'I hope I shall be hanged to-morrow,'
for [I feare me] I shall be hanged; whereat the king laughed a good,[447] not only to see the Tanner's vaine feare, but also to heare his illshapen terme: and gave him for recompence of his good sport, the inheritance of Plumpton-parke. I am afraid," concludes this sagacious writer, "the poets of our times that speake more finely and correctedly, will come too short of such a reward," p. [214].—The phrase, here referred to, is not found in this ballad at present,[448] but occurs with some variation in another old poem, intitled John the Reeve, described in the following volume (see the Preface to the King and the Miller),[449] viz.
"Nay, sayd John, by Gods grace,
And Edward wer in this place,
Hee shold not touch this tonne:
He wold be wroth with John I hope,
Thereffore I beshrew the soupe,
That in his mouth shold come." Pt. ii. st. 24.
The following text is selected (with such other corrections as occurred) from two copies in black-letter. The one in the Bodleyan library, intitled, "A merrie, pleasant, and delectable historie betweene K. Edward the Fourth, and a Tanner of Tamworth, &c. printed at London, by John Danter, 1596." This copy, ancient as it now is, appears to have been modernized and altered at the time it was published; and many vestiges of the more ancient readings were recovered from another copy, (though more recently printed,) in one sheet folio, without date, in the Pepys collection.
But these are both very inferior in point of antiquity to the old ballad of The King and the Barker, reprinted with other "Pieces of Ancient Popular Poetry from Authentic Manuscripts and old Printed Copies, &c." Lond. 1791, 8vo. As that very antique Poem had never occurred to the Editor of the Reliques, till he saw it in the above collection, he now refers the curious reader to it, as an imperfect and incorrect copy of the old original ballad.
[This ballad was a great favourite with our ancestors and is probably of considerable antiquity.
The earliest entry of it upon the Registers of the Stationers' Company is to William Griffith in 1564, but no such edition is known to bibliographers. It is possible, however, that Puttenham may have found the line quoted above—
"I hope I shall be hanged to-morrow"
in that edition.