X.
THE LADY'S FALL
Is given (with corrections) from the Editor's ancient folio MS.[323] collated with two printed copies in black-letter; one in the British Museum, the other in the Pepys Collection. Its old title is, A lamentable ballad of the Lady's fall. To the tune of, In Pescod time, &c.—The ballad here referred to is preserved in the Muses Library, 8vo. p. 281. It is an allegory or vision, intitled, The Shepherd's Slumber, and opens with some pretty rural images, viz.
"In pescod time when hound to horn
Gives eare till buck be kil'd,
And little lads with pipes of corne
Sate keeping beasts a-field."
"I went to gather strawberries
By woods and groves full fair, &c."
[Mr. Hales thinks it possible that this ballad was written by the same author as The Children in the Wood—"the same facility of language and of rhyme, the same power of pathos, the same extreme simplicity characterise both ballads."
Mr. Chappell says that Chevy Chace was sometimes sung to the tune of In Pescod time, as were the Bride's burial (No. 12), and Lady Isabella's Tragedy (No. 14). The various readings from the original MS. are noted at the foot of the page.]
