_And when these raskals went away,_ _What e’re you thing they did me repay_ _Ich will not you deceive._ _Facks[,] just as folks go to a vaire,_ _They vaidled up my goods and ware,_ _And so they took their leave._
_O what a clutter they did make_ _Our house for ~Babel~ they did take,_ _We could not understand a jot._ _Yet they did know what did belong_ _To drink and zwear in our own tongue,_ _Such language they had a got._
_Nor home ich any zafe aboad,_ _If that Ise chance to go abroad,_ _These rogues will come to spy me;_ _Then zurrah, zurrah, quoth they, tarry,_ _We know false letters you do carry,_ _And so they come to try me._
_For as swift as any lightning goes_ _Straight all their hand into my hose,_ _There out they pull my purse._ _O zurrah, zurrah, this is it,_ _Your Letters are in silver writ;_ _You may go take your course._
_A Trouper t’other day did greet me,_ [ ... Lost line.] _But could you guesse the reason,_ _Thou art, quoth he, a rebel, Knave,_ _And zo thou dost thy zelf behave,_ _For thou doest whistle treason._
_Nor was this raskal much to blame,_ _For all his mates zwore just the zame,_ _That ich was fain to do._ _Ich humble pardon of him sought,_ _And gave him money for my fault,_ _And glad I could scape so too._
This is, veritably, a “document in madness” of such civil wars and military licence. It reads like the genuine narratives of Prussian brutality and outrage during the occupation of Alsace and Lorraine: which is hereafter to be bitterly avenged.
This lively ditty is sung by Latrocinio in the comedy of “The Widow,” Act iii. sc. 1, produced about 1616, and written by JOHN FLETCHER, Ben Jonson, and Thomas Middleton. The song bears trace of Fletcher’s hand (more, we believe, than of Jonson’s). It has a rollicking freedom that made it a favourite. We meet it in _Wit’s Interpreter_, 1655, p. 69; 1671, p. 175; and elsewhere. See Dyce’s _Middleton_, iii. 383, and _Dodsley’s Old Plays_, 1744, vi. 34.
Page 61. _There is not halfe so warm a fire._
This re-appears, with variations and twelve additional lines (inferior), in _Westminster-Drollery_, 1671, i. 102; where is the corrupt text “_and ~daily~ pays us with what is_.” Our present text gives us the true word, “_dully_.”