THE FAIRYS FAREWELL. 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 Yet who of late for cleanliness Lament, lament old abbies, The fairies lost command; They did but change priests babies, But some have changed your land: And all your children stol'n from thence Are now grown puritanes, Who live as changelings ever since, For love of your demaines. At morning and at evening both You merry were and glad, When Tom came home from labour, Then merrily went their tabour, Witness those rings and roundelays By which we note the fairies Or Or else to take their ease. A tell-tale in their company, Their mirth was punish'd sure: Now they have left our quarters; Are kept in store; con twenty thanks To William Churne of Staffordshire And pray ye for his noddle: For all the fairies evidence Were lost if it were addle.* By Richard Corbet, afterwards bishop of Oxford and Norwich, who died in 1635. Posterity would have been much more indebted to this witty prelate for a few of gaffer Churnes fairy-tales than for all the sermons his lordship ever wrote. THE END. LONDON: PRINTED BY THOMAS DAVISON, WHITEFRIARS. |