This humorous old song fell from the hand of the witty Dr. Corbet (afterwards bishop of Norwich, &c.) and is printed from his Poëtica Stromata, 1648, 12mo. (compared with the third edition of his poems, 1672.) It is there called, A proper new Ballad, intitled, The Fairies Farewell, or God-a-mercy Will, to be sung or whistled to the tune of The Meddow brow, by the learned; by the unlearned, to the tune of Fortune.
The departure of Fairies is here attributed to the abolition of monkery: Chaucer has, with equal humour, assigned a cause the very reverse, in his Wife of Bath's Tale.
"In olde dayes of the king Artour,
Of which that Bretons speken gret honour,
All was this lond fulfilled of faerie;
The elf-quene, with hire joly compagnie
Danced ful oft in many a grene mede.
This was the old opinion as I rede;
I speke of many hundred yeres ago;
But now can no man see non elves mo,
For now the grete charitee and prayeres
Of limitoures and other holy freres,
That serchen every land and every streme,
As thikke as motes in the sonne beme,
Blissing halles, chambres, kichenes, and boures,
Citees and burghes, castles high and toures,
Thropes and bernes, shepenes and dairies,
This maketh that ther ben no faeries:
For ther as wont to walken was an elf,
Ther walketh now the limitour himself,
In undermeles and in morweninges,
And sayth his Matines and his holy thinges,
As he goth in his limitatioun.
Women may now go safely up and doun,
In every bush, and under every tree,
Ther is non other incubus but he,
And he ne will don hem no dishonour."
Tyrwhitt's Chaucer, i. p. 255.
Dr. Richard Corbet, having been bishop of Oxford about three years, and afterwards as long bishop of Norwich, died in 1635, Ætat. 52.
Farewell rewards and Fairies!
Good housewives now may say;
For now foule sluts in dairies,
Doe fare as well as they:
And though they sweepe their hearths no less 5
Than mayds were wont to doe,
Yet who of late for cleaneliness
Finds sixe-pence in her shoe?
Lament, lament old Abbies,
The fairies lost command; 10
They did but change priests babies,
But some have chang'd your land: