The Sources and Analogues of 'A Midsummer-Night's Dream'/The Fairies' Farewell

by Frank Sidgwick

The Fairies' Farewell: Or God-a-mercy Will

(To be sung or whistled to the Tune of the Meadow Brow by the learned; by the unlearned, to the Tune of Fortune.)

Farewell rewards and Fairies!

Good housewives, now you 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 sixpence in her shoe?

Lament, lament old abbeys,

The fairies' lost command;

They did but change priests' babies;

But some have changed your land;

And all your children sprung from thence

Are now grown Puritans,

Who live as changelings ever since

For love of your demesnes.

At morning and at evening both

You merry were and glad,

So little care of sleep or sloth

These pretty ladies had.

When Tom came home from labour,

Or Ciss to milking rose,

Then merrily, merrily went their tabour,

And nimbly went their toes.

Witness those rings and roundelays

Of theirs, which yet remain,

Were footed in Queen Mary's 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 they take their ease.

A tell-tale in their company

They never could endure;

And whoso kept not secretly

Their mirth, was punished sure:

It was a just and Christian deed

To pinch such black and blue:

O how the common-wealth doth [need]^[1]

Such justices as you!

Now they have left our quarters;

A Register they have

Who looketh to their charters,

A man both wise and grave.

An hundred of their merry pranks

By one that I could name

Are 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 cheer

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.

RICHARD CORBET (1582-1625),

from Poetica Stromata (1648)

Endnotes

1 ↑  [need]. Poetica Stromata reads want.