e highest hill,
Which rises o'er the source of Dee,
And from the eastern summit sped
Its silver light on tower and tree."

I find, however, amongst my papers, a fragment of a version of this same
ballad, of, I assume, earlier antiquity, which so surpasses Low's ballad
that the author has little to thank him for his interference. The first
verse of what I take to be the original poem stands thus:

"The moon had climbed the highest hill,
Where eagles big[2] aboon the Dee,
And like the looks of a lovely dame,
Brought joy to every body's ee."

No poetical reader will require his attention to be directed to the
immeasurable superiority of this glorious verse: the high poetic animation,
the eagles' visits, the lovely looks of female beauty, the exhilarating
gladness and joy affecting the beholder, all manifest the genius of the
master bard. I shall receive it as a favour if any of your correspondents
will furnish a complete copy of the original poem, and contrast it with
what "Low" fancied his "improvements."

JAMES CORNISH.

[Footnote 2: Build.]

_Epitaph at Wood Ditton._--You have recently appropriated a small space in
your "medium of intercommunication" to the subject of epitaphs. I can
furnish you with one which I have been accustomed to regard as a "grand
climacterical absurdity." About thirty years ago, when making a short
summer ramble, I entered the churchyard of Wood Ditton, near Newmarket, and
my attention was attracted by a headstone, having inlaid into its upper
part a piece of iron, measuring about ten inches by six, and hollowed out
into the shape of a _dish_. I inquired of a cottager residing on the spot
what the thing meant? I was informed that the party whose ashes the grave
covered was a man who, during a long life, had a strange taste for sopping
a slice of bread in a dripping-pan (a pan over which meat has been
roasted), and would relinquish for this all kinds of dishes, sweet or
savoury; that in his will he left a request that a dripping-pan should be
fixed in his gravestone; that he wrote his own epitaph, an exact copy of
which I herewith give you, and which he requested to be engraved on the
stone:

"Here lies my corpse, who was the man
That loved a sop in the dripping-pan;
But now believe me I am dead,--
See here the pan stands at my head.
Still for sops till the last I cried,
But could not eat, and so I died.
My neighbours they perhaps will laugh,
When they