[Roxburghe Collection (Bright's Supp. Volume), IV. 64.]

The Musical Shepherdess;

Or,

DORINDA'S lamentation for the loss of AMINTAS.

Amintor all Arcadia's Glory was,

A youth so sweet that all he did surpass,

But Time's all-moving s[c]ith this flower did cut,
Fate to his days hath the last period put :

For musick and for singing who but he
Was fit to help the Gods with harmony?

His fair Dorinda, seeing he was gone,

And the poor mournful Damsel left alone,

Invokes the [rural] Nymphs to sing his praise,

Whilst she a Garland weaves, then ends her days;

Resolving not to stay behind her Love:

She being deny'd him here, mounts up above.

TO A PLEASANT NEW TUNE, CALLED Amintas' farewel: OR, Digby's Farewel.

A

Dieu to the Pleasures and follies of Love,

For a passion more noble my fancy doth move;

My Shepherd is dead, and I live to proclaim

The sorrowful notes of Amintas his name.

The Wood-Nymphs reply, when they hear me complain, "Thou never shalt see thy Amintas again:

For death hath befriended him,

Fate hath defended him,

None, none alive is so happy a Swain!"

You Shepherds and Nymphs that have danced to his lays,
Come, help me to sing forth Amintas his praise:
No Swain for the mirtle durst with him dispute,

So sweet were his notes whilst he sung to his Lute;

9

Dorinda's Lamentation for the loss of Amintas.

Then come to his Grave, and your kindness pursue,
To weave him a Garland of Cypress and Yew:
For Life hath forsaken him,

Death hath o're-taken him,

No Swain again will be ever so true.

Then leave me alone to my wretched estate,
[I] lost him too soon, and I loved him too late;
You ecchoes and fountains my witnesses prove,
How deeply I sigh for the loss of my Love.
And now of our Pan, whom we chiefly adore,
This favour I never will cease to implore,
That now I may go above,

And there enjoy my Love,

And live more happy then ever before.1

But if that old god should my wishes deny,

My Soul through the clouds to my dearest shall flye,
So swift that his Deity shall not restrain
Me from the delights of so happy a Swain.
I'le send my Petitions to Venus so fair,

To secure my flight which I take in the air;

Surely she'l pitty take,

And Lovers happy make,

For she herself has been catcht in Love's snare.

36

How pleasantly did our blest time away creep,
When Amintas and I did together keep sheep;
His musick and mine did so sweetly agree,
When we sat in a vale under a shady tree;
The pritty Lambs feeding did to us give ear,
And the dainty young kids liv'd secure from fear:

But now he is dead and gone,

And I am left alone,

In the Spring-time of life he concluded the year.

45

Now the flocks do lament that their pastor is fled,
But I more am griev'd that Amintas is dead;
They miss him all day, but I miss him at night,
To them he gave safety, but to me sweet delight;
All day free from danger of ravenous beast,
They fed securely, and at night took their rest:
But I miss him night and day

Now he is fled away,

His lips were to me a continual feast.

54

Here the original song ends, but with the different line,
"Then, then, I never will part with him more."

You pritty kind Nymphs that have heard of his fame,
I beg your assistance to sound forth his name;
But if there be any that my Shepheard ne'r knew,
His picture I'le draw and present to their view:
Though not half so lively the shaddow will be,
Yet I know 'twill be pleasant some part for to see.
Apollo I'le compel

To help me to draw it well,

And what there is wanting shall be made up in me.
His cheeks' red and white, being free from all paint,
And his looks so divine, you would think him a Saint;
A language so free, and so pleasant a voice,

That I thought myself blest when I made him my choice;
When he sung, all the world did admire his song,
All sorts for to hear him together did throng:

His body strait and tall,

With something best of all,

Which shall be nameless for fear you should long :

His Musick, so sweet that it ravisht each Soul,
All creatures that heard it his loss do condole,
But I most of all do lament for my dear,
Who ne'r can enjoy my self whilst I live here:
Two hearts once united by Love's lasting bands,
Can ne'r be divided by Death's cruel hands;

Though he be gone before,
He has my heart in store,

Hark! Hark! he calls. I'le obey his commands.

I come, oh, I come, my Amintas, my love!
My body I'le leave here in this pleasant Grove,
This little sharp Knife to my heart I will send,
To tell it 'tis time to make haste to its friend;
And that my true soul to my Shepherd is fled:
Some kind Nymph will bury me when I am dead.
Now all the world adieu!

My dearest I'le pursue,

This Garland shall crown my Amintas his head.

With Allowance.

63

72

81

90

W. P.

Printed for J. W., J. C., W. T. and T. P.

[That is, for John Wright, John Clarke, William Thackeray, and Thomas Passenger or Passinger. In Black-letter, with four cuts, to which a fifth is added in C. 22, e. 2, fol. 154: busto of a man, for which see p. 667. The tree-cut differs. Another ditty, to the same tune, "Good News in Bad Times," 1683, is given in the Second Monmouth Group, in next volume. Date of our ballad, 1676.]

England's New Bell-Man.

