BEAUMONT AND FLETCHER

From The Knight of the Burning Pestle, produced apparently in 1611, Act ii, sc. 8; Dyce, II, 173.

She cares not for her daddy,

Nor she cares not for her mammy,

For she is, she is, she is, she is

My lord of Lowgave’s lassy.

(Perhaps only a song.)

Give him flowers enow, palmer, give him flowers enow,

Give him red and white, and blue, green, and yellow.

Act v, sc. iii; Dyce, p. 226.

With that came out his paramour,

She was as white as the lily-flower.

Hey, troul, troly, loly

With that came out her own dear knight,

He was as true as ever did fight.

From Bonduca, produced before March, 1619: Act v, sc. 2, Dyce, V, 88.

It was an old tale, ten thousand times told,

Of a young lady was turnd into mould,

Her life it was lovely, her death it was bold.

From The Two Noble Kinsmen, printed in 1634, Act iii, sc. 4; Dyce, XI, 383.

For I’ll cut my green coat a foot above my knee,

And I’ll clip my yellow locks an inch below mine ee.

Hey, nonny, nonny, nonny

He’s buy me a white cut, forth for to ride,

And I’ll go seek him through the world that is so wide.

Hey, nonny, nonny, nonny

The Complaynt of Scotland, 1549, gives two lines of a song on the murder, in 1517, of the Sieur de la Bastie, a distinguished knight in the service of the Regent, Duke of Albany. The song may, or may not, have been a ballad.

God sen the Duc hed byddin in France,

And Delabautë hed neuyr cum hame.

ed. Leyden, p. 100.

The History of the Houses of Douglas and Angus, written by Master David Hume of Godscroft, p. 155, Edinburgh, 1644.

Of the treacherous execution of William, sixth Earl of Douglas, at the castle of Edinburgh, in 1440, Hume of Godscroft says: “It is sure the people did abhorre it, execrating the very place where it was done; in detestation of the fact of which the memory remaineth yet to our dayes in these words.” Since Hume mentions no ballad, it is not likely that he knew of more than this single stanza, or that more existed. (Sir Walter Scott, however, confidently assumes that there was a ballad. Minstrelsy, 1833, I, 221 f.)

Edinburgh castle, towne, and tower,

God grant thou sinke for sinne!

And that even for the black dinner

Earle Douglas got therein.

Written on the fly-leaf of a little volume printed at Edinburgh about 1670 (Quevedo’s Novels), Laing MSS, University of Edinburgh, Div. II, 358. (Communicated by Mr Macmath.)

‘He steps full statly on y^e stre[et],

He hads y^e charters of him sell,

In to his cloathing he is compl[ete],

In Craford’s mure he bears y^e bell.

‘I wish I had died my own fai[r] death,

In tender age, qⁿ I was young;

I would never have broke my heart

For y^e love of any churl’s son.

‘Wo be to my parents all,

Y^t lives so farr beyond y^e sea!

I might have lived a noble life,

And wedded in my own countrë.’

Finlay’s Scottish Ballads, I, xxxii.

A “romantic ballad, of which, unfortunately, one stanza only has been preserved. The tradition bears that a young lady was carried away by the fairies, and that, although invisible to her friends who were in search of her, she was sometimes heard by them lamenting her destiny in a pathetic song, of which the stanza just mentioned runs nearly thus:”

O Alva hills is bonny,

Dalycoutry hills is fair,

But to think on the braes of Menstrie

It maks my heart fu sair.