II.
PLAIN TRUTH AND BLIND IGNORANCE.
This excellent old ballad is preserved in the little ancient miscellany, intitled, The Garland of Goodwill.—Ignorance is here made to speak in the broad Somersetshire dialect. The scene we may suppose to be Glastonbury Abbey.
Truth.
God speed you, ancient father,
And give you a good daye;
What is the cause, I praye you
So sadly here you staye?
And that you keep such gazing 5
On this decayed place,
The which, for superstition,
Good princes down did raze?
Ignorance.
Chill[807] tell thee, by my vazen[808],
That zometimes che[809] have knowne 10
A vair and goodly abbey
Stand here of bricke and stone;
And many a holy vrier[810],
As ich[811] may say to thee,
Within these goodly cloysters
Che did full often zee. 15