Or eke a pheasant hen,
Or was it the bodye of a faire ladye
Come swimming down the stream?
Oh! it was not a pheasant cock,
Nor eke a pheasant hen,
But it was the bodye of a faire ladye,
Came swimming down the stream."
For the next two verses I am at fault, but their purport was that the body "stopped hard by a miller's mill," and that this "miller chanced to come by," and took it out of the water "to make a melodye."
My venerable friend's tune here became a more lively one, and the time quicker; but I can only recollect a few of the couplets, and those not correctly, nor in order of sequence, in which the transformation of the lady into a viol is described:
"And what did he do with her fair bodye?