Now when he had anointed her From the head unto the heel, Zounds! said the man, methinks you look Just like the very De’el. Go, fetch me down all the feathers thou hast, And lay them down by me, And I will roll myself therein, ’Till never a place go free. Come, tie a string about my neck, And lead me to this place, And I will save you from the Devil, If I have but so much grace. The Devil, he stood roaring out, And looked both fierce and bold; Thou hast brought me a beast unto this place, And the bargain thou dost hold. Come, shew me the face of this beast, said the Devil, Come, shew it me in a short space; Then he shewed him his wife’s buttocks, And swore it was her face: She has monstrous cheeks, the Devil he said, As she now stands at length, You’d take her for some monstrous beast Taken by Man’s main strength. How many more of these beasts, said the Devil, How many more of this kind? I have seven more such, said the poor man, But have left them all behind. If you have seven more such, said the Devil, The truth unto you I tell, You have beasts enough to cheat me And all the Devils in Hell. Here, take thy bond and indenture both, I’ll have nothing to do with thee: So the man and his wife went joyfully home And lived full merrily. O, God send us good merry long lives, Without any sorrow or woe, Now here’s a health to all such wives Who can cheat the Devil so. There is ‘A Pleasant new Ballad you here may behold How the Devill, though subtle, was guld by a Scold.’ [Illustration] The story of this ballad is, that the Devil, being much amused with this scolding wife, went to fetch her. Taking the form of a horse, he called upon her husband, and told him to set her on his back. This was easily accomplished by telling her to _lead_ the horse to the stable, which she refused to do. ‘Goe leade, sir Knave, quoth she, and wherefore not, Goe ride? She took the Devill by the reines, and up she goes astride.’ And once on the Devil, she _rode_ him; she kicked him, beat him, slit his ears, and kept him galloping all through Hell, until he could go no longer, when he concluded to take her home again to her husband. ‘Here, take her (quoth the Devill) to keep her here be bold, For Hell would not be troubled with such an earthly scold. When I come home, I may to all my fellowes tell, I lost my labour and my bloud, to bring a scold to Hell.’ In another ballad, called ‘The Devil’s Oak,’ he is made out to be a very poor thing; the last verse says: ‘That shall be try’d, the Devil then he cry’d, then up the Devil he did start, Then the Tinker threw his staff about, and he made the Devil to smart: There against a gate, he did break his pate, and both his horns he broke; And ever since that time, I will make up my rhime, it was called “The Devil’s Oak.”’