Giving an account of a nobleman, who, taking notice of a poor man’s industrious care and pains for the maintaining of his charge of seven small children, met him upon a day, and discoursing with him, invited him, and his wife and his children, home to his house, and bestowed upon them a farm of thirty acres of land, to be continued to him and his heirs for ever.
To the tune of The Two English Travellers.
[This still popular ballad is entitled in the modern copies, The Nobleman and Thrasher; or, the Generous Gift. There is a copy preserved in the Roxburgh Collection, with which our version has been collated. It is taken from a broadside printed by Robert Marchbank, in the Custom-house Entry, Newcastle.]
A nobleman lived in a village of late,
Hard by a poor thrasher, whose charge it was great;
For he had seven children, and most of them small,
And nought but his labour to support them withal.
He never was given to idle and lurk,
For this nobleman saw him go daily to work,
With his flail and his bag, and his bottle of beer,
As cheerful as those that have hundreds a year.
Thus careful, and constant, each morning he went,
Unto his daily labour with joy and content;
So jocular and jolly he’d whistle and sing,
As blithe and as brisk as the birds in the spring.
One morning, this nobleman taking a walk,
He met this poor man, and he freely did talk;
He asked him [at first] many questions at large,
And then began talking concerning his charge.
‘Thou hast many children, I very well know,
Thy labour is hard, and thy wages are low,
And yet thou art cheerful; I pray tell me true,
How can you maintain them as well as you do?’
‘I carefully carry home what I do earn,
My daily expenses by this I do learn;
And find it is possible, though we be poor,
To still keep the ravenous wolf from the door.
‘I reap and I mow, and I harrow and sow,
Sometimes a hedging and ditching I go;
No work comes amiss, for I thrash, and I plough,
Thus my bread I do earn by the sweat of my brow.