clearly an echo from the roof. But there is more of the communal strain in spinning-songs;[[676]] for here is the home of balladry, a city of refuge even to this day,[[677]] and here the women make as well as sing the song. Echoes of the wheel itself[[678]] are not infrequent; perhaps they are too close to art in that pretty song of sewing, knitting, and spinning, sung by three women in the first act of Roister Doister:—
Pipe mery Annot, etc.
Trilla, trilla, trillarie,
Worke Tibet, knitte Annot, spinne Margerie:[[679]]
Let us see who shall winne the victorie....
although, what with incremental repetition in other stanzas, and the audible whir of the wheel, this is like the songs which still move women to emulation under like circumstances in the spinning-rooms of Europe. “In Northamptonshire, when girls are knitting in company, they say”—surely sing?—
“Needle to needle, and stitch to stitch,
Pull the old woman out of the ditch;
If you ain’t out by the time I’m in,
I’ll rap your knuckles with my knitting-pin.