Snail, snail, come out of your hole,
Or else I'll make you as black as a coal.[F]
[F] It was probably the custom, on repeating these lines, to hold the snail to a candle, in order to make it quit the shell. In Normandy it was the practice, at Christmas, for boys to run round fruit-trees, with lighted torches, singing these lines:
Taupes et mulots,
Sortez de vos clos,
Sinon vous brulerai et la barbe et les os.
Sing jig my jole, the pudding bowl,
The table and the frame,
My master he did cudgel me,
For kissing of my dame.
Bell horses, bell horses,
What time o' day?
One a clock, two a clock,
Time to away.
O the little rusty, dusty, rusty miller:
I'll not change my wife for either gold or siller.