The song of Sir Eglamour, in Mr Chappell's collection, has another variety of the _Failte_ or _Fal, la_, of a much more composite character:--
Sir Eglamour that valiant knight, _Fal, la, lanky down dilly!_ He took his sword and went to fight, _Fal, la, lanky down dilly!_
In another song, called "The Friar in the Well," this chorus appears in a slightly different form:--
Listen awhile and I will tell Of a Friar that loved a bonnie lass well, _Fal la! lál, lal, lal, lá! Fal la, langtre down dilly!_
_Lan_ is the Gaelic for full, and _dile_ for rain. The one version has _lanky_, the other _langtre_, both of which are corruptions of the Celtic. The true reading is _Failte la, lan, ri, dun, dile_, which signifies "Welcome to the full or complete day! let us go to the hill of rain."
_Hey, nonnie, nonnie._ "Such unmeaning burdens of songs," says Nares in his Glossary, "are common to ballads in most languages." But this burden is not unmeaning, and signifies "Hail to the noon." _Noin_ or noon, the ninth hour was so called in the Celtic, because at midsummer in our northern latitudes it was the ninth hour after sunrise. With the Romans, in a more southern latitude, noon was the ninth hour after sunrise, at six in the morning, answering to our three o'clock of the afternoon. A song with this burden was sung in England in the days of Charles the Second:--
I am a senseless thing, with a hey! Men call me a king, with a ho? For my luxury and ease, They brought me o'er the seas, _With a heigh, nonnie, nonnie, nonnie, no!_
Mr Chappell cites an ancient ballad which was sung to the tune of _Hie dildo, dil_. This also appears to be Druidical, and to be resolvable into _Ai! dile dun dile!_ or "Hail to the rain, to the rain upon the hill," a thanksgiving for rain after a drought.
_Trim go trix_ is a chorus that continued to be popular until the time of Charles the Second, when Tom D'Urfrey wrote a song entitled "Under the Greenwood Tree," of which he made it the burden. Another appears in Allan Ramsay's Tea-table Miscellany:--
The Pope, that pagan full of pride, He has us blinded long, For where the blind the blind does guide, No wonder things go wrong.
Like prince and king, he led the ring Of all inquitie. _Hey trix, trim go trix!_ Under the greenwood tree.