Stanza I, line 3. palliards—see Note, p. 210, ten lines from bottom.
"Retoure My Dear Dell"
See Note to "The Canter's Serenade." This song appears to be a variation of a much older one, generally ascribed to Chas II, entitled I pass all my hours in a shady old grove.
The Vain Dreamer
See Note to "The Canter's Serenade."
"When My Dimber Dell I Courted"
See Note to "The Canter's Serenade." The first two stanzas appear in a somewhat different form as "a new song" to the time of Beauty's Ruin in The Triumph of Wit (1707), of which the first stanza is as follows:—
When Dorinda first I courted,
She had charms and beauty too;
Conquering pleasures when she sported,
The transport it was ever new:
But wastful time do's now deceive her,
Which her glories did uphold;
All her arts can ne'er relieve her,
Poor Dorinda is grown old.
Stanza I, line 4. Wap = the act of kind. Dimber dell = pretty wench—"A dell is a yonge wenche, able for generation, and not yet knowen or broken by the upright man … when they have beene lyen with all by the upright man then they be Doxes, and no Dells."— (HARMAN).
Stanza III, line 3. Upright-men—"the second rank of the Canting tribes, having sole right to the first night's lodging with the Dells."—(B. E., Dict. Cant. Crew, 1696).