With scarlet gowns & broad gold lace, would make a yeoman sweat; 5
With stockings roll'd above their knees & shoes as black as jet;
With eating beef & drinking beer, O they were stout & hale—
Good English hospitality, O then it did not fail!
Thus sitting at the table wide the Mayor & Aldermen 9
Were fit to give law to the city; each eat as much as ten:
The hungry poor enter'd the hall to eat good beef & ale—
Good English hospitality, O then it did not fail!
company were tired, & insisted on the Lawgiver singing a song himself, which he readily complied with:—'
Cp. 'Old English hospitality is long since deceased,' in Chatterton's 'Antiquity of Christmas Games,' an essay reprinted in the Miscellanies of 1778, with which work Blake appears to me to have been familiar.
EY i. pp. 198-9. WBY (p. 135) entitles this song 'Old English Hospitality,' following the inaccurate version given of the refrain in the first and second stanza by EY.
1 has] have WBY.4 and 8 Good] Old EY, WBY.10 law] laws EY, WBY.
vi
1Leave, O leave [me] to my sorrows;
Here I'll sit & fade away,
Till I'm nothing but a spirit,
And I lose this form of clay.
5Then if chance along this forest
Any walk in pathless ways.
Thro' the gloom he'll see my shadow,
Hear my voice upon the Breeze.
Isl. in Moon, chap, xi—'Here a laugh began, and Miss Gittipin sung—.' EY i. p. 200. WBY (p. 102) prints as a single stanza, with title 'A Song of Sorrow.'
1 me] omitted in orig.; me EY, WBY.sorrows] sorrow EY, WBY. 4 lose] love EY, WBY.
