ladies ride,
Jimp and sma',--"
a smooth ride, then a rough trot,--
"This is the way the cadgers ride.
Creels and a'!"
Such songs are sometimes not printed, but they are never forgotten.
About the people mentioned in this book:--We do not exactly know who Old
King Cole was, but King Arthur must have reigned some time about 500 to
600 A.D. As a child grows up, he will, if he is fond of poetry, read
thousands of lines about this Prince, and the Table Round where his
Knights dined, and how four weeping Queens carried him from his last
fight to Avalon, a country where the apple-trees are always in bloom.
But the reader will never forget the bag-pudding, which "the Queen next
morning fried." Her name was Guinevere, and the historian says that she
"was a true lover, and therefore made she a good end." But she had a
great deal of unhappiness in her life.
I cannot tell what King of France went up the hill with twenty thousand
men, and did nothing when he got there. But I do know who Charley was
that "loved good ale and wine," and also "loved good brandy," and was
fond of a pretty girl, "as sweet as sugar-candy." This was the banished
Prince of Wales, who tried to win back his father's kingdom more than a
hundred years ago, and gained battles, and took cities, and would have
recovered the throne if his officers had followed him. But he was as
unfortunate as he was brave, and when he had no longer a chance, perhaps
he _did_ love good ale and wine rather too dearly. As for the pretty
girls, they all ran after him, and he could not run away like Georgey
Porgey. There is plenty of poetry about Charley, as well as about King
Arthur.
About King Charles the First, "upon a black horse," a child will soon
hear at least as much as he can want, and perhaps his heart "will be
ready to burst," as the rhyme says, with sorrow for the unhappy King.
After he had his head cut off, "the Parliament soldiers went to the
King," that is, to his son Charles, and crowned him in his turn, but he
was thought a little too gay. Then we come to the King "who had a
daughter fair, and gave the Prince of Orange her."
There is another rhyme about him:--
"O what's the rhyme to porringer?
Ken ye the rhyme to porringer?
King James the Seventh had ae dochter,
And he gave her to an Oranger.
Ken ye how he requited him?
Ken ye how he requi
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