[66] An allusion to Sebastian Brandt's "Ship of Fools," translated by Alexander Barclay.
[67] So in "the second three-man's song," prefixed to Dekker's "Shoemaker's Holiday," 1600, though in one case the bowl was black, in the other brown—
"Trowl the bowl, the jolly nut-brown bowl;
And here, kind mate, to thee!
Let's sing a dirge for Saint Hugh's soul,
And drown it merrily_."
It seems probable that this was a harvest-home song, usually sung by reapers in the country: the chorus or burden, "Hooky, hooky," &c. is still heard in some parts of the kingdom, with this variation—
"Hooky, hooky, we have shorn,
And bound what we did reap,
And we have brought the harvest home,
To make bread good and cheap."
Which is an improvement, inasmuch as harvests are not brought home to town.
[68] Shakespeare has sufficiently shown this in the character of Francis, the drawer, in "Henry IV. Part I."
[69] [A play on the double meaning of the word].
[70] In the original copy this negative is by some accident thrust into the next line, so as to destroy at once the metre and the meaning. It is still too much in the first line.
[71] This expression must allude to the dress of Harvest, which has many ears of wheat about it in various parts. Will Summer, after Harvest goes out, calls him, on this account, "a bundle of straw," and speaks of his "thatched suit."