It is quite evident, from such passages, that during a long time a proverbial and popular character attached to this noisy personage: such has not yet passed away. The earliest complete imprint of “Arthur o’ Bradley” as a Song, (from a printed original, of 1656, beginning “All you that desire to merry be,”) in our present [Appendix, Part iv]. Quite distinct from this hitherto unnoticed examplar, not already reprinted, is “Saw you not Pierce, the piper,” &c., the ballad reproduced by us, from Merry Drollery, 1661, Part 2nd., p. 124, (and ditto, Compleat 1670, 1691, p. 312); which agrees with the Antidote against Melancholy, same date, 1661, p. 16. More than a Century later, an inferior rendering was common, printed on broadsheets. It was mentioned, in 1797, by Joseph Ritson, as being a “much more modern ballad [than the Antidote version] upon this popular subject, in the same measure intitled Arthur o’ Bradley, and beginning ‘All in the merry month of May.’” (Robin Hood, 1797, ii. 211.) Of this we already gave two verses, (in Appendix to M. Drollery C., p. 400), but as we believe the ballad has not been reprinted in this century, we may give all that is extant, from the only copy within reach, of Arthur o’ Bradley:—
“All in the merry month of May,
The maids [they will be gay,
For] a May-pole they will have, &c.”
([See the present Appendix, Part iv.])
In this, doubtless, we detect two versions, garbed together. What is now the final verse is merely a variation of the sixth: probably the broadsheet-printer could not meet with a genuine eighth verse. Robert Bell denounced the whole as “a miserable composition” (even as he had declared against the amatory Lyrics of Charles the Second’s time): but then, he might have added, with Goldsmith, “My Bear dances to none but the werry genteelest of tunes.”
Far superior to this was the “Arthur o’ Bradley’s Wedding:
“Come, neighbours, and listen awhile, If ever you wished to smile,” &c., which was sung by ... Taylor, a comic actor, about the beginning of this century. It is not improbable that he wrote or adapted it, availing himself of such traditional scraps as he could meet with. Two copies of it, duplicate, on broadsheets, are in the Douce Collection at Oxford, vol. iv. pp. 18, 19. A copy, also, in J. H. Dixon’s Bds. and Sgs. of the Peasantry, Percy Soc., 1845, vol. xvii. (and in R. B.’s Annotated Ed. B. P., p. 138.)
There is still another “Arthur o’ Bradley,” but not much can, or need, be said in its favour; except that it contains only three verses. Yet even these are more than two which can be spared. Its only tolerable lines are borrowed from the Roxburghe Ballad. It is the nadir of Bradleyism, and has not even a title, beyond the burden “O rare Arthur o’ Bradley, O!” Let us, briefly, be in at the death: although Arthur makes not a Swan-like end, with the help of his Catnach poet. It begins thus:
’Twas in the sweet month of May, I walked out to take the air,