I have spent ten years in collecting the folk songs of the West of England, and I have not come across one in which the agricultural labourer grumbles at his lot. On the contrary, their songs, the very outpouring of their hearts, are full of joy and happiness. Once, indeed, an old minstrel did say to me, "Did y' ever hear, sir, 'The Lament of the Poor Man?'" I pricked up my ears. Now at last I was about to hear some socialistic sentiment, some cry of anguish of the oppressed peasant. "No," I answered, "never--sing it me." And then I heard it. The lament of a man afflicted with a scolding wife. That alone made him poor, and that affliction is not confined to the dweller in the cottage. Here and there we do come on miserable cottages--a disgrace to the land. But to whom do they belong? They have been erected on lives, or by squatters, and the landlords have no power over them. I know a certain village which is nearly all ruinous; but there all the ruinous cottages are held on lives. It is quite true that the landowner can force the holder of the tenure to put it in repair, but he is reluctant to put on the screw of the law, and he argues, "The houses were built to last three lives--no more. When they fall in to me, they will fall in altogether, and I will build decent, solid cottages in their place." Over the squatter's cottage he has no control whatever. Listen to the note of the agricultural, downtrodden labourer, his wail of anguish under the heel of the squire and farmer. "When the day's work is ended and over, he'll go To fair or to market to buy him a bow, And whistle as he walks, O! and shrilly too will sing, There's no life like the ploughboy's all in merry spring. "Good luck to the ploughboy, wherever he may be, A fair pretty maiden he'll take on his knee, He'll drink the nut-brown ale, and this song the lad will sing, O the ploughboy is happier than the noble or the king." This is sung from one end of England to another, and always to the same very rude melody in a Gregorian tone, that shows it has expressed the sentiments of the ploughboy for at least two hundred years. Listen again: "Prithee lend your jocund voices, For to listen we're agreed; Come sing of songs the choicest, Of the life the ploughboys lead There are none that live so merry As the ploughboy does in spring, When he hears the sweet birds whistle And the nightingales to sing. "In the heat of the daytime It's little we can do, We will lie beside our oxen For an hour, or for two. On the banks of sweet violets I'll take my noontide rest, And it's I can kiss a pretty girl As hearty as the best. "O, the farmer must have seed, sirs, Or I swear he cannot sow, And the miller with his millwheel Is an idle man also. And the huntsman gives up hunting, And the tradesman stands aside, And the poor man bread is wanting, So 'tis we for all provide."