And eke there befel an accident,
By fault of a carpenter's son,
Who to saw chips his sharp axe-e-lent
Woe worth the time may Lon-

May London say: woe worth the carpenter! And all such block-head fools;

Would he were hanged up like a sarpent here For meddling with edge tools.

For into the chips there fell a spark,
Which put out in such flames,
That it was known into South-wark
Which lies beyond the Thames

For loe! the bridge was wondrous high,
With water underneath;
O'er which as many fishes fly

As birds therein do breathe.

And yet the fire consumed the brigg,
Not far from place of landing;
And though the building was full big,
It fell down-not-with-standing.

And eke into the water fell

So many pewter dishes,

That a man might have taken up very well Both boiled and roasted fishes!

And thus the bridge of London town,
For building that was sumptuous,
Was all by fire half burnt down
For being too contumptious!

Thus you

have all but half my song,

Pray list to what comes ater;

with the fire,

For now I have cool'd you
I'll warm you with the water!

I'll tell

you what the river's name's
Where the children did slide-a,

It was fair London's swiftest Thames,
Which keeps both time and tide-a.

All on the tenth of January,

To the wonder of much people; 'Twas frozen o'er that well 'twould bear Almost a country steeple!

Three children sliding thereabout,

Upon a place too thin;

That so at last it did fall out,

That they did all fall in.

A great lord there was that laid with the king,
And with the king great wager makes;

But when he saw that he could not win
He sigh'd, and would have drawn stakes.

He said it would bear a man for to slide,
And laid a hundred pound;

The king said it would break, and so it did,
For three children there were drown'd.

Of which one's head was from his should-
ers stricken,-whose name was John;
Who then cried out as loud as he could
Oh Lon-a! Lon-a! London!

Oh! tut-tut-turn from thy sinful race!
Thus did his speech decay;

I wonder that in such a case

He had no more to say.

And thus being drown'd, alack! alack!

The water ran down their throats,

And stopp'd their breath three hours by the clock,

Before they could get any boats!

Ye parents all that children have,
And ye that have none yet,

Preserve children from the grave,

your

And teach them at home to sit.

For had these at a sermon been,
Or else upon dry ground,
Why then I never would have been seen,
If that they had been drown'd.

Even as a huntsman ties his dogs
For fear they should go fro' him ;
So tye your children with severity's clogs,
Untie 'em and you'll undo 'em.

God bless our noble Parliament,

And rid them from all fears;

God bless all the Commons of this land
And God bless-some of the Peers!

LXX.

London's Ordinary; or, Every Man in his Humour.

THIS humourous old Song is from a small oblong Commonplace Book of Music and Poetry, written at the close of the seventeenth century. It is evidently of much earlier date than the hand-writing of the MS., and a black-letter copy "Printed by the assignes of Thomas Symcocke" is preserved in the Roxburghe Collection (vol. i, p. 212). It has been very incorrectly printed, with the entire omission of one stanza (the twelfth) in Evans's Collection of Old Ballads. A portion of the same is also inserted, under the title of "The Tavern Song," in the third edition of Wit and Mirth, an Antidote against Melancholy, 1682.

In a black-letter Poem of Queen Elizabeth's reign, entitled Newes from Bartholemew Fayre, there is a curious enumeration of Taverns in London, namely:

:

"There hath been great sale and utterance of wine,

Besides beere, and ale, and Ipocras fine,

In every country, region and nation,

But chiefly in Billingsgate, at the Salutation;

And the Bore's Head, near London Stone;
The Swan at Dowgate, a taverne well knowne;