[Same p. 155.] This Ale, my bonny lads, &c.
Like Nos. 4, 21, 24, 31, &c., not yet found elsewhere.
[Page 156.] What! are we met? Come. &c.
With music by Thomas Holmes, in Hilton’s Catch that Catch can, 1652, p. 46.
[Same p. 156.] Jog on, jog on the foot path-way.
The four earliest lines of this ditty are sung by Autolycus the Pedlar, and “picker up of unconsidered trifles,” in Shakespeare’s Winter’s Tale (about 1610), Act iv. sc. 2. Whether the latter portion of the song was also by him (nay, more, whether he actually wrote, or merely quoted even the four opening lines), cannot be determined. We prefer to believe that from his hand alone came the fragment, at least—this lively snatch of melody, with good philosophy, such as the Ascetics reject, to their own damage. No wrong is done in accepting the remainder of the song as genuine. The final verse is orthodox, according to the Autolycusian rule of faith. It is in Windsor Drollery, p. 30; and our Introduction to Westminster-Drollery, p. xxxv.
[Page 157.] The parcht earth drinks, &c.
Compare, with this lame paraphrase of Anacreon’s racy Ode, the more poetic version by Abraham Cowley, printed in Merry Drollery, Compleat, p. 22 (not in 1661 ed. Merry D.) All of Cowley’s Anacreontiques are graceful and melodious. He and Thomas Stanley fully entered into the spirit of them, arcades ambo.
[Same p. 157.] A Man of Wales, &c.
We meet this, six years earlier, in Wits Interpreter, 1655 edit., p. 285; 1671, p. 290. Our text is the superior.