Page:Notes and Queries - Series 10 - Volume 4.djvu/108

 NOTES AND QUERIES. s. iv. JULY 29, 1905. •except N. Breton. -The statement is not •ornithologically absurd, and as it occurs in ' Planetomachia' it is true. 18. "A man having cracked his credit is •halfe hanged," ' Mamillia' (ii. 91), 1583. "A woman having crackt her loyaltie is halfe hanged," 'Alcida' (ix. 80), 1588. "Thou knowest that a woman's chiefest treasure is her good name, and that she which crackt her credit is halfe hanged," ' Never too Late' {viii. 154). Without the hanging clause the saying is earlier, "his credit is cracked " oc- curring in Edwards's ' Damon and Pithias,' 1571, and in Tusser. 19. " I cannot blame you sith Aretino and his fellow came over your fallowes with such cutting blowes," ' Tritauaeron ' (iii. 82), 1584. "After he hath learned al of him, then he comes over his fallowes kindly wele drinke a quart of wine," ' Art of (Jonny-catching' (x. 17), 1592. " Straight they come over his fallowes thus," ibid., p. 45. "I, gathering my wits together, came over his fallowes thus," ' Blacke Booke's Messenger' (xi. 13), 1592. "I •will come over your fallowes with this bad Rethoricke." I never met this elsewhere. Is it taken from the harrow going over the ploughed land and roughly breaking down obstacles, and smoothing them away ] Some- times it merely means an introduction or an intrusion upon one. This series of "Greenisms" shows how alarminglyGreeneindulged in repetition. But these are on a small scale—chips of chance he might have called them. We will see •what he does with larger pieces. These ob- servations can be taken in a proper sequence, and they are of interest perhaps in showing what Greene deemed his tit-bits, or what he thought the public wanted. And certainly he was in one sense not mistaken. For the •number of times he appears as the first •authority for proverbial expressions is very considerable, snowing how his language was seized upon; and if Greene be accusable of plagiarism, it is a long time since Ben Jonson called attention to the fact that he was freely plagiarized from himself. He speaks of "" Greene's works, whence she may steal with more security," in 'Every Man out of his Humour,1 II. i. (1599). Some of the foregoing •peculiarities are borrowed from Roman prosody, apparently. H. G. HAKT. (To be continued.) VIII. •THE BITTER WITHY.' THIRTY-SEVEN years ago a contributor to •* N. & Q.' (4th S. i. 53) asked for the full form V 4 <| •!«* „ f ,, *»•*« >. i> ii '•. .. in/n lin.lj'tim VI I of a carol describing how " sweet Jesus ] She gave Him slashes three. drowned three virgins, who refused to let Him play with them, by leading them over a bridge made of sunbeams, and how He was beaten by the Virgin with "slashes three" from a "withy tree," which He therefore cursed, and condemned to be " the very first tree that shall perish at the heart." No reply, it seems, has ever been given to this day. The following version was communicated on 31 December, 1888, by Mr. Henry Eller- shaw, Jun., of Rotherham, in a letter to Mr. 'A. H. Bullen (shortly after the publication of the latter's 'Songs and Carols'), who has given me permission to contribute a copy. It was taken down verbatim as sung by an old Herefordshire man of about seventy (in 1888), who learnt it from his grandmother. I have added the punctuation and numbered the verses. THE WITHIES. I. As it fell out on a Holy day, The drops of rain did fall, did fall. Our Saviour asked leave of His mother Mary If He might go play at ball. H. " To play at ball, my own dear Son, It's time You was going or gone, But be sure let me hear no complaint of You At night when You do come home." III. It was upline scorn and downling scorn, Oh, there He met three jolly jo-dins : Oh, there He asked the three jolly jerdins If they would go play at ball. " Oh, we are lords' and ladies' sons, Born in bower or in hall, And You are but some poor maid's child Born'd in an ox's stall." " If you are lords' and ladies' sons, Born'd in bower or in hall. Then at the very last I '11 make it appear That I am above you all." VI. Our Saviour built a bridge with the beams of th« sun, And over He gone, He gone He, And after followed the three jolly jerdins, And drownded they were all three. VII. It was upling scorn and downling acorn. The mothers of them did whoop and call, '"ing out, "Mary mild, call >•-~— « r"»-! 'or ours are drownded all." Mary mild, Mary mild, called home her Child, And laid our Saviour across her knee, And with a whole handful of bitter withy