17. "A warning for Wooers, that they be not ouer hastie. . . . To, Salisburie Plaine."
This ballad, beginning "Ye louing wormes come learne of me," R. W. Bond prints among the early poems of John Lyly (Works, III, 465). In marginal glosses he notes resemblances between the phrases and ideas in the ballad and in Lyly's Euphues, Campaspe, etc., and remarks (ibid., 438), "Few, I believe, will be found to question the correctness of my attribution of . . . A Warning for Wooers" to Lyly. Nevertheless, as Collier (Extracts, I, 110) long ago pointed out, Richard Jones licensed No. 17 in July, 1565, as "a ballett intituled ye lovynge Wormes comme learne of me" (Trans. I, 293), at which time Lyly was a mere lad. Cf . also No. 20, below. Halliwell-Phillipps, in his Memoranda on Love's Labour's Lost, p. 70, says that the name of Shakespeare's comedy may have been suggested by lines in the ballad of "Ye loving worms."
18. "An excellent Song of an outcast Louer. To, All in a Garden green."
As Arber (p. viii) noticed, "a ballett intituled All in a garden grene/betwene ij lovers" was registered by Pekering in 1565 (Trans., I, 295). For comments on this ballad, see foot-note 24. It is hard to see how the septenaries of No. 18 could be sung to the tune of "All in a Garden Green," a ballad written in a peculiar stanza form; but that No. 18 had actually appeared before Jones licensed his Pleasant Sonnets is proved by the fact that its first two stanzas are copied verbatim in Bodleian MS. Ashmole 48 (ed. Wright, p. 183; cf. foot-note 20 above).
19. "The complaint of a woman Louer, To the tune of, Raging loue."
"Raging Love" was a tune derived from Lord Surrey's "The louer comforteth himself with the worthinesse of his loue," a poem in Tottel's Miscellany (ed. Arber, p. 14), and reprinted as a broadside in 1557, 1560–61, and 1561–62 (Trans., I, 75, 154, 177). Perhaps
accepted this MS. without question, somewhat to the detriment of his otherwise invaluable work. The MS. also contains vulgar "jests" of Peele, Tarlton, and Elderton (for two stanzas about Elderton, see Popular Music, I, 107), and some light is perhaps thrown on their composition by the preface to Collier's Few Odds and Ends, for Cheerful Friends (25 copies, privately printed, 1870). A comparison of the ballads in that book with those in the MS. may also prove illuminating.
