The song is also reprinted for the Percy Society, (Fairholt’s Costume), xxvii. 130, as well as in Evans’ O. Bds., iii. 245. Compare John Cleavland’s “Square Cap,”—“Come hither, Apollo’s bouncing girl.”
[Page 135 (orig. 30).] The Wit hath long beholden been.
In Harleian MS. No. 6931, where it is signed as by Dr. W. Strode.
The tune of this is “The Shaking of the Sheets,” according to a broadside printed for John Trundle (1605-24, before 1628, as by that date we believe his widow’s name would have been substituted). We find it reprinted by J. P. Collier in his Book of Roxburghe Ballads, p. 172, 1847, as “The Song of the Caps.” In an introductory note, we gather that “This spirited and humorous song seems to have been founded, in some of its points, upon the ‘Pleasant Dialogue or Disputation between the Cap and the Head,’ which prose satire went through two editions, in 1564 and 1565: (see the Bridgewater Catalogue, p. 46.) It is, however, more modern, and certainly cannot be placed earlier than the end of the reign of Elizabeth. It may be suspected that it underwent some changes, to adapt it to the times, when it was afterwards reprinted; and we finally meet with it, but in a rather corrupted state, in a work published in 1656, called ‘Sportive Wit: the Muses Merriment, a new Spring of Lusty Drollery,’ &c.” [p. 23.] It appears, with the music, in Pills, iv. 157; in Percy Society’s “Costume,” 1849, 115, with woodcuts of several of the caps mentioned.
In Sportive Wit, 1656, p. 23, is a second verse (coming before “The Monmouth Cap,” &c.):—
2.—The Cap doth stand, each man can show,
Above a Crown, but Kings below:
The Cap is nearer heav’n than we;
A greater sign of Majestie: