“ The saints themselves were never such,
The prelates ne’er ruled half so much;
Oh! such a rogue’s a Roundhead.
What’s he that doth the bishops hate,
And counts their calling reprobate,
’Cause by the Pope propounded;
And thinks a zealous cobbler better
Than learned Usher in ev’ry letter?
Oh! such a rogue’s a Roundhead.
What’s he that doth high treason say,
As often as his yea and nay,
And wish the King confounded;
And dares maintain that Mr Pim
Is fitter for a crown than him?
Oh! such a rogue’s a Roundhead. ”

“ And Fortune is a whore;
There’s none but knaves and fools regard her,
Or her power implore.
But he that is a trusty Roger,
And will serve the King;
Altho’ he be a tatter’d soldier,
Yet may skip and sing:
Whilst we that fight for love,
May in the way of honour prove
That they who make sport of us
May come short of us;
Fate will flatter them,
And will scatter them;
Whilst our loyalty
Looks upon royalty,
We that live peacefully,
May be successfully
Crown’d with a crown at last.
Tho’ a real honest man
May be quite undone,
He’ll show his allegiance,
Love, and obedience ”

“ What victories we saints obtain,
The like ne’er seen before:
How often we Prince Rupert kill’d,
And bravely won the day,
The wicked Cavaliers did run
The clean contrary way.
The true religion we maintain,
The kingdom’s peace and plenty;
The privilege of Parliament
Not known to one and twenty;
The ancient fundamental laws,
And teach men to obey
Their lawful sovereign, and all these
The clean contrary way.
We subjects’ liberties preserve
By imprisonment and plunder,
And do enrich ourselves and state
By keeping th’ wicked under. ”

“ The city courting their own ruin,
Thank the Parliament twice for their treble undoing.
A street ballad. From a broadside, 1647.
The hierarchy is out of date,
Our monarchy was sick of late,
But now ’tis grown an excellent state:
Oh, God a-mercy, Parliament!
The teachers knew not what to say,
The ’prentices have leave to play,
The people have all forgotten to pray;
Still, God a-mercy, Parliament! ”

“ The Frenchies shall flee with their treacherie,
And the foes of the King ashamed remain:
The which you shall see when the time it shall be
That the King comes home in peace again.
The Parliament must willing be
That all the world may plainly see
How they do labour still for peace,
That now these bloody wars may cease;
For they will gladly spend their lives to defend
The King in all his right to reign:
So then I can tell all things will be well
When we enjoy sweet peace again. ”

“ THE LOYAL PRISONER. From the Loyal Garland.
How happy’s that pris’ner that conquers his fate
With silence, and ne’er on bad fortune complains,
But carelessly plays with keys on his grate,
And he makes a sweet concert with them and his chains!
He drowns care in sack, while his thoughts are opprest,
And he makes his heart float like a cork in his breast.
Then since we are slaves, and all islanders be,
And our land a large prison enclosed by the sea,
We’ll drink off the ocean, and set ourselves free,
For man is the world’s epitomy. ”

“ The song and ballad have ceased to deal with public affairs. No new ones of the kind are made except as miserable parodies and burlesques that may amuse sober costermongers and half-drunken men about town, who frequent music saloons at midnight, but which are offensive to every one else. Such genuine old ballads as remain in the popular memory are either fast dying out, or relate exclusively to the never-to-be-superseded topics of love, war, and wine. The people of our day have little heart or appreciation for song, except in Scotland and Ireland. ”

“ We are by force made slaves,
By some whom we did count our friends,
But in the end proved knaves.
p. 15And now to such a grievous height
Are our misfortunes grown,
That our estates are took away
By tricks before ne’er known.
For there are agents sent abroad
Most humbly for to crave
Our alms; but if they are denied,
And of us nothing have,
Then by a vote ex tempore
We are to prison sent,
Mark’d with the name of enemy,
To King and Parliament:
And during our imprisonment,
Their lawless bulls do plunder
A license to their soldiers,
Our houses for to plunder. ”

“ Those birds and beasts that please our eyes
Will then beget our loathing;
When foxes tremble in their holes
At dangers that they see,
And those we think so wise prove fools,
Then low, boys, down go we.
If those designs abortive prove
We’ve been so long in hatching,
And cunning knaves are forced to move
From home for fear of catching;
The rabble soon will change their tone
When our intrigues they see,
And cry God save the Church and Throne,
Then low, boys, down go we. ”

