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ENGLISH SONG AND BALLAD MUSIC. |
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And when by barons wrangling,
Hot faction did increase, And vile intestine jangling
Had banished England's peace, The men of Kent to battle went,
They fear'd no wild confusion ; But joined with York, soon did the work,
And made a blest conclusion.
At hunting, or the race too,
They sprightly vigour shew; And at a female chase too,
None like a Kentish beau; All blest with health ; and as for wealth,
By fortune's kind embraces, A yeoman gray shall oft outweigh
A knight in other places. |
The generous, brave, and hearty,
All o'er the shire we find; •
And for the low-church party,
They're of the brightest kind : For king and laws, they prop the cause,
Which high church has confounded; They love with height the moderate right,
But hate the crop-ear'd roundhead.
The promised land of blessing,
For our forefathers meant, Is now in right possessing—
For Canaan sure was Kent: The dome at Knole, by fame enroll 'd,
The church at Canterbury, The hops, the beer, the cherries here,
May fill a famous story. |
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LILLIBURLEEO.
" The following rhymes," says Dr. Percy, " slight and insignificant as they may now seem, had once a more powerful effect than either the Philippics of Demosthenes or Cicero; and contributed not a little towards the great revolution in 1688. Let us hear a contemporary writer: "
" A foolish ballad was made at that time, treating the Papists, and chiefly the Irish, in a very ridiculous manner, which had a burden, said to be Irish words, ' Lero, lero, lilliburlero,' that made an impression on the [King's] army, that cannot be imagined by those that saw it not. The whole army, and at last the people, both in city and country, wrere singing it perpetually. And, perhaps, never had so slight a thing so great an effect."—Burnet's History of his own Times.
" It was written, or at least re-published, on the Earl of Tyrconnel's going a second time to Ireland, in 1688.... Lilliburlero and Bullen-a-lak are said to have been the words of distinction used among the Irish Papists in their massacre of Protestants, in 1641."
In " A True Relation of the several Facts and Circumstances of the intended Riot and Tumult on Queen Elizabeth's Birth-day" (3rd edit., 1712a), the authorship of the words is ascribed to Lord Wharton—who is said to have penned it in revenge for James II. having given the appointment of Lord Deputy of Ireland to Tyrconnel. " A late Viceroy [of Ireland], who has so often boasted himself upon his talent for mischief, invention, lying, and for making a certain Lilliburlero song; with which, if you will believe himself, he sung a deluded prince out of three kingdoms."
Mr. Markland, in a note to Boswell's Life of Johnson, says that, " according to Lord Dartmouth, there was a particular expression in it, which the King remembered he had made use of to the Earl of Dorset, from whence it was con- |
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* Queen Elizabeth's Birthday was then kept as an Anti-Jacobite Festival. A ballad for those occasions will be found in the Roxburghe Coll., iii. 557, dated, in manuscript, 1711. It is entitled, "Queen Elizabeth's Day; or, The Downfall of the Devil, the Pope, and the Pretender. To the tune of Bonny Dundee:" commencing,—
" Let's sing to the memory of glorious Queen Bess, Who long did the hearts of her subjects possess, |
And whose mighty actions did to us secure Those m3ny great blessings that now do endure: For she then did lay that solid foundation On which our religion is fix'd, in this nation; For Popery was "put into utter disgrace, And Protestantism set up in its place."
Five stanzas of eight lines. It is also printed in A Pill
to purge Slate Melancholy, 1716. |
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