The pilgrimages undertaken on pretence of religion, were often productive of affairs of gallantry, and led the votaries to no other shrine than that of Venus.[464]
The following ballad was once very popular; it is quoted in Fletcher's Knt. of the burning pestle, act ii. sc. ult. and in another old play, called, Hans Beer-pot, his invisible Comedy, &c. 4to. 1618; act i.—The copy below was communicated to the Editor by the late Mr. Shenstone as corrected by him from an ancient copy, and supplied with a concluding stanza.
We have placed this, and Gentle Herdsman, &c. thus early in the volume, upon a presumption that they must have been written, if not before the dissolution of the monasteries, yet while the remembrance of them was fresh in the minds of the people.
[Although Percy does not mention his folio MS. this song is there, and a copy from it is now printed at the end of Percy's version. With the exception of the last three lines there are little but verbal differences, but these are numerous. The ending is strikingly inferior to that of the MS. and does very little credit to Shenstone's poetical taste. A copy of the song in the Bodleian library (MS. Rawl. 85 fol. 124) is signed W. R., and Dr. Bliss in consequence claimed it for Sir Walter Raleigh in his edition of Wood's Athenæ. It is inserted in the Oxford edition of Raleigh's Works, vol. viii. p. 733, with the title—False Love and True Love. Dr. Hannah also includes it in his edition of the Courtly Poets, but believes it highly improbable that Raleigh wrote the song.
Mr. Chappell points out that the first line of the ballad quoted above is introduced in Nashe's Have with you to Saffron Walden, 1596. In The Weakest goes to the Wall, 1600, we read
"King Richard's gone to Walsingham, to the Holy Land."
The tune of Walsingham was highly popular, and numerous songs have been set to it.]
