There was another village poet who flourished in the same epoch as the Jim cited above. His name was Rab Downe. He had a remarkable facility for running off impromptu verses. On one occasion at a wrestling match, he began swinging himself from foot to foot, and to a chant—these fellows always sing their verses—described the match as it went on before him, versifying all the turns and incidents of the struggle, throwing in words relative to the onlookers, their names and complementary expletives.
No doubt that much of the compositions of these men was mere doggerel, but it was not always so. In their songs gleam out here and there a poetic, or, at all events, a fresh and quaint thought. What is always difficult to ascertain is what is original and what traditional, for when they do pretend to originality they often import into their verses whole passages from ancient ballads. But in this they are not peculiar. Hindley in his Life of James Catnach, the Broadside publisher, gives some verses on the death of the Princess Charlotte, which Catnach claimed as his own composition. The first verse runs—
"She is gone! sweet Charlotte's gone,
Gone to the silent bourne;
She is gone, she's gone for ever more,—
She never can return."
But this was a mere adaptation of a song of The Drowned Lover, which is a favourite with the old singers—
"He is gone! my love is drowned!
My love whom I deplore.