LXVIII.

Since my tears and lamenting,
False love, breed thy contenting;
Still thus to weep for ever
These fountains shall persèver.
Till my heart grief-brimfilled,

Out, alas! shall be distilled.

Wretched doggrel! and moreover a bad translation. The original with music by Orlando di Lasso is in the Musica Divina, Antwerp, 1588.

"Poich' il mio largo pianto,

"Amor, ti piace tanto;

"Asciuti mai

"Quest' occhi non vedrai,

"Fin che non venga fuore,

"Ohime! per gl' occh' il core."

I find a far better English version in an old programme of the Ancient Concerts, at which the Italian Madrigal used to be frequently sung about fifty years ago:

"Ah! since my deepest sorrows prove

"So very pleasing to my love;

"Mine eyes shall never cease from tears,
"Till thro' these eyes my heart

appears."

LXIX.

Come, lovers, follow me and leave this weeping,

See where the little god lies sweetly sleeping:

Soft, then, for fear we wake him,

And to his bow he take him ;

Oh then if he but spy us,
Whither shall we fly us?

And if he come upon us,

Out, well away! then are we woe begone us.
Hence, follow me; away, dispatch us—

And that apace, for fear he catch us.

This is not unlike one of Bennet's Madrigals, "Come, Shepherds, follow me," in which a similar caution is given to beware of awakening the sleeping god of love.

LXX.

I will no more come to thee,
That flout'st me when I woo thee:

For still Ty hy, Ty hy thou criest,

And all my rings, my pins, and gloves deniest.

The exclamation Ty hy or Te hee, occurs frequently in Scotch Ballads. It is still in use in that country, and is generally indicative of derision.

"Te hee, quo' Jenny, keek, keek, I see you;
Minny, yon man makes but a mock."

The Wowing of Jenny and Jock.

LXXI.

Within an arbour of sweet brier and roses,
I heard two lovers talk in wanton gloses:
Say, dainty dear, quoth he, to whom

Is thy true liking tied?

To whom but thee, my bonny love?
The gentle Nymph replied.

I die, I die, I die, quoth he;
And I, and I, and I, quoth she:
Give me, quoth he, some token,
Or else my heart is broken:

What need of that? quoth she; you well do know it.
Sweetly come kiss me then, quoth he, and show it.

This is evidently a translation from the same original that has furnished "Within a greenwood" in the Musica Transalpina.

LXXII.

Hark, jolly shepherds, hark yon lusty ringing;

How cheerfully the bells dance, whilst the lads are springing;

Go then, why sit we here delaying,

And all yon merry lads and lasses playing?

How gaily Flora leads it,

And o'er the meadow treads it:

The woods and groves they ring loudly resounding

With echo sweet rebounding.

Printed in England's Helicon, A.D. 1600, and entitled The Shepherd's Consort; author's name not given.

LXXIII.

Say, gentle nymphs, that tread these mountains,
Whilst sweetly you sit playing,

Saw you my Daphne straying
Along your crystal fountains?

If that

you chance to meet her,

Kiss her and kindly greet her:

Then these sweet garlands take her,

And say from me, I never will forsake her.

LXXIV.

Ho! who comes there with bagpiping and drumming?
O, 't is, I see, the Morris dance a coming.

Come, ladies, come away, I say come quickly,

And see how trim they dance about, and trickly:
Hey! there again; hark! how the bells they shake it!
Now for our town, hey ho our town, and take it:
Soft, not away so fast; dost see they melt them?
Piper be hang'd, knave! look, the dancers swelt them:
Out, there, stand out; you come too far (I say) in,
And give the hobby-horse more room to play in.

No traces of the Morris dance, or Morisco as it was called, can be found in England prior to the reign of Henry the Seventh. As the name implies, it originated with the Moors, and probably reached us indirectly through the medium of Spain and France. It was originally danced by one, as well as by several persons; sometimes with the accompaniment of castanets, sometimes of bells, as may be seen by the following authorities :

"At a splendid feast given by Gaston de Foix at Ven

"dôme, A.D. 1458, four young laddes and a damosell, “attired like savages daunced by good direction a Morisco "before the assembly."

Thoinot Arbeau or Jean Tabourot (said to have been a Canon of the Cathedral at Lengres about the middle of the sixteenth century) relates, that "in his youthful days "it was the custom in good societies for a boy to come "into the hall after supper with his face blackened, his "forehead bound with white taffeta, and bells tied to his legs. He then proceeded to dance the Morisco the "whole length of the hall, backwards and forwards, to the "great delight of the company." (From a curious work entitled Orchesographie, Lengres, 1588.)

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In an old comedy called Variety, printed 1649, some one is described to be like "A Bacchanalian dancing the Spanish "Morisco with knackers (sc. castanets) at his fingers."

According to Sir J. Hawkins, within the memory of persons living when he wrote his History of Music (about sixty years ago), a saraband danced by a Moor constantly formed part of the entertainment of a puppet-show, and was performed with castanets.

The Morris was most frequently joined to processions and pageants, especially to those appropriated for the celebration of the May games: on these occasions the hobbyhorse or a dragon, together with Robin Hood, Maid Marian, and other characters supposed to have been the companions of that famous outlaw, made a part of the dance.

The hobby-horse was a figure with the head and tail of a horse, having a wooden frame for the body attached to the person of him who was to play the character, with trappings reaching to the ground. Thus equipped he pranced about imitating the curvetings and motions of the aforesaid quadruped.

Maid Marian was generally represented by a man dressed in female attire, who walked with a short mincing step, the better to sustain the character; whence the miller's wife in