The Sources and Analogues of 'A Midsummer-Night's Dream'/The Fairies' Farewell

The Fairies' Farewell: Or God-a-mercy Will
(To be sung or whistled to the Tune of the Meadow Brow by the learned; by the unlearned, to the Tune of Fortune.)


 * Farewell rewards and Fairies!
 * Good housewives, now you may say;
 * For now foul sluts in dairies
 * Do fare as well as they;
 * And though they sweep their hearths no less
 * Than maids were wont to do,
 * Yet who of late for cleanliness
 * Finds sixpence in her shoe?


 * Lament, lament old abbeys,
 * The fairies' lost command;
 * 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
 * For love of your demesnes.


 * At morning and at evening both
 * You merry were and glad,
 * So little care of sleep or sloth
 * These pretty ladies had.
 * When Tom came home from labour,
 * Or Ciss to milking rose,
 * Then merrily, merrily went their tabour,
 * And nimbly went their toes.


 * Witness those rings and roundelays
 * 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,
 * They never danced on any heath,
 * As when the time hath bin.


 * By which we note the fairies
 * Were of the old profession;
 * Their songs were Ave Maries,
 * 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.


 * 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
 * To pinch such black and blue:
 * O how the common-wealth doth [need]
 * Such justices as you!


 * Now they have left our quarters;
 * A Register they have
 * Who looketh to their charters,
 * A man both wise and grave.
 * An hundred of their merry pranks
 * By one that I could name
 * Are kept in store; con twenty thanks
 * To William for the same.




 * To William Churne of Staffordshire
 * Give laud and praises due,
 * Who every meal can mend your cheer
 * With tales both old and true:
 * To William all give audience,
 * And pray ye for his noddle:
 * For all the fairies evidence
 * Were lost, if it were addle.


 * RICHARD CORBET (1582-1625),
 * from Poetica Stromata (1648)

Endnotes
1 [need]. Poetica Stromata reads want.