon heard,
She touck a fawing down behind,
She wad a thousand men a scar’d,
To have felt her how she fill’d the wind.
Her master he went out at night,
Of whilk he had oft mickle need,
He left her neane her bed to right,
Nor neane for to had up her head.
Next day when he came to the town,
He ran to see his mear with speed,
He thought she had fawn in a swoon,
But when he try’d she was cald dead.
It’s ever alas! but what remeed,
Had she play’d me this at Michaelmas,
It wad a studden me in geud steed,
And sav’d me both yeats, hay and grass.
There’s ne’er an elf in aw the town,
That hardly weell can say his creed,
But he will swear a solemn oath,
Crack o’ wealth Ecky’s mear cau’d dead.
Lad, wilt thou for Hob Trumble run?
I ken he will come at my need;
That seun he may take off her skin,
For I mun leeve though she be dead.
Now straight he came with knife in hand,
He flead her fra the top to th’ tail,
He left nae mare skin on her aw
Then wad been a heudin to a flail.
He seld her haill hide for a groat,
So far I let you understand,
And what he did weed he may well weet,
For he bought neither house nor land.
Now have I cassen away my care,
And hope to live to get another;
And night and day shall be my prayer,
The fiend gae down the loaning with her.
Now shall I draw it near an end,
And tauk nae mare of her at least,
But hoping none for to offend,
You shall hear part of her funeral feast.
To her resorted mony a beak,
And birds of sundry sorts of hue;
There was three hundred at the least,
You may believe it to be true.
Sir Ingram Corby he came first there,
With his fair lady clad in black,
And with him swarms there did appear
Of piots hopping at his back.
The carrion craw she was not slack,
Aw cled into her mourning weed,
With her resorted mony a mack
Of greedy kite and hungry gleede.
When they were aw conven’d compleat,
And every yean had taen their place;
So rudely they fell tea their meat,
But nane thought on to say the grace.
Some rip’d her ribs, some pluck’d her face,
Nae bit of her was to be seen;
Sir Ingram Corby in that place,
Himself he pick’d out baith her eyne.
But wait ye what an a chance befel,
When they were at this jolly chear,
Sir William Bark, I can you tell,
He unexpected lighted there.
Put aw the feasters in sike a fear,
Some hopt away, some flew aside,
There was not ane durst come him near,
Nay not sir Corby, nor his bride.
He came not with a single side,
For mony a tike did him attend,
I wait he was no puft we pride,
As you shall hear before I end.
See rudely they fell to the meat,
But napkin, trencher, salt, or knife;
Some to the head, some to the feet,
While banes geud bare there was na strife.
In came there a tike, they cau’d him Grim,
Sea greedily he did her gripe,
But he rave out her belly-rim,
And aw her puddings he made pipe.
Her lights, her liver, but an her tripe,
They lay all trailing upon the green;
They were aw gane with a sudden wipe,
Not any of them was to be seen.
But suddenly begeud a feast,
And after that begeud a fray;
The tikes that were baith weak and least,
They carried aw the bats away.
And they that were of the weaker sort,
They harl’d her through the paddock-peul,
They leugh, and said it was good sport,
When they had drest her like a feule.
Thus have you heard of Ecky’s mear,
How pitifully she made her end;
I write unto you far and near,
Who says her death is no well penn’d.
I leave it to yoursel’s to mend,
That chance the peur man need again;
If it be ill penn’d it is well kend,
I got as little for my ‘pain.’
STANZAS,
Addressed to Northumbria.
Old Janus advances all cloathed in white,
And his long-smother’d tempests sends forth;
On the mountains cold bosom, as black as the night,
Sinks the dark rolling clouds of the north.
In their winding sheets rob’d are the hills and the dales,
And the verdure no longer is seen;
Save where the slow streams wind their way thro’ the vales,
With their margins besprinkled with green.
On the stump of a thorn, with his bosom of red,
See the robin his thankful notes raise
For his crumbs—by his precepts, oh! may I be led
To give the All-bounteous due praise.
Hark! the blast sweeps the heath; see the mountain fir bend;
Thick tempests obscure the pale sky;
The fast-gathering drift on the hedge see descend,
And streams of faint lightning flash by.
Yes, Northumbria, thy climate is cold and severe;
There winter usurps the blithe spring;
And through the wide range of the circling year,
Chilling damps to thy bosom will cling.
Yet thy health-giving breeze, be it ever so cold,
Knits the nerves of thy children for war;
Whose proud speaking eye in the soldier behold,
And for whose dauntless heart view the tar.
He bounds o’er thy brooks, and he climbs thy wild rocks,
Health and vigour inhales from the breeze;
Despising in manhood the tempest’s rude shocks,
Fearless quits his dear home for the seas.
Lo! the canvas it swell’d: from the banks of the Tyne,
The vessel scuds swiftly along;
From his eye independant, see stern valour shine,
As he hums a Northumbrian song.
Now the battle-day comes, and far, far from his shore,
The squadrons of France meet his eyes;
Unaw’d his proud heart, ’mid the cannons’ loud roar,
He with Collingwood conquers and dies.
From thy hills, too, at sound of the heart-rousing drum,
Thy war breathing soldier retires;
In lion-like strength seeks the carnage field’s hum,
Fights—blesses thy name—and expires!
Such, such are the heroes in thy vallies rear’d,
Such, Northumbria, thy children still be:
Proud commerce, from Tyne’s banks in glory uprear’d,
To her breast clasps the lords of the sea.
Come forward ye dark rolling clouds of the north,
Who shrinks from your blasts but the coward and slave?
Ye nerve the bold sons that Northumbria sends forth,
To fight for her king on Trafalgar’s proud wave.
January 2d, 1807.
Bothwell.
THOMAS WHITTLE.
The author of the five succeeding pieces of poetry, a Northumbrian by birth, and was long resident in the neighbourhood of Cambo, as appears by the following lines taken from his Whimsical Love with Ann Dobson:—
“At Cambo, on a fatal day,
I chanc’d to see and view
This Celia’s face, more fresh than May,
When every blossom’s new;
Like patient Grissel, at her wheel,
Acting the housewife’s part,
My spirits in my veins did reel,
And love danc’d in my heart.”
As also from the History of Northumberland, (1811) Vol. II, page 221.
“Cambo was the favourite residence of the ingenious and eccentric Thomas Whittle, whose comic productions often beguile the long winter evenings of our rustic Northumbrians. His parents and the place of his birth are unknown. It is believed that he was the natural son of a gentleman of fortune, and that he was called Whittle from the place of his nativity, which some say was in the parish of Shilbottle, and others in the parish of Ovingham.
“Though Whittle was a profligate in his life, and sometimes licentious in his compositions, yet the superior talents he has displayed in his best productions, sufficiently entitle him to our notice in this work. His poems and songs have long been perused by the people of the county with eager admiration and delight, and will probably be a source of entertainment to many succeeding generations. His Whimsical Love is a master-piece of its kind; and his Poetic Letter to the Razor-setter, his satirical Poem on William Carstairs, and his song called the Mitford Galloway, are replete with wit and humour, and will afford a mental feast to all who have a taste for comic poetry.” The last of which was published during his life, with the following old wood cut, as a head piece to it:—
Bidford Galloway.