No Doctor can cure, with his Physick more sure,
Than a Cup of small Beer in the morning.
This shows how a great man’s gifts are undervalued. Christopher Sly was truly wise (yet accounted a Sot and even a Rogue, though “the Slys are no rogues: look in the chronicles! We came in with Richard Conqueror!”) when, with all the wealth and luxury of the Duke at command, he demanded nothing so much as “a pot o’ the smallest ale.” He had good need of it.
[Page 152.] My Lady and her Maid, upon a merry pin.
This meets us earlier, in Hilton’s Catch that Catch Can, 1651, p. 64, with music by William Ellis. The missing first verse reappears (if, indeed, not a later addition) in Oxford Drollery, 1674, Part iii. p. 163, as “made at Oxford many years since”:—
My Lady and her Maid
Were late at Course-a-Park:
The wind blew out the candle, and
She went to bed in the dark,