'There was one among them all That's slender, fair and tall, With a black and rolling eye, And a skin of lily dye.' 'A bonny lass I courted full many a long day, And dearly I loved to be in her sweet company.' (The lover then describes the progress of his suit, which proves unsuccessful, and concludes thus:--) 'Go, dig me a pit, that is long, large, and deep, And I'll lay myself down, and take a long sleep. And that's the way to forget her.' "The air to the latter was rather plaintive, and from the lips of some siren might have been entitled to an _encore_, but the voice which now gave it utterance only added another to many previous proofs that the English are not a musical people. The minstrel was in appearance one of the most athletic men I have ever seen, and although seventy-five years of age, would still, as I subsequently learnt, perform a day's work better than most of the young men of the parish. He was a pauper, but in great respect among the neighbouring rustics for his vocal powers. His auditory were moor-farmers with countenances as rugged and weather-beaten as the rocks among which they live." It is not a little interesting to know that some seventy years after this recorded evening we were able to recover two of the songs which Mr. Johns gives somewhat inaccurately; and both are included in this collection. The first is "The Three Jovial Welshmen," No. 75; and the last is "The False Bride," No. 97. One of my old singers, James Olver, was the son of very strict Wesleyans. When he was a boy, he was allowed to hear no music save psalm and hymn tunes. But he was wont to creep out of his window at night, and start away to the tavern where the miners congregated, and listen to and heap up in his memory the songs he there heard. As these were forbidden fruit they were all the more dearly prized and surely remembered, and when he was a white-haired old man, he poured them out to us. Some forty or fifty years ago, it was customary when the corn was cut, for the young men of a parish to agree together, and without telling the farmer of their intention, to invade his harvest field, work all night and stack his corn, whilst he slept. It was allowed to leak out who had done him this favour, and in return, he invited them with their lasses to sup and dance and make merry in a lighted barn. Then famous old songs were sung. But all that good feeling is at an end, and in its place exists a rankling hostility between the tiller of the soil and his employer. Blame assuredly attaches to the farmer for this condition of affairs, in that he has done away with the farmhouse festivities in which workmen and employer took part.