Oh! may my mother's spirit mild
Watch over and protect her child."
I have never since, through a tolerably extensive course of reading, met with the poem to which these lines belong, and have inquired of others, without more success. Can any of your correspondents inform me of the name of the poem, and of its author?
S. S. WARDEN.
Hearne's Confirmation.—Baxter's Heavy Shove.—Old Ballad.
—In Narratives of Sorcery and Magic, by Thomas Wright, Esq. (1851), vol. ii. p. 163., mention is made of a work by the associate of the notorious Hopkins, the "Witch-finder General," one John Hearne, entitled, A Confirmation and Discovery of Witchcraft (1648). I should esteem it a great favour if any of the numerous readers of your valuable journal can inform me where a copy of Hearne's work is to be found, as it appears to be wanting in the British Museum, and several other of the public libraries. I already happen to possess a copy of Matthew Hopkins's Discovery of Witches, 4to. (1647), an extraordinary little work, which Sir Walter Scott acknowledges he was acquainted with but by name.
There is a tract, too, by the celebrated author of the Saints' Rest, which I never yet could put eyes on, though I have for some years "collected" rather largely; I allude to Baxter's Heavy Shove, mentioned at page 99. of Lackington's "Life," and in one or two other works; but among a very large collection of old editions of Baxter's works possessed by me, it is not to be discovered. If any of your correspondents can enlighten me upon the subject I shall be much gratified.
Though I have collected rather extensively among the ballad lore of this country, I am sorry to say I never could find out from what particular ballad the annexed stanza is derived. It is to be found, as an epigraph, in Poetical Memoirs, by the late James Bird, 8vo. (1823):
"Brunette and fayre, my heart did share,
As last a wyfe I tooke: