The cheerful parish bells had rung,
With eager steps he trudged along,
While flowery garlands round him hung,
Which shepherds use to wear;
He tapped the window; ‘Haste, my dear!’
Jenny impatient cried, ‘Who’s there?’
’’Tis I, my love, and no one near;
Step gently down, you’ve nought to fear,
With Jockey to the fair.’
Step gently down, &c.
’My dad and mam are fast asleep,
My brother’s up, and with the sheep;
And will you still your promise keep,
Which I have heard you swear?
And will you ever constant prove?’
’I will, by all the powers above,
And ne’er deceive my charming dove;
Dispel these doubts, and haste, my love,
With Jockey to the fair.’
Dispel, &c.
‘Behold, the ring,’ the shepherd cried;
’Will Jenny be my charming bride?
Let Cupid be our happy guide,
And Hymen meet us there.’
Then Jockey did his vows renew;
He would be constant, would he true,
His word was pledged; away she flew,
O’er cowslips tipped with balmy dew,
With Jockey to the fair.
O’er cowslips, &c.
In raptures meet the joyful throng;
Their gay companions, blithe and young,
Each join the dance, each raise the song,
To hail the happy pair.
In turns there’s none so loud as they,
They bless the kind propitious day,
The smiling morn of blooming May,
When lovely Jenny ran away
With Jockey to the fair.
When lovely, &c.
[Mr. Birkbeck, of Threapland House, Lintondale, in
Craven, has favoured us with the following fragment.
The tune is well known in the North, but all attempts
on the part of Mr. Birkbeck to obtain the remaining
verses have been unsuccessful. The song is evidently
of the date of the first rebellion, 1715.]
Long Preston Peg to proud Preston went,
To see the Scotch rebels it was her intent.
A noble Scotch lord, as he passed by,
On this Yorkshire damsel did soon cast an eye.
He called to his servant, which on him did wait,
’Go down to yon girl who stands in the gate,
{69}
That sings with a voice so soft and so sweet,
And in my name do her lovingly greet.’
Ballad: The sweet nightingale;
or, down in those valleys
below.
An ancient Cornish song.
[This curious ditty, which may be confidently assigned
to the seventeenth century, is said to be a translation
from the ancient Cornish tongue. We first heard
it in Germany, in the pleasure-gardens of the Marienberg,
on the Moselle. The singers were four Cornish
miners, who were at that time, 1854, employed at some
lead mines near the town of Zell. The leader
or ‘Captain,’ John Stocker, said that
the song was an established favourite with the lead
miners of Cornwall and Devonshire, and was always sung
on the pay-days, and at the wakes; and that his grandfather,
who died thirty years before, at the age of a hundred
years, used to sing the song, and say that it was
very old. Stocker promised to make a copy of
it, but there was no opportunity of procuring it before
we left Germany. The following version has been
supplied by a gentleman in Plymouth, who writes:-
