The Two Faithful Lovers. "In deep wet ways, by grey old gardens, The old years and flowers they used to know. Watch, sleep not, gird thyself with prayer. Nor the graves open for their call. The end is more than joy and anguish, Than lives that laugh and lives that languish: The poppied sleep, the end of all."-Swinburne: "Ilicet." HE lamentable ditty which here follows, bearing title of "The Two Faithful Lovers," was probably intended for the delight of those who could "suck melancholy out of a song, as a weasel sucks eggs;" those who loved a mournful history, crossing their armis, looking woe-begone, and haunting gloomy solitudes out of mere wantonness. The deeper sorrows of life affect us differently from these fantastic sentiments. Except in the fatal ending there is a similarity of incident in this ballad and one already given in our volume (p. 250), "The Mariner's Misfortune;" but in the latter the faithful lovers are rescued after shipwreck, reunited, and, as the story-books often say, "live happily ever after." A quite different ballad bears the same title of "The Two Faithful Lovers," but it gives "a merry praise of Betty," goes to the tune of "The amorous Damsel of Bristol City," is in Roxb. Coll., ii. 480; iv. 77; and begins "In a May morning as I was walking, I heard two Lovers together talking." It was written by T. B., who may have been either Tobias Bowne (one of whose ballads was the Doubting Virgin, mentioned so often, on pp. 336, 353), or, less probably, Thomas Brewer, who wrote Pepys, i. 196. Certainly not Thomas Bylle, who wrote “Behold, BAGFORD. 2 I O Lord, a sinner in distress," with the second part, "O God, who framed'st," &c. (Roxb. Coll., i. 136, 137). The tune selected for our Bagford ballad (Popular Music, p. 370) was not favourable for pathetic ditties of tender affection, but must have had the disadvantage of suggesting burlesque. "Franklin is filed away" is in our Bagford Collection, ii. 69; as also in Pepys, ii. 76; Douce, fol. 222; and also in the Roxb. Coll., ii. 348. It is entitled "A Mournful Carol, or an Elegy Lamenting the tragic end of two faithful Lovers, Frankin and Cordelius; he being slain, she slew herself with her dagger. To a new tune, called, Frankin is fled away." Printed for M. Coles, Vere, Clark, Thackeray, and Passinger. It begins, Frankin, my loyal friend, O hone, O hone! In whom my joys do end, O hone! O hone! Since last he took his flight, Bids now the world good night, O hone, O hone! Frankin is fled and gone, O hone, O hone! And left me here alone, O hone, O hone! Frankin is fled away, The glory of the May; Who can but mourn and say, O hone, O hone! The following ballad, with "The Two Constant Lovers," ii. 140, precedes "The Lass of Lynn's New Joy" in the folio volume. [This cut in the original stands to the left of that printed in Part II. p. 454.] |