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REIGN OF ELIZABETH. 125 |
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The first of fair dairy-maids, if you'll believe, Was Adam's own wife, our great-grandmother Eve,
Who oft milk'd a cow,
As well she knew how ;
Though butter was not then so cheap as 'tis now, She hoarded no butter nor cheese on her shelves, For butter and cheese in those days made themselves.
In that age or time there was no horrid money, Yet the children of Israel had both milk and honey :
No queen you could see,
Of the highest degree,
But would milk the brown cow with the meanest she; Their lambs gave them clothing, their cows gave them meat, And in plenty and peace all their joys were compleat.
Amongst the rare virtues that milk does produce, For a thousand of dainties it's daily in use;
Now a pudding I'll tell thee,
Ere it goes in the belly,
Must have from good milk both the cream and the jelly: For a dainty fine pudding, without cream or milk, Is a citizen's wife without satin or silk.
In the virtues of milk there is more to be muster'd, The charming delights both of cheese-cake and custard,
For at Tottenham Court,
You can have no sport,
Unless you give custards and cheese-cake too for't; And what's the jack-pudding that makes us to laugh, Unless he hath got a great custard to quaff?
Both pancake and fritter of milk have good store,
But a Devonshire whitepot* must needs have much more;
No state you can think,
Though you study and wink,
From the lusty sack-posset* to poor posset drink, But milk's the ingredient, though sack's ne'er the worse, For 'tis sack makes the man, though 'tis milk makes the nurse.
Elderton's ballad, called " News from Northumberland," a copy of which is in the Library of the Society of Antiquaries, was probably written to this tune.
THE STAINES MORRIS TUNE.
This tune is taken from the first edition of The Dancing Master. It is also in William Ballet's Lute Book (time of-Elizabeth); and was printed as late as about 1760, in a Collection of Country Dances, by Wright.
The Maypole Song, in Adeem and Diana, seems so exactly fitted to the air, that, having no guide as to the one intended, I have, on conjecture, printed it with this tune.
» Devonshire white-pot, ot hasty-pudding, consisting of A pint; then fetch, from India's fertile coast,
flour and milk boiled together. Nutmeg, the glory of the British toast."
6 The following is a receipt for sack-posset:— Dryden*s Miscellany Poems, vol. v., p. 138.
" From fair Barbadoes, on the western main, Fetch sugar, half a pound; fetch sack, from Spain, |
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