I never once will falter,
But George my king shall ever be,
Except the times do alter.
For this is law, &c.
The short scholar was right as to the effect of the Doctor’s song. It was hailed with rapturous applause by the lower tables, though you would have said, to look at them, that scarcely a man of the audience, except those close round the singer, could have appreciated it. People don’t always like best what they fully understand; and I don’t know which is the greatest mistake, to fancy yourself above your audience, or to try to come down to them. The little stiffness which the presence of strangers belonging to the broad-cloth classes had at first created amongst the pastime folk was wearing off, and several songs were started at once from the distant parts of the booth, all of which, save one, came to untimely ends in the course of the first verse or so, leaving the field clear to a ruddy-faced, smock-frocked man, who, with his eyes cast up to the tent-top, droned through his nose the following mournful ditty:—
THE BARKSHIRE TRAGEDY.
A varmer he lived in the West Countree,
Hey-down, bow-down,
A varmer he lived in the West Countree,
And he had daughters one, two, and dree.