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The Battle of Blenheim,

....... 167

A true Ballad of St. Antidius, the Pope, and the Devil,.. 171 Queen Orraca and the Five Martyrs of Morocco,

The Surgeon's Warning,

Henry the Hermit,

St. Gualberto, addressed to a Friend,

......... 181

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Ballads

and

Metrical Tales.

MARY,

THE MAID OF THE INN.

THE subject of the following Ballad was related to me, when a school-boy, as a fact which had happened in the north of England. Either Furnes or Kirkstall Abbey (I forget which) was named as the scene. It seems however to have been founded upon a story related in Dr. Plot's History of Staffordshire.

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Amongst the unusual accidents," says this amusing au thor," that have attended the female sex in the course of their lives, I think I may also reckon the narrow escapes they have made from death. Whereof I met with one mentioned with admiration by every body at Leek, that happened not far off at the Black Meer of Morridge, which, though famous for nothing for which it is commonly reputed so, (as that it is bottomless, no cattle will drink of it, or birds fly over or settle upon it, all which I found false,) yet is so, for the signal deliverance of a poor woman, enticed thither in a dismal stormy night, by a bloody ruffian, who had first gotten her with child, and intended in this remote inhospitable place to have dispatched her by drowning. The same night (Providence so ordering it) there were several persons of inferior rank drinking in an ale-house at Leek,

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