As in the Town I walk'd one night

The twinkling Stars did shine most bright,
Pittying of my Love's distress,

Whom nature did with beauty bless:

Then welcome grief, and care, and woe,
Lingring is Loves overthrow.

[? Verses lost.]

Boldly I drew the Curtains by,

Where charming beauty pierc'd mine e[ye,]
I should delight, I do protest,

To entertain so sweet a guest:

Then welcome grief, and care, and [woe,]
Lingring is love's overthrow.

I folded down the Milk-white sheet

12

18

[Fol. 38.1? Second Part; or, a distinct ballad, in Answer.]
But fair one know your glass is run,
Your time is short, your Thread is spun,
Your spotted face, and rich attire
Is fuell for eternal fire;

And now begins your care and woe,
Pride is Beauty's overthrow.
Mistake me not, Death, I am young,
Come not so soon to do me wrong;
Take another and set me free,

She may serve as well as me:

Too soon begins my care and woe,
Pride is Beauties overthrow.
Take pitty on my roling eye,
And count me yet too young to dye,
Oh grant to me some longer time,
And cut me not off in my prime :
Too soon begins my care and woe,
Pride is Beauties overthrow.
The Roses and the Lillies fair
That in my cheeks now painted are,
Methinks might so much pity move,
And for to make thee kinder prove:
Too soon begins my care and woe,
Pride is Beauties overthrow.

Thus with her fainting murmuring breath,

While these entreaties he mislikes,

In vain she courts none-sparing death;

And fiercely at her beauty strikes :

30

36

42

48

Too soon began her care and woe,
Pride was beauty's overthrow.

54

1 Some stanzas are almost certainly lost here, between our lines 24 and 25, where the ballad-sheet is cut into two, and mounted on separate leaves of stiff paper. The 27th line refers to the odious fashion of wearing Beauty-spots of black sticking-plaster, cut in various fantastic shapes; sometimes of crescents, Greek or Maltese crosses, even a coach and horses at full gallop, as depicted in ballad woodcuts. To this subject we shall return hereafter, with illustrations. Come you Ladies that do wear

More Fashions than Sundays in the Year;

With your Locks, Ribbond-knots, and silk Roses;

With your Spots on your face and your noses;

Your bare breasts and your back, discover what you lack,

Come along, come along, I must lash you!

(A True Satire, in Pills to P. Mel., ii. 87, edit. 1700.)

Panting with Deaths all-killing dart,
She did resign her bleeding heart,
And pale as Ashes down she fell,
Whose beauty lately did excell:

Thus ended all her care and woe,
Pride was Beauty's overthrow.
You that are made of beauties mould,
When in a glass you do behold,
Your lovely features; think on't, then,
You must to Dust return agen:

Take heed of grief, and care, and woe,
For Pride will work loves overthrow.
Prepare for Death soon as you can,
For life is only like a span,

Though nature hath you fair ones made,
Know that your beauties once must fade:
Timely prevent your care and woe,

For death will work your overthrow.

60

66

72

Printed for J. Wright, J. Clark, W. Thackery, and T. Passenger. [About 1680-82. Black-letter: burden in Roman.]

The Damosel's Last Farewell.

"Here she is allow'd her virgin crants,
Her maiden-strewments, and the bringing home
Of bell and burial."-Hamlet, Act v. sc. 1.

LOVE-SICK

JOVE-SICK girls, two hundred years ago, prized this melancholy ditty, as they did "The Bride's Burial" of the Roxburghe Collection, i. 59. Common to both, in printed broadsides, was the characteristic woodcut here repeated, of six white-robed maidens "bringing home" the dead beauty to her last dwellingplace; bearing the coffin, with her "Virgin-crants" laid above it, the wreath of lilies, snow-drops, or jessamine, emblems of purity. Many a fair lady shed tears of sorrow, not unmingled with that self-pity which often prompts such offerings of compassion, over the fate of this hapless "Damosel;" the cruel rigour of whose parents was not slackened until too late, when she lay on her death-bed. Under all the quaint ruggedness of the ballad we can find touches of human feeling, befitting the tragedy of blighted hopes. There is no difficulty in estimating the power it held over young people, whose "course of truelove never did run smooth." Such tales as this were laid to heart, and oftentimes they kept it from becoming hard and chilled, in a world that is seldom too full of generous impulses or sympathy. Better a few sobs and tears over a Love-song, than the giddy recklessness that seeks to banish all remembrance

1 Shakespearian commentators have, according to their use and wont, done their utmost to destroy the appropriateness of words employed by the greatest of all poets, when incidentally showing us the burial of "the fair Ophelia :" such a funeral-train of weeping maidens, bearing the corpse of one thus early called away, he himself had seen, no doubt, in his native glades of Warwickshire. With exception of the earliest known edition, dated 1603 (the priest's single speech in it being short, and probably mutilated), all the quarto editions of Hamlet, published during Shakespeare's lifetime, print the words "Virgin crants;" signifying her "crantz," garland, crown of flowers, or wreath, such as we see represented laid on the coffin in our woodcut. After Shakespeare's death in 1616, the four folios must needs alter this word "crants to "Rites;" Warburton, dissatisfied, substituted "chants;" smaller men, like Edwards, 1758, and Heath, 1765 (Cambridge Shakespeare, viii. 159), blunderingly offered conjectural "grants," the former person generously giving us the alternative of "pants"!-with a ludicrous obtuseness failing to see that only married women shrewishly desire these articles, and even they covet them not after death as funeral ornaments, but during matrimonial felicity, except at a Skimmington.

of one's own disappointed first affection, by entrance into a shameless round of intrigue, of coquetry, and dissipation:

Mark it, Cesario, it is old and plain,

The Spinsters, and the Knitters in the sun,

And the Free-maids that weave their thread with bones,

Do use to chaunt it. It is silly sooth,

And dallies with the innocence of Love,

Like the old age.

A copy of this broadside is in the Pepys Collection, iii. 353. As regards the date: Josiah Deacon's time was 1684-95, but as the ballad is licensed by Sir Roger L'Estrange, who exercised the office until 1685 only, we have the time restricted to 1684-5.

The tune named, "Cruel bloody Fate," is oftener referred to as "Philander." It belongs to a ballad thus variously entitled, and also as "The Maiden's Tragedy," and "The True Lover's Tragedy." The music to it, composed by Henry Purcell, is in Playford's Choice Ayres (1681), iii. 29; and in Pills, iv. 284. The words were written by Nat. Lee, for his tragedy of "Theodosius," 1680, Act v. sc. 1. Copies are in the Douce Collection, at Oxford, and Roxb. Coll., iv. 78. For several years the song continued to be popular, and suffered the usual fate of being parodied for political squibs, one version being directed against the intriguing Anthony Astley Cooper, Lord Shaftesbury, in 1682-3, "Poor Tony," the title being "Dagon's Fall." Another, upon Thomas Armstrong, begins "Ah, cruel bloody Tom! what can'st thou hope for more?"-It is entitled, "The Bully Whig; or, The Poor Whore's Lamentation," &c., in 180 Loyal Songs, 1685, p. 129. Closely connected with the Philander ballad (to which there is a sequel, "Sitting beneath the Shade," &c., Roxb. Coll., iv. 6) is one found in Roxb. Coll., ii. 105, beginning, Ah, cruel maid, give o'er,

To punish him with scorn, &c.

It bears title "The Deceiver Deceived; or, The Virgin's Revenge;" and was, like our Bagford Ballad, licensed by Sir Roger L'Estrange, between 1680 and 1685.

The Grave-digger woodcut, on p. 157, very neat in the original broadside, is evidently a part of some book-illustration.