ning burdens of songs," says Nares in
his Glossary, "are common to ballads in most languages." But this burden
is not unmeaning, and signifies "Hail to the noon." _Noin_ or noon, the
ninth hour was so called in the Celtic, because at midsummer in our
northern latitudes it was the ninth hour after sunrise. With the Romans,
in a more southern latitude, noon was the ninth hour after sunrise, at
six in the morning, answering to our three o'clock of the afternoon. A
song with this burden was sung in England in the days of Charles the
Second:--

I am a senseless thing, with a hey!
Men call me a king, with a ho?
For my luxury and ease,
They brought me o'er the seas,
_With a heigh, nonnie, nonnie, nonnie, no!_

Mr Chappell cites an ancient ballad which was sung to the tune of _Hie
dildo, dil_. This also appears to be Druidical, and to be resolvable
into _Ai! dile dun dile!_ or "Hail to the rain, to the rain upon the
hill," a thanksgiving for rain after a drought.

_Trim go trix_ is a chorus that continued to be popular until the time
of Charles the Second, when Tom D'Urfrey wrote a song entitled "Under
the Greenwood Tree," of which he made it the burden. Another appears in
Allan Ramsay's Tea-table Miscellany:--

The Pope, that pagan full of pride,
He has us blinded long,
For where the blind the blind does guide,
No wonder things go wrong.

Like prince and king, he led the ring
Of all inquitie.
_Hey trix, trim go trix!_
Under the greenwood tree.

In Gaelic _dream_ or _dreim_ signifies a family, a tribe, the people, a
procession; and _qu tric_, frequently, often, so that these words
represent a frequent procession of the people to the hill of worship
under the greenwood tree.

In Motherwell's "Ancient and Modern Minstrelsy," the ballad of Hynd Horn
contains a Celtic chorus repeated in every stanza:--

Near Edinburgh was a young child born,
With a _Hey lilli lu_, and a _how lo lan_!
And his name it was called young Hynd Horn,
And the birk and the broom bloom bonnie.

Here the words are corruptions of _aidhe_ (Hail); _li_, light or colour;
_lu_, small; _ath_, again; _lo_, day-light; _lan_, full; and may be
rendered "Hail to the faint or small light of the dawn"; and "again the
full light of the day" (after the sun had risen).

In the Nursery Rhymes of England, edited by Mr Halliwell for th