"O once I had plenty of thyme, It would flourish by night and by day, Till a saucy lad came, return'd from the sea, And stole my thyme away. "O and I was a damsel fair, But fairer I wish't to appear; So I wash'd me in milk, and I clothed me in silk, And put the sweet thyme in my hair. "With June is the red rose in bud, But that was no flower for me, I plucked the bud, and it prick'd me to blood, And I gazed on the willow tree. "O the willow tree it will twist, And the willow tree it will twine, I would I were fast in my lover's arms clasp't, For 'tis he that has stolen my thyme. "O it's very good drinking of ale, But it's better far drinking of wine, I would I were clasp't in my lover's arms fast, For 'tis he that has stolen my thyme." The song, running as it does on the same theme and in the same metre as "The Seeds of Love," is very generally mixed up with it, and Miss Broadwood calls her version of it, in "English County Songs," p. 58, "The Seeds of Love, _or_ The Sprig of Thyme." The "Seeds of Love" is attributed by Dr. Whittaker, in his "History of Whalley," to Mrs. Fleetwood Habergham, who died in 1703. He says: "Ruined by the extravagance and disgraced by the vices of her husband, she soothed her sorrows by some stanzas yet remembered among the old people of her neighbourhood." See "The New Lover's Garland," B.M. (11,621, b 6); a Northumbrian version in "Northumbrian Minstrelsy," 1882, p. 90; a Scottish version in "Albyn's Anthology," 1816, i. p. 40; a Somersetshire in "Folk Songs from Somerset," No. 1; a Yorkshire in Kidson's "Traditional Tunes," p. 69. As the two songs are so mixed up together, I have thought it best to re-write the song. The melody was almost certainly originally in the Æolian mode, but has got altered. 8. ROVING JACK. Taken down, words and melody, from William Aggett, Chagford, and from James Parsons, Lew Down. An inferior version of the words is to be found among Catnach's Broadsheets, Ballads, B.M. (1162, b, vol. vii.), also one printed in Edinburgh, Ballads (1750-1840), B.M. (1871, f). Note what has been said relative to this tune, which is in the Æolian mode, under 1, "By chance it was," with which it is closely related. 9. BRIXHAM TOWN. Words taken down from Jonas Coaker, aged 85, and blind. The melody was given us by Mr. John Webb, who had heard him sing it in former years. Another version to the same air was obtained from North Tawton. Again, another was given me by the Hon. A.F. Northcote, who took it down in 1877 from an itinerant pedlar of 90 years at Buckingham. The words and tune were clearly composed at the time of the Commonwealth, 1649-1661.