"If man could see

The perils and diseases that he elbows,

Each day he walks a mile; which catch at him,
Which fall behind and graze him as he passes;
Then would he know that Life's a single pilgrim,
Fighting unarm'd amongst a thousand soldiers."
-Death's Jest-Book, iv. 1.

FOLLOWING

OLLOWING "The Enchanted Lover," and preceding "England's New Bellman," comes a ballad entitled "England's Darling," in praise of the ill-starred Duke of Monmouth. It is Roxb. Coll., II. 141, but it will be more convenient to delay its reproduction until the end of the short group of E-initialed ballads at this place (viz. "England's Triumph" and "The English Fortune-Teller," beside the one named "England's New Bellman "), and thus leave it for p. 503, to become the commencement of a "Group of Ballads on the Duke of Monmouth's Protestant Rebellion."

1

Portents have always had a fascination for our gloomy London ancestors, and for all of those whom terror more than hope has swayed in town or country. Panics have been frequent, and it needed nothing beyond some unusual sight or sound in the sky, the sea or earth, for remembrances of past sorrows to be revived in all their intensity, as though it held a mystical connection with the sins of the nation. Certainly the date of "the great eclipse of March 29th, 1652," was sufficiently marked, as the time of England's bitter humiliation under the rule of the bloodstained and intolerant Long Parliament, which by a series of lawless acts had overthrown all the liberties for which it had affected to stand forth in defence; punishing with banishment, confiscation or death, those who had dared make remonstrance or opposition to its usurpation of supreme power. It was not merely that Strafford, Laud, and still later the King himself, had been slain under various direct violations of constitutional law with perversion of evidence and packed tribunals, from which all independent judgement was rigorously and even

1 Old Style as usual, corresponding with April 8th of our later reckoning. The day of the Eclipse was known in Scotland as "Mirk Monday." John Evelyn fails not to notice the Eclipse characteristically, he being generally observant of meteors, comets, and other phenomena, as befitted a man of science (thus he annotated the "blazing star" seen before the murder of Strafford, and again a similar one on the eve of Viscount Stafford's execution). He misdates it, a month too late, in his Diary, not as March but April: "29th. Was that celebrated Eclipse of the Sun, so much threatened by ye astrologers, and which had so exceedingly alarm'd the whole nation that hardly any one would worke, nor stir out of their houses. So ridiculously were they abus'd by knavish and ignorant stargazers."-Diary of John Evelyn, ii. 39, Bickers' edition, 1878.

VOL. IV.

2 H

fraudulently excluded. It was the continuous and galling tyranny of a greedy and cruel assemblage of bitter sectaries, ever making fresh exactions and restrictions, insulting and coercing all who were not their willing slaves, meanly spying into every private family, and inflicting a heavier vassalage by ignorant and conceited "Tryers" than even the ecclesiastical intolerance of the abolished Star-Chamber itself. Military license is at all times irksome, but it became tenfold more oppressive when a brutal soldiery took credit also for being self-elected to illumination of the Spirit. Little did it profit that a strong arm for awhile controulled these savage-minded despoilers of the Cavaliers' homes; these ruthless destroyers in cold blood of any prisoners who fell into their hands, as at Colchester and at Drogheda; these alternate tools and overthrowers of the Parliament, that in mockery of its own "Self-denying Ordinance" had enriched itself with ill-gotten wealth, and had disgraced itself by such scandalous private vices as Oliver reproached them with, when he far exceeded the rash attempt of Charles against the paltry "five members," and enforced by breach of privilege the too-long delayed Dissolution in 1653. We need not wonder that at such times of hypocritical canting and fratricidal strife the minds of credulous and superstitious men were agitated, and even such a sight as an Eclipse of the Sun, instead of turning thoughts to the glory of the Creation, and the almighty power of the Creator, should have been associated with a distinct prophetical warning, as though the course of nature were not being fulfilled but interrupted.

There are unmistakeable proofs that this Bellman ballad enjoyed great popularity, for the different issues of it were numerous. The author was not improbably Richard Climsell. The Pepys copy (II. 61), with two woodcuts, was printed for A. P., W. D., and Thomas Thackeray, at the Angel in Brick Lane; the Bagford (II. 51) for W. Onlen; in Wood's Collection are two copies, E. 25, fol. 128, and 401, fol. 119 (the latter agreeing with Rawlinson's, 566, fol. 162, which was printed for F. Coles, T. Vere, and J. Wright). There is a different version preserved in the Pepysian Coll., I. 55, beginning, "Awake, awake, O England!" It is "A New Ballad, intituled, A Bell-man for England, which night and day doth sta[nd to] ring in all men's hearing, God's Vengeance is at hand." Three columns of eight lines each, and one woodcut. This may be Thomas Deloney's ballad on the Great Earthquake, of date before 1596 (distinct from the "Take Warning London, and beware," of J. P. Collier's manuscript). He himself is believed to have died before the year 1600. Possibly our ballad had been "conveyed" from his, by a process familiarly known as a pious fraud. There are no pilferers so mean and so irrepressible as the pietistic Maw-worms, who purloin other folks' hymns, and glibly patter their religious phraseology.