[2] Collier's Extracts from the Reg. Stat. Co. ii. 25.
[3] An abridgment of this ballad was published in Ritson's Ancient Songs and Ballads, 1829, ii. 31. But see the Townley Catalogue, No. 358.
[4] The elder Disraeli has a chapter on this subject in his Amenities of Literature.
[5] For some of these notices I am indebted to Mr. Singer; others I have added myself from the various sources.
[6] In Act v. Sc. iii of Fletcher's Nice Valour (Dyce's B. & F. x. 361) there is mention of the Hundred Novels, alluding, not to the C. Mery Talys, but to the Decameron of Boccaccio, of which an English translation appeared in 1620-5.
[7] i.e. do out. It is, perhaps, scarcely necessary to mention that in French, the term commander has a double signification, to command and to commend. In our language, the two words are of course distinct; hence the jest.
[8] Cudgel.
[9] This story is merely the latter portion of the seventh novel of the Seventh Day of the Decameron; but Boccaccio tells it somewhat differently. It may also he found in the Pecorone of Ser. Giovanni Fiorentino, and in A Sackful of Newes. 1673 (a reprint of a much older edition). In the latter there are one or two trifling particulars not found here.
[10] A rabbit-warren.
[11] Net, Fr. haie.