And all your children stoln from thence Are now growne Puritanes, Who live as changelings ever since, 15 For love of your demaines.
At morning and at evening both You merry were and glad, So little care of sleepe and sloth, These prettie ladies had. 20 When Tom came home from labour, Or Ciss to milking rose, Then merrily went their tabour, And nimbly went their toes.
Witness those rings and roundelayes 25 Of theirs, which yet remaine; Were footed in queene Maries dayes On many a grassy playne. But since of late Elizabeth And later James came in; 30 They never danc'd on any heath, As when the time hath bin.
By which wee note the fairies 35 Were of the old profession: Their songs were _Ave Maries_, Their dances were procession. But now, alas! they all are dead, Or gone beyond the seas, Or farther for religion fled, Or else they take their ease. 40
A tell-tale in their company They never could endure; And whoso kept not secretly Their mirth, was punish'd sure:
It was a just and christian deed 45 To pinch such blacke and blue: O how the common-welth doth need Such justices, as you!
Now they have left our quarters; A Register they have, 50 Who can preserve their charters; A man both wise and grave. An hundred of their merry pranks By one that I could name Are kept in store; con twenty thanks 55 To William for the same.
To William Churne of Staffordshire Give laud and praises due, Who every meale can mend your cheare With tales both old and true: 60 To William all give audience, And pray yee for his noddle: For all the fairies evidence Were lost, if it were addle.
[***] After these _Songs_ on the _Fairies_, the reader may be curious to see the manner in which they were formerly invoked and bound to human service. In Ashmole's _Collection of MSS._ at Oxford (Num. 8259. 1406. 2), are the papers of some alchymist, which contain a variety of Incantations and Forms of Conjuring both _Fairies_, _Witches_, and _Demons_, principally, as it should seem, to assist him in his Great Work of transmuting Metals. Most of them are too impious to be reprinted: but the two following may be very innocently laughed at.
Whoever looks into Ben Jonson's _Alchymist_, will find that these impostors, among their other secrets, affected to have a power over _Fairies_: and that they were commonly expected to be seen in a christal glass appears from that extraordinary book, _The Relation_ _of Dr. John Dee's actions with Spirits_, 1659, folio.