Page:Notes and Queries - Series 10 - Volume 2.djvu/492

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NOTES AND QUERIES. [io* s. n. NOV. 19,

Take from me my milk-white steed,

My saddle and my bow, And I will away to some foreign countree,

Where no one will me know.

'The word 'bow' gives one a clue to the .antiquity of this version." In Percy's version it will be remembered the eleventh stanza runs :

If she be dead, then take my horse,

My saddle and bridle also ; For I will into some farr countrye, Where nae man shall me knowe.

Besides the broadside in the Pepys collection at Cambridge, there are two copies in the Roxburghe collection in the British Museum, and two others in the Douce collection in the Bodleian. All these copies, with the excep- tion of one in the Douce collection, were printed by P. Brooksby at the Golden Ball at Pye Corner. The Douce copy was printed at the same sign by Brooks by 's successor, J. Walter. Brooksby printed between 1672 and 1695, and Walter between 1690 and 1720. All these broadsides, which have a few casual verbal variations, were collated by the late Prof. F. J. Child in his monumental work 'The English and Scottish Popular Ballads,' ii. 426-8, and he adopted as his standard version one of those in the Rox- burghe collection. In this, as in all the 'broadside texts, the eleventh stanza runs :

Then I will sell my goodly steed, My saddle and my bow ;

I will into some far countrey, Where no man doth me know.

It is therefore evident that "bow," which

occurs in the Irish version, belongs to the

earlier texts, and that " bridle " may possibly be an "improvement" due to the bishop's lady friend, although it is also found in an Aldermary Churchyard chap-book version, belonging to the middle of the eighteenth century.

The word "bow" brings us to the time when the London young man was wont to spend a good deal of his spare time at the "" butts," which were numerous in the suburbs of London during the Tudor regime. Fins- bury Fields were the favourite rendezvous for the archers in the north of London, and Islington Butts were situated at that point of Islington Common where the boundary lines of Hackney and Islington parishes meet. The turf embankments which constituted the '" butts " may be said roughly to have stood at the junction of the Kingsland and the Ball's Pond Roads. We can, therefore, imagine that the bailiff's daughter, trudging along the dusty Shoreditch Road on her way to "fair London," met the esquire's son /riding forth with his bow and quiver to

practise at the butts, with the happy dnou- ment that is related in the ballad. The "green bank," altered by some later editors into a "grassy bank," is also a sophistication of Percy's, the seventh stanza running in the old versions :

As she went along the road,

The weather being hot and dry, There was she aware of her true-love,

At length came riding by. The date of the ballad may, I think, be ascribed to the latter half of Elizabeth's reign, and the verses may have been due to the fertile pen of Elderton or Deloney. Mr. T. E. Tomlins, who in his 'Perambulation of Islington ' has devoted much learning to this archery question, says (p. 149 n.) that the last notice he can find of the bow being used as a warlike implement is in 'Rot. Pat.' 16 Car. p. 13, n. 12. W. F. PRIDEAUX.

[The latest use of the bow in war was discussed at 10 th S. i. 225, 278, 437, 497. At the last reference it was shown that at so recent a date as 1862-3 hillmen armed with bows and arrows acted as allies of England in suppressing a rebellion in Assam. ]

FRENCH PROVERBIAL PHRASES. (See 10 th S. i. 3, 485.)

Manager la chevre et le chou. This proverb is said to be derived from a problem often given to children, similar to the English one of the fox, goose, and corn, only here it is a question of a wolf, a she-goat, and a cabbage : otherwise the solution is similar. The man first crosses the river with the goat, leaving the cabbage with the wolf; on the second journey he takes the cabbage and brings back the goat, returning with the wolf ; then he comes back once more and fetches the goat.

Us sont comme les cloches, on leur fait dire ce qu'on veut. Dreux du Radier (in his ' Re- creations Historiques,' vol. i. p. 120) says he translated the following from the Latin of Raulin, a preacher who died in 1514 :

LA VEUVE ET LES CLOCHES.

Apres la mort du meimier Nicolas,

Jeanne, sa veuve, en prudente femelle, Alia chez son pasteur consulter certain cas

Qui lui roulait dans la cervelle. Elle avait un valet : son nom sera Lucas.

II lui paraissait son affaire ; Ce n'e"tait un galant a brillante maniere,

Un Adonis & propos delicats ;

Le drole avait de solides appas : II etait frais, robuste : un autre en eut fait cas. Enfin, dit au cur la dolente meuniere, Le defunt 6tant mort, je suis dans 1'embarras ; Lucas m'en tirerait.

Le, Cure. Epousez done Lucas.