“ England and America are too prosaic and too busy, and the masses, notwithstanding all their supposed advantages in education, are much too vulgar to delight in either song or ballad that rises to the dignity of poetry. They appreciate the buffooneries of the “Negro Minstrelsy,” and the inanities and the vapidities of sentimental love songs, but the elegance of such writers as Thomas Moore, and the force of such vigorous thinkers and tender lyrists as Robert Burns, are above their sphere, and are left to scholars in their closets and ladies in their drawing-rooms. ”

“ Honour will make him fast.
Freely then
Let’s be honest men
And kick at fate,
For we may live to see
Our loyalty
Valued at a higher rate.
He that bears a sword
Or a word against the throne,
And does profanely prate
To abuse the state,
Hath no kindness for his own.
What tho’ painted plumes and prayers
Are the prosp’rous men,
Yet we’ll attend our own affairs
’Till they come to ’t agen;
Treachery may be faced with light,
And letchery lined with furr;
A cuckold may be made a knight,
Sing Fortune de la Guerre.
But what’s that to us, brave boys,
That are right honest men? ”

“ We languishing do die:
Excise doth give free-quarters birth,
While soldiers multiply.
Our lives we forfeit every day,
Our money cuts our throats;
The laws are taken clean away,
Or shrunk to traitor’s votes.
CROMWELL ON THE THRONE.
Like patient mules resolve to bear
Whate’er we shall impose;
Your lives and goods you need not fear,
We’ll prove your friends, not foes.
We (the elected ones) must guide
A thousand years this land;
You must be props unto our pride,
And slaves to our command.
KING CHARLES IN HIS COFFIN.
But you may fail of your fair hopes,
If fates propitious be ”

“ The bar-boys shall be pages all,
A tavern well-prepared,
And nothing shall be spared;
In jovial sort shall be the court,
Wine-porters that are soldiers tall
Be yeomen of the guard.
But if a cooper we with a red nose see
In any part of the town;
The cooper shall, with his aids-royal,
Bear the sceptre of the crown;
Young wits that wash away their cash
In wine and recreation,
Who hates ale and beer, shall be welcome here
To give their approbation ”

“ Tipple on, for there is no such haste
To be going;
We drowning may fear,
But your end will be there
Where there is neither swimming nor rowing.
We were gamesters alike, and our stakes were both down, boys,
But Fortune did favour you, being her own, boys;
And who would not venture a cast for a crown, boys?
Since we wear the right colours, he the worst of our foes is
That goes to traduce, and fondly supposes
That Cromwell’s an enemy to sack and red noses.
Then, then, quaff it round,
No deceit in a brimmer is found ”

“ Clean down the wind like Cavaliers.
Fill this unnatural quart with sack,
Nature all vacuums doth decline;
Ourselves will be a zodiac,
And every mouth shall be a sign.
Methinks the travels of the glass
Are circular, like Plato’s year;
Where everything is as it was
Let’s tipple round: and so ’tis here.
THE NEW COURTIER. By Alex. Brome. 1648.
Since it must be so
Then so let it go,
Let the giddy-brain’d times turn round;
Since we have no king let the goblet be crown’d,
Our monarchy thus will recover:
While the pottles are weeping
We’ll drench our sad souls
In big-bellied bowls ”

“ To Sir W. C. Trevelyan literature is indebted for the restoration of a few of these waifs and strays, which he found pasted in an old trunk of the days of Cromwell, and which he carefully detached and presented to the British Museum. But a sufficient number of these flying leaves of satire, sentiment, and loyalty have reached our time, to throw a curious and instructive light upon the feelings of the men who resisted the progress of the English Revolution; and who made loyalty to the person of the monarch, even when the monarch was wrong, the first of the civic virtues. ”

“ As they could not reach the ears of their countrymen by the printed book, the pamphlet, or the newspaper, nor mount the pulpit and dispute with Puritanism on its own ground and in its own precincts, they found the song, the ballad, and the epigram more available among a musical and song-loving people such as the English then were, and trusted to these to keep up the spirit of loyalty in the evil days of the royal cause, to teach courage in adversity, and cheerfulness in all circumstances, and to ridicule the hypocrites whom they could not shame, and the tyrants whom they could not overthrow. ”

