Now, having described our boats, horses, and crew,
And our Fairlop so gay, which you all do review,
Our boat she comes home by the winding of [ ... ],
And now you are welcome into Fairlop Hall.
Our boat we put by for another fair day,
And ever remember that old Daniel Day.
Haste away, &c.
"A few years before Mr. Day died, his favourite oak lost a limb, out of which he procured a coffin to be made for his own interment, and often used to lie down in it, to try how it would fit him. He died October 13, 1767, aged eighty-four, and his remains were conveyed to Barking by water, pursuant of his own request, accompanied by six journeymen Block and Pump Makers, to each of whom he bequeathed a new leathern apron and a guinea."
So runs this historical and poetical (?) fragment. The first song I have often heard sung, or rather bawled, by Mr. Hemingway from one of the windows in the street which diverges out of the Mil-End Road, at the "King's Arms." That was before I commenced my teens. Hemingway has long since gone the way of Daniel Day; and Fairlop has lost so much of its original vigour and popularity, as to be almost one of the things that were.
There is an engraving of Fairlop Oak, as it appeared in 1806, in the Gentleman's Magazine for July, 1806, p. 617. I think that some particulars of Fairlop Oak are given in Loudon's Arboretum. The woodcut in the Mirror referred to (p. 114.) bears some resemblance, in the outline of the tree, to my specimen of the Catnach literature.