Page:Fairy tales, now first collected by Joseph Ritson.djvu/57

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ON FAIRIES.

47

I jest to Oberon, and make him smile,When I a fat, and bean-fed horse beguile,Neighing in likeness of a filly foal:And sometimes lurk I in a gossips bowl,In very likeness of a roasted crab;And, when she drinks, against her lips I bob,And on her wither'd dewlap pour the ale.The wisest aunt, telling the saddest tale,Sometime for three-foot stool mistaketh me,Then slip I from her bum, down topples she,And 'rails or' cries,^[1] and falls into a cough,And then the whole quire hold their hips and lough,

↑ This is Warburtons reading, which has, surely, more sense than the, apparently, corrupted reading of the old and new editions, "tailor cries," which doctor Johnson, miserably, attempts to defend by asserting, that "the trick of the fairy is represented as producing rather merriment than anger."—Had, however, the worthy doctor ever chanced to fall by the removal from under him, of a three-foot stool, it is very doubtful whether he himself would have expressed much pleasure on feeling the pain of the fall, and finding himself the laughing-stock of the whole company. He would have been more ready, like the frogs in the fable, to exclaim "This may be sport to you, but it is death to me." The old woman had reason both to rail and cry, as she would naturally suspect the stool had been plucked from under her just as she was going to sit down; than which there cannot well be a more disagreeable accident, as the incredulous reader who doubts the fact, may be easily convinced of, by trying the experiment.

[1] This is Warburtons reading, which has, surely, more sense than the, apparently, corrupted reading of the old and new editions, "tailor cries," which doctor Johnson, miserably, attempts to defend by asserting, that "the trick of the fairy is represented as producing rather merriment than anger."—Had, however, the worthy doctor ever chanced to fall by the removal from under him, of a three-foot stool, it is very doubtful whether he himself would have expressed much pleasure on feeling the pain of the fall, and finding himself the laughing-stock of the whole company. He would have been more ready, like the frogs in the fable, to exclaim "This may be sport to you, but it is death to me." The old woman had reason both to rail and cry, as she would naturally suspect the stool had been plucked from under her just as she was going to sit down; than which there cannot well be a more disagreeable accident, as the incredulous reader who doubts the fact, may be easily convinced of, by trying the experiment.

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