I pray thee speik to me.

“The lead is wondrous heavy, mither,

The well is wondrous deip,

A keen pen-knife sticks in my hert,

A word I donnae speik.

“Gae hame, gae hame, my mither deir,

Fetch me my windling sheet,

And at the back o’ Mirry-land toune

Its thair we twa sall meet.”

Chaucer, in the last stanza of his Prioress’s Tale, has the following three lines, which are probably the conclusion of the above:—.