3.

[The following song relating to Robin Hood, the celebrated outlaw, is well known at Worksop, in Nottinghamshire, where it constitutes one of the nursery series.]

ROBIN HOOD, Robin Hood,
Is in the mickle wood!
Little John, Little John,
He to the town is gone.

Robin Hood, Robin Hood,
Is telling his beads,
All in the green wood,
Among the green weeds.

Little John, Little John,
If he comes no more,
Robin Hood, Robin Hood,
He will fret full sore!

4.

[The following lines were obtained in Oxfordshire. which it alludes is related by Matthew Paris.]

ONE moonshiny night

As I sat high,

Waiting for one

To come by;

The boughs did bend,

My heart did ache

The story to

To see what hole the fox did make.

5.

[The following perhaps refers to Joanna of Castile, who visited the court of Henry the Seventh, in the year 1506.]

I HAD a little nut tree, nothing would it bear
But a silver nutmeg and a golden pear;
The King of Spain's daughter came to visit me,
And all was because of my little nut tree.
I skipp'd over water, I danced over sea,
And all the birds in the air couldn't catch me.

6.

[From a MS. in the old Royal Library, in the British Museum, the exact reference to which is mislaid. It is written, if I recollect rightly, in a hand of the time of Henry VIII., in an older manuscript.

WE make no spare

Of John Hunkes' mare;

And now I

Think she will die;

He thought it good,

To put her in the wood,

To seek where she might lie dry;

If the mare should chance to fail,
Then the crowns would for her sale.

7.

[From MS. Sloane, 1489, fol. 19, written in the time of Charles I.] THE King of France, and four thousand men, They drew their swords, and put them up again.

8.

[In a tract, called "Pigges Corantoe, or Newes from the North," 4to., Lond. 1642, p. 3, this is called "Old Tarlton's Song." It is perhaps a parody on the popular epigram of "Jack and Jill." I do not know the period of the battle to which it appears to allude, but Tarlton died in the year 1588, so that the rhyme must be earlier.]

THE King of France went up the hill,
With twenty thousand men ;

The King of France came down the hill,
And ne'er went up again.

9.

THE King of France, with twenty thousand men, Went up the hill, and then came down again; The King of Spain, with twenty thousand more, Climb'd the same hill the French had climb'd

before.

10.

[Another version. The nurse sings the first line, and repeats it, time after time, until the expectant little one asks, what next? Then comes the climax.]

THE King of France, the King of France, with forty thousand men,

Oh, they all went up the hill, and so-came back

again!

11.

B

*

Ar the siege of Belle-isle,
I was there all the while,
All the while, all the while,
At the siege of Belle-isle.

12.

[The tune to the following may be found in the "English Dancing Master," 1651, p. 37.]

THE rose is red, the grass is green,
Serve Queen Bess our noble queen;
Kitty the spinner

Will sit down to dinner,

And eat the leg of a frog;
All good people

Look over the steeple,

And see the cat play with the dog.

13.

PLEASE to remember
The fifth of November,
Gunpowder treason and plot;

I know no reason

Why gunpowder treason

Should ever be forgot.

14.

[Taken from MS. Douce, 357, fol. 124. See Echard's "History of England," book iii., chap. 1.]

SEE saw, sack-a-day ;*

Monmouth is a pretty boy,

Richmond is another,

Grafton is my only joy,

And why should I these three destroy,

To please a pious brother!