"O staye, O staye, thou goodlye youthe,45
She standeth by thy side;
She is here alive, she is not dead,
And readye to be thy bride."
"O farewell griefe, and welcome joye,
Ten thousand times therefore;50
For nowe I have founde mine owne true love,
Whom I thought I should never see more."
THE BLIND BEGGAR'S DAUGHTER OF BEDNALL GREEN.
The copy here given of this favorite popular ballad is derived from Ancient Poems, Ballads, and Songs of the Peasantry of England, Percy Society, xvii. 60. It is there printed from a modern broadside, "carefully collated" with a copy in the Bagford collection. In Percy's edition, (Reliques, ii. 171,) besides many trivial emendations, eight modern stanzas (said to be the work of Robert Dodsley) are substituted for the first five of the Beggar's second song, "to remove absurdities and inconsistencies," and to reconcile the story to probability and true history! The copy in A Collection of Old Ballads, ii. 202, is not very different from the present, and the few changes that have been made in the text selected, unless otherwise accounted for, are adopted from that.
"Pepys, in his diary, 25th June, 1663, speaks of going with Sir William and Lady Batten, and Sir J. Minnes, to Sir W. Rider's at Bednall Green, to dinner, 'a fine place;' and adds, 'This very house was built by the Blind Beggar of Bednall Green, so much talked of and sung in ballads; but they say it was only some outhouses of it.'" Chappell, Popular Musk of the Olden Time, p. 159.
This song's of a beggar who long lost his sight,
And had a fair daughter, most pleasant and bright;
And many a gallant brave suitor had she,
And none was so comely as pretty Bessee.
And though she was of complexion most fair,5
[Yet seeing] she was but a beggar his heir,
Of ancient housekeepers despised was she,
Whose sons came as suitors to pretty Bessee.