| |
| FAREWELL, rewards and fairies, | |
| Good housewives now may say, | |
| For now foul sluts in dairies | |
| Do fare as well as they. | |
| And though they sweep their hearths no less | 5 |
| Than maids were wont to do, | |
| Yet who of late for cleanness | |
| Finds sixpence in her shoe? | |
| |
| Lament, lament, old Abbeys, | |
| The Fairies’ lost command! | 10 |
| 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 | 15 |
| For love of your demains. | |
| |
| At morning and at evening both | |
| You merry were and glad, | |
| So little care of sleep or sloth | |
| These pretty ladies had; | 20 |
| When Tom came home from labour, | |
| Or Cis to milking rose, | |
| Then merrily went their tabor, | |
| And nimbly went their toes. | |
| |
| Witness those rings and roundelays | 25 |
| 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, | 30 |
| They never danced on any heath | |
| As when the time hath been. | |
| |
| By which we note the Fairies | |
| Were of the old Profession. | |
| Their songs were ‘Ave Mary’s’, | 35 |
| 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. | 40 |
| |
| 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 | 45 |
| To pinch such black and blue. | |
| Oh how the commonwealth doth want | |
| Such Justices as you! | |
| |
