most people would imagine. Unfortunately, many Morris sides have
been disbanded within the last two or three decades, and our field of
work is therefore becoming more and more restricted; for it is difficult,
and in many cases impossible, to acquire accurate information unless the
Morris side is actually in being. We intend, however, to continue our
inquiries without pause, in order that we may collect all the existing
tunes and other information upon this most interesting subject before it
is too late.

We append some notes on the tunes which we are publishing in connection
with this volume, with the exception of "Bean Setting," "Trunkles," and
"Laudnum Bunches," about which we know nothing.

NOTES ON MORRIS TUNES.

"HOW D'YE DO?"

Compare "Blowzabella, my bouncing Doxie," in d'Urfey's "Pills to purge
melancholy," I., p. 190 (Ed. 1719).

"RIGS O' MARLOW."

This air is printed in Burke Thumoth's collection of Irish Airs (1720),
in Holden's "Old Irish Tunes" (1806), and in "Songs of Ireland," p. 164
(Boosey).

T. Crofton Croker quotes the words of the original song in "The Popular
Songs of Ireland" (1839), of which the first verse is as follows:--

AIR--"Sandy lent the man his Mull."
Beauing, belling, dancing, drinking,
Breaking windows, damning, sinking,
Ever raking, never thinking,
Live the rakes of Mallow.

Mr. Kimber, the leader of the Headington Morris, could only give us the
first verse of their song, which, however, is quite different from the
Irish words:--

When I go to Marlow Fair
With the ribbons in my hair,
All the boys and girls declare,
Here comes the rigs o' Marlow.

Mallow is in County Cork and was a fashionable watering-place in the
eighteenth century, when it was known as the "Irish Bath." Croker says
that the young men of that fashionable water-drinking town were
proverbially called "the rakes of Mallow," and he adds: "A set of pretty
pickles they were, if the song descriptive of their mode of life, here
recorded after the most delicate oral testimony, is not very much
over-coloured."

Neither the Oxfordshire nor the Gloucestershire Morris-men, from both of
whom we recovered this tune, had probably heard of "Mallow"; it was
natural enough, therefore, to substitute "Marlow," which, of course, they
know very well.

"COUNTRY GARDENS."

This is the prototype of "The Vicar of Bray," and Mr. Kidson tells us
that he has it in an old