And then they brought him to a barn,
A prisoner to endure;
And so they fetched him out again,
And laid him on the floor.
Then they set men with holly clubs,
To beat the flesh from his bones;
But the miller he served him worse than that,
For he ground him betwixt two stones.
O! Barleycorn is the choicest grain
That ever was sown on land;
It will do more than any grain,
By the turning of your hand.
It will make a boy into a man,
And a man into an ass;
It will change your gold into silver,
And your silver into brass.
It will make the huntsman hunt the fox,
That never wound his horn;
It will bring the tinker to the stocks,
That people may him scorn.
It will put sack into a glass,
And claret in the can;
And it will cause a man to drink
Till he neither can go nor stand.
BLOW THE WINDS, I-HO!
[This Northumbrian ballad is of great antiquity, and bears considerable resemblance to The Baffled Knight; or, Lady’s Policy, inserted in Percy’s Reliques. It is not in any popular collection. In the broadside from which it is here printed, the title and chorus are given, Blow the Winds, I-O, a form common to many ballads and songs, but only to those of great antiquity. Chappell, in his Popular Music, has an example in a song as old as 1698:—
‘Here’s a health to jolly Bacchus,
I-ho! I-ho! I-ho!’
and in another well-known old catch the same form appears:—