facts. The song is worthy of recovery and preservation, as a remnant of
English character and manners; and I have only referred to Hasted to
point out the probable district in which it will be found.

There are many other characteristics of the manners of the humbler
classes to be found in songs that had great local popularity within the
period of living memory; for instance, the _Wednesbury Cocking_ amongst
the colliers of Staffordshire and _Rotherham Status_ amongst the cutlers
of Sheffield. Their language, it is true, is not always very
delicate--perhaps was not even at the time these songs were
composed,--as they picture rather the exuberant freaks of a
half-civilised people than the better phases of their character. Yet
even these form "part and parcel" of the history of "the true-born
Englishman."

One song more may be noticed here:--the rigmarole, snatches of which
probably most of us have heard, which contains an immense number of mere
truisms having no connexion with each others, and no bond of union but
the metrical form in which their juxtaposition is effected, and the
rhyme, which is kept up very well throughout, though sometimes by the
introduction of a nonsense line. Who does not remember--

"A yard of pudding's not an ell,"

or

"Not forgetting _dytherum di_,
A tailor's goose can never fly,"

and other like parts?