[87]. "Gilderoy."
A pretty song about a monstrously ugly scoundrel, though handsome of feature. Gilderoy was a highwayman, sparing for his prey neither man nor woman, and if there were "roses" on his shoes, they were blood-red. At last fifty armed avengers surrounded his house at night and set on. He killed eight of them before he was captured; which, if true, was bonnie fighting. Nevertheless, such a villain he was that he was hanged, without trial, on a gibbet thirty feet high, and the bones of him (despite the last stanza of the ballad) dangled in chains forty feet above Leith Walk in Edinburgh for fifty years afterwards.
[88]. "And his name was Little Bingo."
In bounding health, it is said, a dog's nose and a woman's elbow are always cold. The reason for which is explained in a legend (referred to in Mrs. Wright's Rustic Speech and Folk Lore). It seems that in the midst of its forty days' riding on the Flood, the Ark one black night sprung a little leak. Father Noah having forgotten to bring his carpenter's bag on board, was at his wits' end to plug the hole in its timbers. In the beam of his rushlight he looked and he looked and he looked; and still the water came rilling in and in. His dog, Shafet, was of course standing by, head on one side, carefully watching his master. And Noah, by good chance, at last casting his eye in his direction, seized the faithful creature and, thrusting his nose into the leak, for a while stopped the flow. But Noah, a merciful man, and partial to animals, quickly perceived that in a few minutes poor Shafet would perish of suffocation, and as, by this time, his wife had descended into the fo'c'sle to see what he was about, he released his dog's nose, and, instead of it, stuffed in her charming elbow. Q.E.D.
But not all dogs are as ready—as Launce in The Two Gentlemen of Verona knew:
"Launce: 'Nay, 'twill bee this howre ere I have done weeping. All the kinde of the Launces, have this very fault: I have received my proportion, like the prodigious Sonne, and am going with Sir Protheus to the Imperialls Court: I thinke Crab my dog, be the sowrest natured dogge that lives: My Mother weeping: my Father wayling: my Sister crying: our Maid howling: our Catte wringing her hands, and all our house in a great perplexitie, yet did not this cruell-hearted Curre shedde one teare: he is a stone, a very pibble stone, and has no more pitty in him then a dogge!"
[90]. "Poor old Horse."
In the furrowed land
The toilsome and patient oxen stand.
Lifting the yoke-encumbered head,