‘‘Potatoes, too, are very nice food,— I don’t know any half so good: You may have them boiled or roast, Whichever way you like them most.’ ‘This gave the company much delight, And made them all to laugh outright; So Dicky had no more to say, But saddled his dapple and rode away. Diddle dum di, &c.’ {151} We have heard a Yorkshire yeoman sing a version, which commenced with this line:— ‘It was at the time of a high holiday.’ {153} Bell-ringing was formerly a great amusement of the English, and the allusions to it are of frequent occurrence. Numerous payments to bell-ringers are generally to be found in Churchwarden’s accounts of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.—CHAPPELL. {154} The subject and burthen of this song are identical with those of the song which immediately follows, called in some copies _The Clown’s Courtship_, _sung to the King at Windsor_, and in others, _I cannot come everyday to woo_. The Kentish ditty cannot be traced to so remote a date as the _Clown’s Courtship_; but it probably belongs to the same period. {165a} The common modern copies read ‘St. Leger’s Round.’ {165b} The common stall copies read ‘Pan,’ which not only furnishes a more accurate rhyme to ‘Nan,’ but is, probably, the true reading. About the time when this song was written, there appears to have been some country minstrel or fiddler, who was well known by the sobriquet of ‘Pan.’ Frequent allusions to such a personage may be found in popular ditties of the period, and it is evidently that individual, and not the heathen deity, who is referred to in the song of _Arthur O’Bradley_:— ‘Not Pan, the god of the swains, Could e’er produce such strains.’—See _ante_, p. 142. {167} A correspondent of _Notes and Queries_ says that, although there is some resemblance between Flora and Furry, the latter word is derived from an old Cornish term, and signifies jubilee or fair. {171} There is another version of these concluding lines:— ‘Down the red lane there lives an old fox, There does he sit a-mumping his chops; Catch him, boys, catch him, catch if you can; ’Tis twenty to one if you catch him or Nan.’ {174} A cant term for a fiddle. In its literal sense, it means trunk, or box-belly. {175} ‘Helicon,’ as observed by Sir C. Sharp, is, of course, the true reading. {177} In the introduction of the ‘prodigal son,’ we have a relic derived from the old mysteries and moralities. Of late years, the ‘prodigal son’ has been left out, and his place supplied by a ‘sailor.’ {179} Probably the disease here pointed at is the sweating sickness of old times.