r and perspicuous to the practised _patterer_ of
_Romany_, or _Pedlar's French_. I have, moreover, been the first to
introduce and naturalize amongst us a measure which, though common
enough in the Argotic minstrelsy of France, has been hitherto utterly
unknown to our _pedestrian_ poetry. Some years afterwards, the song
alluded to, better known under the title of "_Nix My Dolly, Pals,--Fake
Away!_" sprang into extraordinary popularity, being set to music by
Rodwell, and chanted by glorious Paul Bedford and clever little Mrs.
Keeley.

Before quitting the subject of these songs, I may mention that they
probably would not have been written at all if one of the earliest of
them--a chance experiment--had not excited the warm approbation of my
friend, Charles Ollier, author of the striking romance of "Ferrers."
This induced me to prosecute the vein accidentally opened.

Turpin was the hero of my boyhood. I had always a strange passion for
highwaymen, and have listened by the hour to their exploits, as narrated
by my father, and especially to those of "Dauntless Dick," that "chief
minion of the moon." One of Turpin's adventures in particular, the ride
to Hough Green, which took deep hold of my fancy, I have recorded in
song. When a boy, I have often lingered by the side of the deep old road
where this robbery was committed, to cast wistful glances into its
mysterious windings; and when night deepened the shadows of the trees,
have urged my horse on his journey, from a vague apprehension of a visit
from the ghostly highwayman. And then there was the Bollin, with its
shelvy banks, which Turpin cleared at a bound; the broad meadows over
which he winged his flight; the pleasant bowling-green of the pleasant
old inn at Hough, where he produced his watch to the Cheshire squires,
with whom he was upon terms of intimacy; all brought something of the
gallant robber to mind. No wonder, in after-years, in selecting a
highwayman for a character in a tale, I should choose my old favorite,
Dick Turpin.

In reference to two of the characters here introduced, and drawn from
personages living at the time the tale was written, it may be mentioned
that poor Jerry Juniper met his death from an accident at Chichester,
while he was proceeding to Goodwood races; and that the knight of
Malta,--Mr. Tom, a brewer of Truro, the self-styled Sir William
Courtenay, who played the strange tricks at Canterbury chronicled in a
song given in these pages,--a