No. 9.
Philander's March.
This rhyme has been familiar throughout the New England States. Some of our older readers will remember how the doors of all the apartments of an old-fashioned mansion, with its great chimney in the centre, would be thrown open at an evening party, and the children march through the house, and up and down the staircase, singing the familiar air—
Come, Philanders,[46] let's be a-marching,
Every one choose from his heartstrings;[47]
Choose your true love now or never,
And be sure you choose no other.
O, my dear——, how I do love you!
Nothing on earth do I prize above you!
With a kiss now let me greet you,
And I will never, never leave you.
Plymouth, Mass. (about 1800).
Another version:
Come, Philander, let us be a-marching,
From the ranks there's no deserting,
Choose your own, your own true lover,
See that you don't choose any other;
Now farewell, dear love, farewell,
We're all a-marching, so farewell.
Deerfield, Mass.
Why, of all the names of the Damon and Sylvia class, Philander,[48] which, according to derivation, should mean fondness for the male sex, came to be a proverbial expression for an amorous person, and contributed to the English language a verb (to philander) we cannot say. Children's intelligence made wild work of the word. A New England variation was, "Come, Lysanders;" and in Pennsylvania, on the Maryland border, the first line has been ingeniously distorted into "Cumberland city-town-boys" marching! Cumberland being a town in the latter state.
No. 10.
Marriage.
(1.) By this name was known in Massachusetts, at the beginning of the century, an elaborate dance (for such, though practised in a Puritan community, it really was) which has a very decided local flavor.