It is quite evident, from such passages, that during a long time a proverbial and popular character attached to this noisy personage: such has not yet passed away. The earliest complete imprint of “Arthur o’ Bradley” as a Song, (from a printed original, of 1656, beginning “_All you that desire to merry be_,”) in our present APPENDIX, Part iv. Quite distinct from this hitherto unnoticed examplar, not already reprinted, is “_Saw you not ~Pierce~, the piper_,” &c., the ballad reproduced by us, from _Merry Drollery_, 1661, Part 2nd., p. 124, (and ditto, _Compleat_ 1670, 1691, p. 312); which agrees with the _Antidote against Melancholy_, same date, 1661, p. 16. More than a Century later, an inferior rendering was common, printed on broadsheets. It was mentioned, in 1797, by Joseph Ritson, as being a “much more modern ballad [than the _Antidote_ version] upon this popular subject, in the same measure intitled _Arthur o’ Bradley_, and beginning ‘All in the merry month of May.’” (_Robin Hood_, 1797, ii. 211.) Of this we already gave two verses, (in Appendix to _M. Drollery C._, p. 400), but as we believe the ballad has not been reprinted in this century, we may give all that is extant, from the only copy within reach, of ARTHUR O’ BRADLEY:— “_All in the merry month of May,_ _The maids [they will be gay,_ _For] a May-pole they will have, &c._” (See the present Appendix, Part iv.) In this, doubtless, we detect two versions, garbed together. What is now the final verse is merely a variation of the sixth: probably the broadsheet-printer could not meet with a genuine eighth verse. Robert Bell denounced the whole as “a miserable composition” (even as he had declared against the amatory Lyrics of Charles the Second’s time): but then, he might have added, with Goldsmith, “My Bear dances to none but the werry genteelest of tunes.” Far superior to this was the “Arthur o’ Bradley’s Wedding: “_Come, neighbours, and listen awhile, If ever you wished to smile_,” &c., which was sung by ... Taylor, a comic actor, about the beginning of this century. It is not improbable that he wrote or adapted it, availing himself of such traditional scraps as he could meet with. Two copies of it, duplicate, on broadsheets, are in the Douce Collection at Oxford, vol. iv. pp. 18, 19. A copy, also, in J. H. Dixon’s _Bds. and Sgs. of the Peasantry_, Percy Soc., 1845, vol. xvii. (and in R. B.’s _Annotated Ed. B. P._, p. 138.) There is still another “Arthur o’ Bradley,” but not much can, or need, be said in its favour; except that it contains only three verses. Yet even these are more than two which can be spared. Its only tolerable lines are borrowed from the Roxburghe Ballad. It is the _nadir_ of Bradleyism, and has not even a title, beyond the burden “_O rare ~Arthur~ o’ ~Bradley~, O!_” Let us, briefly, be in at the death: although Arthur makes not a Swan-like end, with the help of his Catnach poet. It begins thus: