"I love a ballad but even too well," says the Clown in _Winter's Tale_, and "I love a ballad in print, a'-life!" sighs Mopsa; but there are no Clowns and Mopsas now. Clever Board School scholars and misses who despise ballads, and love dear as life your coarse, vulgar, music-hall buffoonery. [9]"I reckon the days is departed When folks 'ud 'a listened to me; I feels like as one broken-hearted, A thinking of what used to be. And I dun' know as much is amended Than was in them merry old times, When, wi' pipes and good ale, folks attended To me and my purty old rhymes. To me and my purty old rhymes. 'Tes true, I be cruel asthmatic, I've lost ivry tooth i' my head, And my limbs be crim'd up wi' rheumatic-- D'rsay I were better in bed. But Lor'! wi' that dratted blue ribbon, Tay-totals and chapels--the lot! A leckturing, canting and fibbin', The old zinging man is forgot. The old zinging man is forgot. I reckon, that wi' my brown fiddle, I'd go from this cottage to that, All the youngsters 'ud dance in the middle, Their pulses and feet pit-a-pat. I cu'd zing--if you'd stand me the liquor, All night, and 'ud never give o'er; My voice--I don't deny't getting thicker, But never exhausting my store. But never exhausting my store. 'Tes politics now is the fashion, As sets folks about by the ear, And slops makes the poorest o' lushing, No zinging for _me_ wi'out beer. I reckon the days be departed For such jolly gaffers as I; Folks will never again be light-hearted, As they was in the days that's gone by. As they was in the days that's gone by. O Lor! what wi' their edi'cation, And me--neither cipher nor write; But in zinging the best in the nation, And give the whole parish delight. I be going, I reckon, full mellow, To lay in the churchyard my head; So say--God be wi' you, old fellow! The last o' the singers is dead. The last o' the singers is dead." [Illustration] FOOTNOTES: [8] The Flying Horse is a peculiarly dangerous throw over the head, and usually breaks or severely injures the spine of the wrestler thus thrown. [9] From _Songs of the West_, by S. Baring Gould and H. Fleetwood Sheppard. Methuen & Co.: 1889. CHAPTER XII. OLD SERVANTS. [Illustration] When _Doomsday Book_ was drawn up, there was but one female domestic servant in the county of Devon, that covers one million six hundred and fifty-five thousand acres. When I mentioned that fact to a lady of my acquaintance, she heaved a deep-drawn sigh, and said, "I wish I had lived in the times of _Doomsday_, and had not been the mistress of that one servant-maid." [Illustration: The Old Butler.]