PUNCH.]
PUNCH AND JUDY.
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yourself, if you can. (sings and dances to the tune of "Green grow the rushes, O.")
Right toll de riddle doll,
There's an end of him, by goll![1]
I'll dance and sing
Like any thing,
With music for my pretty Poll.Exit.
Enter Punch, with a large sheep-bell, which he rings violently, and dances about the stage, shaking the bell and his head at the same time, and accompanying the music with his voice;—tune, "Morgiana in Ireland."
Mr. Punch is a very gay man,
He is the fellow the ladies for winning, oh;
Let them do whatever they can,
They never can stand his talking and grinning, oh.
Enter a Servant, in a foreign livery.
Servant. Mr. Punch, my master, he say he no like dat noise.
Punch. (with surprise and mocking him) Your master, he say he no like dat noise! What noise?
Servant. Dat nasty noise.
Punch. Do you call music a noise.[2]- ↑ A very respectable ancient English oath. Goll, in our old writers, and in the vulgar tongue, is the same as hand; so that to swear "goll," is nothing more than to swear by one's hand. "By goles," or "golls," is still used in the country. Thus, in S. Rowley's "Noble Soldier," 1634, Act 3. Baltazar says to Onelia, (a lady of Spanish and not of Irish extraction, as might be supposed by her name,) "Say'st thou me so? Give me thy goll, thou art a noble girl," &c. We leave it to future sagacious commentators on this play, to shew that "learning is somewhere vain," and to multiply quotations on a point never disputed.
- ↑ Our less refined ancestors used to do so. "A noise of fiddlers," "a noise of flutes," &c., are common expressions in old plays of the reigns of Elizabeth and James I. Punch's ear for music resembles that of Nick Bottom. "I have a reasonable good ear for music: let us have the tongs and the bones."
