Choyce Drollery: Songs and Sonnets: Being a Collection of Divers Excellent Pieces of Poetry, of Several Eminent Authors.
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Choyce Drollery: Songs and Sonnets: Being a Collection of Divers Excellent Pieces of Poetry, of Several Eminent Authors.
English poetry -- Early modern, 1500-1700; English wit and humor; Songs, English -- Texts
_And when these raskals went away,_
_What e’re you thing they did me repay_
_Ich will not you deceive._
_Facks[,] just as folks go to a vaire,_
_They vaidled up my goods and ware,_
_And so they took their leave._
_O what a clutter they did make_
_Our house for ~Babel~ they did take,_
_We could not understand a jot._
_Yet they did know what did belong_
_To drink and zwear in our own tongue,_
_Such language they had a got._
_Nor home ich any zafe aboad,_
_If that Ise chance to go abroad,_
_These rogues will come to spy me;_
_Then zurrah, zurrah, quoth they, tarry,_
_We know false letters you do carry,_
_And so they come to try me._
_For as swift as any lightning goes_
_Straight all their hand into my hose,_
_There out they pull my purse._
_O zurrah, zurrah, this is it,_
_Your Letters are in silver writ;_
_You may go take your course._
_A Trouper t’other day did greet me,_
[ ... Lost line.]
_But could you guesse the reason,_
_Thou art, quoth he, a rebel, Knave,_
_And zo thou dost thy zelf behave,_
_For thou doest whistle treason._
_Nor was this raskal much to blame,_
_For all his mates zwore just the zame,_
_That ich was fain to do._
_Ich humble pardon of him sought,_
_And gave him money for my fault,_
_And glad I could scape so too._
(_Wits Interpreter_, 250, 1671 ed.)
This is, veritably, a “document in madness” of such civil wars and
military licence. It reads like the genuine narratives of Prussian
brutality and outrage during the occupation of Alsace and Lorraine: which
is hereafter to be bitterly avenged.
Page 60. _I keep my horse, I keep_, &c.
This lively ditty is sung by Latrocinio in the comedy of “The Widow,”
Act iii. sc. 1, produced about 1616, and written by JOHN FLETCHER, Ben
Jonson, and Thomas Middleton. The song bears trace of Fletcher’s hand
(more, we believe, than of Jonson’s). It has a rollicking freedom that
made it a favourite. We meet it in _Wit’s Interpreter_, 1655, p. 69;
1671, p. 175; and elsewhere. See Dyce’s _Middleton_, iii. 383, and
_Dodsley’s Old Plays_, 1744, vi. 34.
Page 61. _There is not halfe so warm a fire._
This re-appears, with variations and twelve additional lines (inferior),
in _Westminster-Drollery_, 1671, i. 102; where is the corrupt text “_and
~daily~ pays us with what is_.” Our present text gives us the true word,
“_dully_.”
Page 62. Fuller _of wish, than hope_, &c.
Fuller’s book, “A _Pisgah sight of Palestine_,” was published about 1649.
The epitaph “Here lies Fuller’s earth,” is well known. He died in 1661.
Page 63. Cloris, _now thou art fled away_.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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