re endeth the booke of a C. mery Talys. Imprinted
at London at the sygne of the meremayde
at powlys gate nexte to chepesyde._

+ _Cum priuelegio Regali._

FOOTNOTES:

[144] Orig. reads _the iii point is that never mis that, &c._

[145] A very costly article of female dress during the reigns of the
Tudor and Stuart sovereigns. It constituted part of the head-gear, and
from the way in which it was worn by some women, was calculated to
convey a notion of skittishness. In the _New Courtly Sonet of the Lady
Greensleeves_, printed in Robinson's "Handful of Pleasant Delites,"
1584, the lover is made to say to his mistress:--

"I bought three kerchers to thy head, That were wrought fine and
gallantly: I kept thee both at board and bed, Which cost my purse
well-favourdly."

ADDITIONAL NOTES AND ILLUSTRATIONS.

A C. MERY TALYS.

Introduction, vi.--I might have mentioned that Taylor the Water-Poet
cites _The Hundred Merry Tales_ as one of the authorities employed by
him in the composition of his _Sir Gregory Nonsense His Newes from No
Place_, 1622 (Taylor's Works, 1630), and see also Epistle Dedicatory to
Meredith's _Eusebius_, 1577.

P. 19.--This story is found in the _Ducento Novelle_ of Celio Malespini,
printed at Venice, 1609, 4o.

P. 22. _Of the Woman that sayd her Woer cam too late._

"If thou be slow to speake, as one I knew,
Thou wouldst assure thy selfe my counsels true;
Hee (too late) finding her upon her knees
In Church, where yet her husbands coorse she sees,
Hearing the Sermon at his funerall,
Longing to behold his buriall,
This sutor being toucht with inward love,
Approached neare his lovely sute to move,
Then stooping downe he whispered in her eare
Saying he bore her love, as might appeare,
In that so soone he shewed his love unto her,
Before any else did app[r]och to woo her,
Alass (said she) your labour is in vaine,
Last night a husband I did entertaine."

--_Uncasing of Machivils Instructions to his Sonne_, 1612,
Sign. C 3. Stories of this kind are of very common occurrence in the
modern collections of facetiae.

P. 23. "When Davie Diker diggs, and dallies not,
When smithes shoo horses, as they would be shod,
_When millers toll not with a golden thumbe_."

--_The Steel Glas, a Satyre_, by George Gascoigne, Esquire (1576), Sign.
H 3 verso.

A writer in the _Retrospective Review_, New Series, ii. 326, states that
this story of the "Mil