Brush up to 'em boldly and try 'em again, For women love sportsmen, as sportsmen love them. Should you chance to be blessed with a termagant wife, Tally-ho, &c. When madam her small-shot begins to let go, Tally-ho, &c. Ye poor forlorn devils, oppressed with the hip, As soon as the whimsy your fancy surrounds, Tally-ho, &c. Come here, ye old codgers, whose nerves are unstrung, Come follow the hounds, and you'll hunt yourselves young. Tally-ho, &c. "Twill cure the short cough, and the rheumatic pain, Do but cry tally-ho, and you're all young again. Tally-ho, &c. If death, that old poacher, to smuggle you strives, Never heed his grim looks if your gelding can go, You cannot be caught while you cry tally-ho. Tally-ho, &c. WAKEN, LORDS AND LADIES GAY. WAKEN, lords and ladies gay, On the mountain dawns the day, All the jolly chase is here, With horse, and hawk, and hunting spear! Hounds are in their couples yelling, Hawks are whistling, horns are knelling. Merrily, merrily, mingle they, "Waken, lords and ladies gay." Thou ne'er wilt hear the mellow horn, Thou ne'er wilt quaff the breath of morn, Nor join thy friends with glee; Ronald! T is worth attention," says Dr. Percy, in his "Relics of English Poetry," "that the English have more songs and ballads on the subject of madness than any of their neighbours. Whether there be any truth in the insinuation that we are more liable to this calamity than other nations, or that our native gloomi. ness hath peculiarly recommended subjects of this class to our writers, we certainly do not find the same in the printed collections of French and Italian songs." Percy presents his readers with six mad songs, as specimens of the English taste for this peculiar class of compositions. Of those which follow in the present collection. only two are included in his "Relics of English Poetry." It is certainly remarkable how much the genius of English writers loves to dally with, to philosophize upon, and to adorn the subject of madness. Of all Shakspeare's plays, Hamlet is undoubtedly the most popular, and it is difficult to decide whether the half craze of Hamlet himself, or the utter prostration of the mind of the luckless Ophelia, is the more painfully and irresistibly attractive, or which of the two excites the most sympathy. The snatches of song sung by the mad Ophelia invariably melt an English audience to tears; and the terrible madness of Lear, whenever it is represented on the stage-touches a chord in every heart. Sir Walter Scott, in his matchless fictions, has also made powerful use of madness, and of that state of mind-not actual lunacy, but not far removed from it-when reason trembles on the balance, and the spectator or the reader watches with excited and painful curiosity the moment when the tottering intellect shall be finally overthrown, and the madness-which was more than suspected-shall be completely revealed. Many of our song-writers have from an early period availed themselves of the popular interest in subjects of this kind; and musical composers have done their best to aid the efforts of song-writers in rendering them attractive. The literature of other countries, as Percy has remarked, offers no such examples, and we seek in vain among the songs of the northern or the southern nations of Europe for similar specimens. Even the genius of the Germans, so akin to our own, fails to cope with us in the delineation of the picturesque horrors and touching sorrows of the mad. If any allusion be made to the subject in the writings of the continental critics, it is but to give additional currency to the old joke about Englishmen, which Shakspeare has put into the mouth of the clown in Hamlet : Hamlet: Ay, marry! why was he sent into England? Clown: Why-because he was mad: he shall recover his wits there; or if he do not, 'tis no great matter there. Hamlet: Why? Clown: "Twill not be seen in him there; there the men are all as mad as he. |