Page:The Folk-Lore Journal Volume 5 1887.djvu/55

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"Spanish Jack (or coxcomb) is not my name,

I'll stamp my foot (stamps) and say the same.

So fare thee well," &c.

"Come back! come back! you Spanish knight.

And choose the fairest in your sight."

The dukes retired, consulted together, and then selected one, singing—

When all the daughters had been taken away, they were brought back to their mother in the same order, the dukes chanting:—

The Rev. S. Rundle, vicar of Godolphin, near Helston, saw some children lately in his neighbourhood playing a portion of this game, when to "Here comes three dukes a-riding" they added—"My rancy, dancy dukes." Mr. Halliwell Phillips, in his Nursery Rhymes and Tales of England, has published three versions of it, but the game as played in Cornwall has some additional couplets.

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For this—quite, I think, a thing of the past—the children (a boy and girl alternately) formed a ring. One stood in the middle holding a white handkerchief by two of its corners: if a boy he would single out one of the girls, dance backwards and forwards opposite to her, and sing—