Fairy Tales, Now First Collected/Song 6

by Joseph Ritson

SONG VI.

THE FAIRYS FAREWELL.

Farewell rewards and fairies! Good housewives now may say;For now foul sluts in dairies, Do fare as well as they.And though they sweep their hearths no less Than maids were wont to do,Yet who of late for cleanliness Finds six-pence in her shoe?

Lament, lament old abbies, The fairies lost command;They did but change priests babies, But some have changed your land:And all your children stol'n from thence Are now grown puritanes,Who live as changelings ever since, For love of your demaines.

At morning and at evening both You merry were and glad,So little care of sleep and sloth, These pretty ladies had.When Tom came home from labour, Or Ciss to milking rose,Then merrily went their tabour, And nimbly went their toes.

Witness those rings and roundelays Of theirs, which yet remain;Were footed in queen Marys days On many a grassy plain.But since of late Elizabeth, And later James came in,They never danced on any heath, As when the time hath bin.

By which we note the fairies Were of the old profession;Their songs were Ave Maries, Their dances were procession.But now, alas! they all are dead, Or gone beyond the seas,Or farther for religion fled, Or else to take their ease.

A tell-tale in their company, They never could endure;And whoso kept not secretly Their mirth was punish'd sure:It was a just and christian deed To pinch such black and blue:O how the commonwealth doth need Such justices as you!

Now they have left our quarters; A register they have,Who can preserve their charters; A man both wise and grave.An hundred of their merry pranks By one that I could nameAre kept in store; con twenty thanks To William for the same.

To William Churne of Staffordshire Give laud and praises due,Who every meal can mend your chear With tales both old and true:To William all give audience, And pray ye for his noddle: For all the fairies evidence Were lost if it were addle.^[1]

1. By Richard Corbet, afterwards bishop of Oxford and Norwich, who died in 1635. Posterity would have been much more indebted to this witty prelate for a few of gaffer Churnes fairy-tales than for all the sermons his lordship ever wrote.