_Nose, nose, jolly red nose,_ _And who gave thee this jolly red nose?_ Cinnamon and ginger, nutmegs and cloves, _And they gave me this jolly red nose_.
And we know, by _A Booke of Merrie Riddles_, 1630, and 1631, that it was much sung:
—_then Ale-Knights should_ _To sing this song not be so bold,_ Nutmegs, Ginger, Cinamon and Cloves, They gave us this jolly red nose.
Same p. 155. _This Ale, my bonny lads, &c._
Like Nos. 4, 21, 24, 31, &c., not yet found elsewhere.
With music by Thomas Holmes, in Hilton’s _Catch that Catch can_, 1652, p. 46.
Same p. 156. _Jog on, jog on the foot path-way._
The four earliest lines of this ditty are sung by Autolycus the Pedlar, and “picker up of unconsidered trifles,” in Shakespeare’s _Winter’s Tale_ (about 1610), Act iv. sc. 2. Whether the latter portion of the song was also by him (nay, more, whether he actually wrote, or merely quoted even the four opening lines), cannot be determined. We prefer to believe that from his hand alone came the fragment, at least—this lively snatch of melody, with good philosophy, such as the Ascetics reject, to their own damage. No wrong is done in accepting the remainder of the song as genuine. The final verse is orthodox, according to the Autolycusian rule of faith. It is in _Windsor Drollery_, p. 30; and our Introduction to _Westminster-Drollery_, p. xxxv.
Compare, with this lame paraphrase of Anacreon’s racy Ode, the more poetic version by Abraham Cowley, printed in _Merry Drollery, Compleat_, p. 22 (not in 1661 ed. _Merry D._) All of Cowley’s Anacreontiques are graceful and melodious. He and Thomas Stanley fully entered into the spirit of them, _arcades ambo_.
We meet this, six years earlier, in _Wits Interpreter_, 1655 edit., p. 285; 1671, p. 290. Our text is the superior.
Page 158. _Drink, drink, all you that think._
Also found in _Wit and Mirth_, 1684, p. 113.
Page 159. _Welcome, welcome, again to thy wits._
By JAMES SHIRLEY, (1590-1666) in his comedy, “The Example,” 1637, Act v. sc. 3, where it is the Song of Sir Solitary Plot and Lady Plot. Repeated in the _Academy of Complements_, 1670, p. 209. Until after that date, for nearly a century, almost all the best songs had been written for stage plays. It forms an appropriate finale, from the last Dramatist of the old school, to the Restoration merriment, the _Antidote against Melancholy_, of 1661.