"Much more a wit, than man of mind; Alike to law, truth, morals blind! Consistent as he lived he died, His age's scandal, and its pride." These are not offered as competing in excellence, for they are both the productions of the same mind, but for the purpose of recording the following remarkable fact respecting their composition. No. 2. was written down immediately on reading your Number in July last (1851); having composed it, I took from my library shelf Lord Brougham's _Life of Voltaire_, in which I knew the lines were, for the purpose of pencilling in my rendering of them. You may conceive my surprise at finding already there the version No. 1. with the date 1848, which I had made in that year, but of which I had so totally lost all remembrance, that not a single turn of thought or expression in one resembles the other. I perfectly remember the mental process of hammering out No. 2., and can confidently affirm that, during the time, no recollection whatever of No. 1., or anything about it, ever crossed my thought. I fear such a total obliteration is a token of failure in a faculty once powerful and accurate, but, perhaps, unduly tasked; yet I offer it to be recorded as a singular fact connected with this wonderful function of mind. A. B. R. Belmont. THE MILLER'S MELODY, FRAGMENT OF AN OLD BALLAD. When I was a good little boy, I was a favourite visitor to an old maiden lady, whose memory retained such a store of old ballads and folk-lore as would be a treasure to many a reader of "N. & Q." were she still living and able to communicate. One ballad, parts of which, as well as the tune, still haunt my memory, I have tried to recover in its integrity but in vain; and of all the little wearers of frocks and pinafores, who had the privilege of occasionally assembling round the dear old lady's tea-table, and for whose amusement she was wont to sing it, I fear I am the sole survivor. The associations connected with this song may perhaps have invested it with an undue degree of interest to me, but I think it sufficiently curious to desire to insert as much as I can remember of it in "N. & Q." in the hope that some of your correspondents may be able to supply the deficiencies. I wish I could at the same time convey an idea of the air. It began in a slow quaint strain, with these words:-- "Oh! was it eke a pheasant cock, Or eke a pheasant hen, Or was it the bodye of a faire ladye Come swimming down the stream? Oh! it was not a pheasant cock, Nor eke a pheasant hen, But it was the bodye of a faire ladye, Came swimming down the stream." For the next two verses I am at fault, but their purport was that the body "stopped hard by a miller's mill," and that this "miller chanced to come by," and took it out of the water "to make a melodye."