The same theme is used in a ballad in the Pepysian Collection. See Ebsworth, "Roxburgh Ballads," vii. 231. Each verse ends-- "I vow I will marry, but I know not when." 102. AMONG THE NEW-MOWN HAY. Bell, in his "Ballads and Songs of the Peasantry," p. 223, gives this song. He says that it is "a village version of an incident which occurred in the Cecil family." Tennyson composed his "Lord of Burleigh" on the same topic. So did Moore his song, "You remember Helen, the hamlet's pride." But it may well be questioned whether either of these compositions comes up to the grace of the little "village version" of the tale. The ballad, however, is probably earlier than the Cecil marriage, and refers to some other legendary mésalliance. Henry Cecil, afterwards Earl and still later first Marquis of Exeter, saw, loved, and married a farmer's daughter named Sarah Hoggins, at Bolas Magna in Staffordshire, in 1790, he under the assumed name of John Jones. She was then aged seventeen, and he aged thirty-seven. Moreover, he was married at the time to Miss Vernon, a Worcestershire lady, to whom he had been united in 1776. In 1791, Henry Cecil obtained a divorce from his wife, Emma Vernon, and then was married in his proper name to Sarah Hoggins, at St. Mildred's, Bread Street, in the City of London. Not fully six years later the "Cottage Countess" died; and after three years the widower espoused a divorcée, sometime wife of the eighth Duke of Hamilton. Happily no question as to the legitimacy of the children arose. Henry, the eldest, was not born till 1793. He died the same year; but his brother, Brownlow, born two years later, lived to succeed his father in 1804. These plain facts take away most of the romance of the story of the "Cottage Countess." Moreover, Henry Cecil did not meet his Sarah among the new-mown hay. He arrived at Bolas in a chaise in a snow-storm, late in November 1788, and was lodged for a few nights in the farm. There he saw Sarah, who with friends was dancing. She was then only fifteen and a half years old. Cecil left, but returned in eighteen months and married her, as already said, under an assumed name, and before he was quit of his first wife. The whole story has been told in _Chambers's Edinburgh Journal_, part 60 (sixth series), December 1, 1902. Melody taken down from James Dingle, Coryton.