http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UMj7O9LZpU8

A song that would have been considered funny/satirical when it was written, in the mid-seventeenth century.


THE FAIRIES' FAREWELL by Bishop Richard Corbet

Farewell rewards and fairies,
Good housewives now may say,
For now foul sluts in dairies
Do fare as well as they.
And tho' they sweep their hearths no less
Than maids were wont to do,
Yet who of late for cleanliness
Finds sixpence in her shoe?

Lament, lament, old Abbeys,
The Fairies' lost command!
They did but change Priests' babies,
But some have changed your land.
And all your children, sprung from thence,
Are now grown Puritans,
Who live as Changelings ever since
For love of your domains.

At morning and at evening both
They merry were and glad,
So little care of sleep or sloth
These pretty ladies had;
When Tom came home from labour,
Or Cis to milking rose,
Then merrily went their tabor,
And nimbly went their toes

Witness those rings and roundelays
Of theirs, which yet remain,
Were footed in Queen Mary's days
On many a grassy plain;
But since of late, Elizabeth,
And later, James came in,
They never danced on any heath
As when the time hath been.

By which we note the Fairies
Were of the old Profession.
Their songs were "Ave Mary"s,
Their dances were Procession.
But now, alas, they all are dead;
Or gone beyond the seas;
Or farther for Religion fled;
Or else they take their ease.

A tell-tale in their company
They never could endure!
And whoso kept not secretly
Their mirth, was punished, sure;
It was a just and Christian deed
To pinch such black and blue.
Oh how the commonwealth doth want
Such Justices as you!

Now they have left our quarters,
A register they have,
Who can preserve their charters,
A man both wise and grave;
A hundred of their merry pranks
By one that I could name
Are kept in store; con twenty thanks
To William for the same.

To William Chourne of Staffordshire
Give land and praises due,
Who every meal can mend your cheer
With tales both old and true;
To William all give audience,
And pray ye for his noddle,
For all the fairies' evidence
Were lost, if that were addle.