Of the old dance “Letterpooch,” the name only is remembered.
BALLADS, Etc.
There are a few well-known old Cornish ballads, which have already been printed and reprinted; my apology for again introducing them here, must be, that a work of this kind would not be complete without them. “John Dory,” “An old ballad on a Duke of Cornwall’s Daughter,” “The Stout Cripple of Cornwall,” and “The Baarley Mow,” may all be found in Specimens of Cornish Provincial Dialect, by Uncle Jan Trenoodle (Sandys); “Tweedily, Tweedily, Twee,”—Through Rev. S. Rundle, in Transactions Penzance Natural History and Antiquarian Society, 1887–88; “Ye sexes give ear to my fancy,” T. Q. Couch, Polperro, Cornwall; and “A fox went forth one moonshining night,” Edward Pole, in Notes and Queries, 1854; “The Long Hundred,” a song of Numbers, W. Pengelly, Notes and Queries, 1873; “When shall we be married?” which I heard many years ago in Scilly, and of which I only remember three verses, I have never seen in print.
The Rev. S. Baring Gould, M.A., is now making a collection of the “Traditional Ballads and Songs of the West of England.” Part I. has been published; it contains “Sweet Nightingale,” said to be a favourite with the miners of Cornwall and Devon; this must be in North Cornwall, as the nightingale is unknown in the western part of the county, scared away, according to the country-folk, “by the sweet singing of its men and women.” And “The Hunting of Arscott of Tetcot,” of which as it has been recast, I will only transcribe the first four lines.
“In the month of November, in the year fifty-two (1652),
Three jolly fox-hunters, all sons of the blue,