“ But scarce of a Parliament in a dirty clout,
Which no body can deny.
’Twas Atkins [68] first served this Rump in with mustard—
The sauce was a compound of courage and custard;
Sir Vane bless’d the creature, Noll snuffled and bluster’d,
Which no body can deny.
The right was as then in old Oliver’s nose;
But when the Devil of that did dispose,
It descended from thence to the Rump in the close,
Which no body can deny.
Nor is it likely there to stay long,
The retentive faculties being gone,
The juggle is stale, and money there’s none,
Which no body can deny. ”

“ Our sorrows in sack shall lie steeping,
And we’ll drink till our eyes do run over;
And prove it by reason
That it can be no treason
To drink and to sing
A mournival of healths to our new-crown’d King.
p. 12Let us all stand bare;—
In the presence we are,
Let our noses like bonfires shine;
Instead of the conduits, let the pottles run wine,
To perfect this new coronation ”

“ Put us in prison and steal our estates,
Though we be forced to be unhorsed,
And walk on foot as it pleaseth the fates;
p. 28In the King’s army no man shall harm ye.
Then come along, boys, valiant and strong, boys,
Fight for your goods, which the Roundheads enjoy;
And when you venture London to enter,
And when you come, boys, with fife and drum, boys,
Isaac himself shall cry, Vive le Roy.
If you will choose them, do not refuse them,
Since honest Parliament never made thieves,
Charles will not further have rogues dipt in murder,
Neither by leases, long lives, nor reprieves. ”

“ To King and every member.
THE ROYALIST. A song made in the Rebellion.
From the Loyal Garland, 1686. Reprinted for the Percy Society, and edited by J. O. Halliwell.
Stay, shut the gate!
T’other quart, boys, ’tis not so late
As you are thinking;
The stars which you see in the hemisphere be
Are but studs in your cheeks by good drinking;
The sun’s gone to tipple all night in the sea, boys,
To-morrow he’ll blush that he’s paler than we, boys;
Drink wine, give him water,
’Tis sack makes us the boys. ”

“ Reprinted for the Percy society, 1850.
In vain ill men attempt us,
Their day is out of date;
The fates do now exempt us
From what we felt of late.
The nation is grown wiser
Than to believe their shame;
He that was the deviser
Themselves begin to blame.
They thought the trumps would ever
Turn on rebellion’s side,
But kinder power deliver
Us from their foolish pride;
For see, they are deceived,
And can no more prevail;
Those who the Rump believed,
Ashamed are of the tale.
THE LOYALIST’S ENCOURAGEMENT. From the Loyal Garland. ”

“ The other House you declined, you shall be no longer a lord;
The reason, as I guess, you silently did confess,
Such lords deserved ill the other House to fill.
Sing hi ho, Mr Cecil, your honour now is gone;
Such lords are not worth a whistle, we have made better lords of our own.
Sing hi ho, etc.
Luke Robinson [93] shall go before ye, that snarling northern tyke;
Be sure he’ll not adore ye, for honour he doth not like;
He cannot honour inherit, and he knows he can never merit,
And therefore he cannot bear it that any one else should wear it. ”

“ But by his dark lanthorn, I sweare he’s as good in the night as day.
Sing hi ho, etc.
Edge, brethren, room for one that looks as big as the best;
’Tis pity to leave him alone, for he is as good as the rest;
No picklock of the laws, he builds among the daws,
If you ha’ any more kings to murder, for a President look no further.
Sing hi ho, John Bradshaw, in blood none further engages;
The Devil from whom he had’s law, will shortly pay him his wages. ”

“ From a Collection of Loyal Songs written against the Rump Parliament.
Fight on, brave soldiers, for the cause,
Fear not the Cavaliers;
Their threat’nings are as senseless as
Our jealousies and fears.
Tis you must perfect this great work,
And all malignants slay;
You must bring back the King again
The clean contrary way.
’Tis for religion that you fight,
And for the kingdom’s good ”

“ With the rest, scolding wives let poor cuckolds appease.
No doubt ’tis the best of all drinks, or so soon
It ne’er had been chose by the Man in the Moon, [110]
Who drinks nothing else, both by night and by day
But claret, brisk claret, and most people say,
Whilst glasses brimful to the stars they go round,
Which makes them shine brighter with red juice still crown’d.
For all things in Nature doe live by good drinking,
And he’s a dull fool, and not worthy my thinking,
That does not prefer it before all the treasure
The Indies contain, or the sea without measure ”