28
'It's na the fashion o our countrie,
Nor yet o yer nane,
To wed a maid in the morning,
An send her hame at een.'
29
'It's na the fashion o my countrie,
Nor is it of my nane,
But I man mind on the lady's love
That freed me out of pine.'
E.
Jamieson's Popular Ballads, II, 117, compounded from A, a manuscript and a stall copy from Scotland, a recited copy from the north of England, and a short version picked off a wall in London. (The parts which repeat A are in smaller type.)
1
In London was Young Beichan born,
He longed strange countries for to see,
But he was taen by a savage Moor,
Who handled him right cruellie.
2
For he viewed the fashions of that land,
Their way of worship viewed he,
But to Mahound or Termagant
Would Beichan never bend a knee.
3
So in every shoulder they've putten a bore,
In every bore they've putten a tree,
And they have made him trail the wine
And spices on his fair bodie.
4
They've casten him in a dungeon deep,
Where he could neither hear nor see,
For seven years they kept him there,
Till he for hunger's like to die.
5
This Moor he had but ae daughter,
Her name was called Susie Pye,
And every day as she took the air,
Near Beichan's prison she passed by.
6
O so it fell upon a day
She heard Young Beichan sadly sing:
'My hounds they all go masterless,
My hawks they flee from tree to tree,
My younger brother will heir my land,
Fair England again I'll never see!'