“Lament each over the blazing fire That downe from Heaven came, And burned S. Powles his lofty spyre With lightning’s furious flame. Lament, I say, Both night and day, Sith London’s sin did cause the same.” V.—GENERAL Tom Long the Carrier. Come merry home, John. Patient Grissel. The Bachelor. “Hough! For the Bachelor! Merry doth he live, All the day long he can daunce sing and playe: His troubles are like to water in a sieve, The more it floweth in, the more it will away: This is the verie truth I doe declare and saye. Maryed men for him may sit, sighe, and grone, He is well content and letteth well alone.” Give place ye Ladies. “Her rosial colour comes and goes With such a comely grace! More ruddie, too, than doth the rose, Within her lively face.” Cruelness of Wicked Women. A Fairing. The Hunt is Up. The Ballad of Broomes. “New broomes, greene broomes, will you buy any? Come, maidens, come quickly, let me take a penny.” The Ballad of Milkmaids. (The Milkmaids did not like being called Malkins. The name Malkin is a diminutive of Mary, and was used in the sense of slattern or country wench.) “Passe not for rybalds which mylke maydes defame, And call them not Malkins, poor Malkins by name: Their trade is as good as anie we knowe And that it is so I will presently showe. Downe & Downe &c.” A Merry Rhyme concerning Butchers, Graysors, Schole maisters and Tankard Bearers. Ruffle, Sleeves and Hose. The Nut Brown Mayd. Row well ye marynors. God send me a wyfe that will do as I say. This list might be multiplied indefinitely. Enough has been given to show that the ballad was the principal medium by which the people were moved and taught. One would not underrate the power of the sermon. At no time, not even in the seventeenth century, was the sermon more powerful than under Elizabeth; but the sermon chiefly treated of doctrine and the ballads taught morals and the conduct of life. Nay, in these cases, which were many, when a ballad secular, amatory, scandalous, or immoral, had become popular, the clergy took it in hand and moralised it: _i.e._ presented a religious parody of it, which they persuaded the people to sing instead of the first version. For example, here is part of a “moralised” ballad:— “To pass the place where pleasure is It ought to please one fantasie, If that the pleasure be amis, And to God’s Work plaine contrarie, Or else we sinne, we sinne, And hell we winne, Great panic therein All remedie gone. Except in Christ alone, alone.”