paint thy shadow a-crook.

The maid that is gentle will make a kind wife;
The magpie that prateth will stir thee to strife:
'Twere better to tarry,
Unless thou canst marry
To sweeten the bitters of life!

* * * * *

What fires the youthful minstrel's lay
Lit in De Thorold's eyes,
It needs not, now, I soothly say:
Sweet Edith had softly stolen away,--
And 'mid his own surprise,
Blent with the boisterous applause
That, instant, to the rafters rose,
The baron his jealous thought forgot.
Quickly, sithence a jocund note
Was fairly struck in every mind,
And jolly ale its power combined
To fill all hearts with deeper glee,--
All wished for gleeful minstrelsy;
And every eye was shrewdly bent
On one whose caustic merriment
At many a blythe Yule-tide had bin
Compelling cause of mirthful grin
To ancient Torksey's rustic folk.

Full soon this sturdy summons broke
From sire and son, and maid and mother:--
"Ho, ho! saint Leonard's fat lay brother!
Why dost thou in the corner peep,
And sipple as if half asleep
Thou wert with this good nappy ale?
Come, rouse thee! for thy sly old tale
Of the Miller of Roche and the hornless devil,
We'll hear, or we leave our Yule-night revel!
Thy folded cloak come cast aside!--
Beneath it thou dost thy rebeck hide--
It is thy old trick--we know it well--
Pledge all! and thy ditty begin to tell!"
"Pledge all, pledge all!" the baron cried;
"Let mirth be free at good Yule-tide!"

Then, forth the lay brother his rebeck drew,
And athwart the triple string
The bow in gamesome mood he threw,--
His joke-song preluding;--
Soon, with sly look, the burly man,
In burly tones his tale began.

The Miller of Roche.[12]

THE LAY BROTHER OF SAINT LEONARD'S TALE.

O the Prior of Roche
Was without reproach
While with saintly monks he chanted;
But when from the mass
He had turned his face,
The prior his saintship scanted.

O the Miller of Roche,--
I swear and avouch,--
Had a wife of nut-brown beauty;
And to shrive her,--they say,--
The prior, each day,
Came with zeal to his ghostly duty.

But the neighbouring wives,
Who ne'er shrove in their lives,--
Such wickedness Sathanas whispers!--
Said the black-cloaked prior
By the miller's log fire,
Oft tarried too late for vespers!

O the thu