=b.= From the recitation of Miss Agnes Macmath, 29th April, 1893; learned by her from her mother, who had it from _her_ mother, Janet Spark, Kirkcudbrightshire. 2. She could na wash and she could na wring, Hey, Wullie Wyliecot, noo, noo, noo For the spoiling o her gay gold ring. Wi my Hey, Wullie Wyliecot, tangie dooble, That robes in the rassiecot, noo, noo, noo (_Refrain perhaps corrupt._) 3. He’s gane oot unto the fauld, He’s catched a wather by the spaul. 5. ‘I darena thrash ye, for yer kin, But I may thrash my ain wather-skin.’ FOOTNOTES: [90] _Bace_ in the second copy, rightly, that is, _bash_, beat; _bare_ in the first (probably mistranscribed). [91] A merry jeste of a shrewde and curste wyfe lapped in Morrelles skin for her good behauyour. Imprinted at London in Fleetestreete, beneath the Conduite, at the signe of Saint John Euangelist, by H. Jackson; without date, but earlier than 1575, since the book was in Captain Cox’s library. Reprinted in Utterson’s Select Pieces of Early Popular Poetry, 1825, II, 169; The Old Taming of the Shrew, edited by T. Amyot for the Shakespeare Society, 1844, p. 53; W. C. Hazlitt’s Early Popular Poetry, IV, 179. [92] These passages are worth noting: She can carde, she can spin, She can thresh and she can fan. (v. 419 f.) In euery hand a rod he gate And layd vpon her a right good pace. (v. 955 f.) Where art thou, wife? shall I haue any meate? (v. 839.) (Compare Herd’s fragments with the last two, and with 903-10.) 278 THE FARMER’S CURST WIFE =A.= ‘The Farmer’s Old Wife,’ Dixon, Ancient Poems, Ballads, and Songs of the Peasantry of England, p. 210, Percy Society, vol. xvii. The same in Bell, p. 204. =B.= Macmath MS., p. 96. The devil comes for a farmer’s wife and is made welcome to her by the husband. The woman proves to be no more controllable in hell than she had been at home; she kicks the imps about, and even brains a set of them with her pattens or a maul. For safety’s sake, the devil is constrained to take her back to her husband.