At threading-needles* we repine,
And leaping over rapiers:
Pindy pandy rascal toys!

We scorn cutting purses;
Though we live by making noise,
For cheating none can curse us.

Over high ways, over low,

And over stones and gravel,
Though we trip it on the toe,
And thus for silver travel;
Though our dances waste our backs,
At night fat capons mend them,
Eggs well brewed in buttered sack,
Our wenches say befriend them.

Oh that all the world were mad!
Then should we have fine dancing;
Hobby-horses would be had,

And brave girls keep a-prancing;
Beggars would on cock-horse ride,
And boobies fall a-roaring;

And cuckolds, though no horns be spied,
Be one another goring.

Welcome, poet to our ging !†

Make rhymes, we'll give thee reason,
Canary bees thy brains shall sting,
Mull-sack did ne'er speak treason;
Peter-see-me shall wash thy nowl,
And Malaga glasses fox thee;
If, poet, thou toss not bowl for bowl,
Thou shalt not kiss a doxy.

* An old pastime.

+ Gang.

See Note, p. 144.

THE GIPSY ROUT.

COME, follow your leader, follow,

Our convoy be Mars and Apollo ;
The van comes brave up here;
As hotly comes the rear.

Our knackers are the fifes and drums,
Sa, sa, the gipsies' army comes!

Horsemen we need not fear,
There's none but footmen here;
The horse sure charge without;
Or if they wheel about,

Our knackers are the shot that fly,
Pit-a-pat rattling in the sky.

If once the great ordnance play,
That's laughing, yet run not away,
But stand the push of pike,

Scorn can but basely strike;

Then let our armies join and sing,

And pit-a-pat make our knackers ring.

Arm, arm! what bands are those?

They cannot be sure our foes;
We'll not draw up our force,
Nor muster any horse;

For since they pleased to view our sight,
Let's this way, this way, give delight.

A council of war let's call,
Look either to stand or fall;
If our weak army stands,
Thank all these noble hands;

Whose gates of love being open thrown,
We enter, and then the town's our own.

THE DRAMATISTS.

12

THY

THE GIPSY'S OATH.

HY best hand lay on this turf of grass, There thy heart lies, vow not to pass From us two years for sun nor snow, For hill nor dale, howe'er winds blow; Vow the hard earth to be thy bed, With her green cushions under thy head; Flower-banks or moss to be thy board, Water thy wine-and drink like a lord. Kings can have but coronations; We are as proud of gipsy fashions; Dance, sing, and in a well-mixed border, Close this new brother of our order.

What we get with us come share,
You to get must vow to care;
Nor strike gipsy, nor stand by
When strangers strike, but fight or die;
Our gipsy-wenches are not common,
You must not kiss a fellow's leman;
Nor to your own, for one you must,
In songs send errands of base lust.

Dance, sing, and in a well-mixed border
Close this new brother of our order.

Set foot to foot; those garlands hold,
Now mark [well] what more is told;
By cross arms, the lover's sign,

Vow as these flowers themselves entwine,
Of April's wealth building a throne
Round, so your love to one or none;
By those touches of your feet,

You must each night embracing meet,
Chaste, howe'er disjoined by day;
You the sun with her must play,
She to you the marigold,

To none but you her leaves unfold;

Wake she or sleep, your eyes so charm,
Want, woe, nor weather do her harm.
This is your market now of kisses,
Buy and sell free each other blisses.
Holidays, high days, gipsy-fairs,

[pairs.

When kisses are fairings, and hearts meet in

THE GIPSY LIFE.

BRA

RAVE Don, cast your eyes on our gipsy fashions: In our antique hey de guize* we go beyond all nations;

Plump Dutch at us grutch, so do English, so do French; He that lopest on the ropes, show me such another wench.

We no camels have to show, nor elephant with growt‡

head;

We can dance, he cannot go, because the beast is corn

fed;

No blind bears shedding tears, for a collier's whipping; Apes nor dogs, quick as frogs, over cudgels skipping.

Jacks-in-boxes, nor decoys, puppets, nor such poor things,

Nor are we those roaring boys that cozen fools with gilt rings; §

For an ocean, not such a motion as the city Nineveh, Dancing, singing, and fine ringing, you these sports shall hear and see.

*A country dance.

† Leaps.

+ Great.

§ Ring-dropping, a gulling trick, which consisted in dropping a paper of brass rings, washed over with gold, on the pavement, and picking it up in the presence of a person likely to be swindled into the purchase of them. It is one of the cheats upon countrymen described by Sir John Fielding, in the last century, in his Extracts from the Penal Laws, and is still practised in the streets of London.

BEN JONSON, FLETCHER, AND MIDDLETON.

THE WIDOW.

[Acted about 1616. First printed 1652.]

THE THIEVES' SONG.

HOW round the world goes, and every thing that's

in it!

The tides of gold and silver ebb and flow in a minute: From the usurer to his sons, there a current swiftly

runs;

From the sons to queans in chief, from the gallant to the thief;

From the thief unto his host, from the host to husband

men;

From the country to the court; and so it comes to us again.

How round the world goes, and every thing that's in it! The tides of gold and silver ebb and flow in a minute.

THOMAS DEKKER.

[AN industrious dramatist in the reign of James I., chiefly distinguished by having been engaged in a literary quarrel with Ben Jonson, who satirized him under the name of Crispinus, an indignity for which Dekker took ample revenge in his Satiro-mastix; or, the Untrussing of a Humorous Poet. Dekker must not be estimated from Jonson's character of him. He wrote a great number of plays, and was joined in several by Webster, Ford, and others. His pieces are remarkably unequal. His plots are not always well chosen, and are generally careless in construction. But in occasional scenes he rises to an unexpected height of power, and exhibits a range of fancy that fairly entitles him to take rank with the majority of his contemporaries.]