CCXLIX.

[IT was probably the custom, on repeating these lines, to hold the snail to a candle, in order to make it quit the shell. In Normandy it was the practice at Christmas for boys to run round fruit trees, with lighted torches, singing these lines :

Taupes et mulots,
Sortez de vos clos,

Sinon vous brulerai et la barbe et les os.]

SNAIL, snail, come out of your hole,
Or else I'll beat you as black as a coal.

CCL.

I SEE the moon, and the moon sees me,
God bless the moon, and God bless me.

66

CCLI.

[AUBREY, in his Remaines of Gentilisme and Judaisme," gives another version of this song, as current in the seventeenth century, very curious, but unfortunately much too indelicate to be printed in a book emanating from the Percy Society, or indeed any other.]

WHEN I was a little girl,

I wash'd my mother's dishes;
I put my finger in my eye,

And pull'd out little fishes.

CCLII.

HERRINGS, herrings, white and red,
Ten a penny, Lent's dead.

Rise dame and give an egg,

Or else a piece of bacon.

One for Peter, two for Paul,
Three for Jack a Lent's all,
Away, Lent, away.

CCLIII.

[The unmarried ladies in the north address the new moon in the following lines:]

ALL hail to the moon! all hail to thee!

I prithee, good moon, declare to me
This night who my husband must be!

Thirteenth Class.—Songs.

CCLIV.

PARSON Darby wore a black gown,
And every button cost half a crowu;
From port to port, and toe to toe,
Turn the ship and away we go!

CCLV.

I HAD a little pony,

His name was Dapple-grey,

I lent him to a lady,

To ride a mile away;

She whipped him, she slashed him,
She rode him through the mire;
I would not lend my pony now
For all the lady's hire.

CCLVI.

As Tommy Snooks, and Bessy Brooks,
Were walking out one Sunday,
Says Tommy Snooks to Bessy Brooks,
"Tomorrow will be Monday."

CCLVII.

[A north-country song.]

SAYS t'auld man tit oak tree,

Young and lusty was I when I kenn'd thee;
I was young and lusty, I was fair and clear,
Young and lusty was I mony a lang year,
But sair fail'd am I, sair fail'd now,

Sair fail'd am I sen I kenn'd thou.

CCLVIII.

[The following song is given in Whiter's Specimen of a Commentary on Shakespeare, 8vo. Lond. 1794, p. 19, as peculiar to Cambridge and Norfolk.]

HEIGH, ho! heigh, ho!

Dame what makes your ducks to die?

What a pize ails 'em, what a pize ails 'em?

Heigh, ho! heigh, ho!

Dame, what ails your ducks to die?

Eating o'polly wigs, eating o'polly wigs. [i. e. Tadpoles.] Heigh, ho! heigh, ho!

CCLIX.

Buz, quoth the blue fly,
Hum, quoth the bee,
Buz and hum they cry,
And so do we:

In his ear, in his nose,
Thus, do you see;

He ate the dormouse,

Else it was thee.

CCLX.

[Out of the many songs relating to the heroine of the following stanza, one only has been deemed eligible for insertion in this volume.]

NANCY DAWSON was so fine,

She wouldn't get up to serve the swine,

She lies in bed till eight or nine,

So its oh! poor Nancy Dawson.

CCLXI.

WE'RE all dry with drinking on't,
We're all dry with drinking on't;
The piper kiss'd the fiddler's wife,
And I can't sleep for thinking on't.