The next that came in was a ragman,
With his rag-bag over his shoulder;
Sure no one could be bolder

Among the jovial crew.

They sat and called for pots and glasses,

Till they were all drunk as asses,

And burnt the old ragman's bag to ashes,

While Joan's ale was new.

In some parts of Suffolk a curious custom still prevails of singing at the harvest suppers the song known as "The Duke of Norfolk." One of the company is crowned with an inverted pillow or cushion, whilst another presents to him, kneeling down to make the presentation, a jug of ale. Probably the custom is derived from the homage which used to be paid to the Dukes of Norfolk, the possessors of wide domains in that county. To "serve the Duke of Norfolk" was, at one period, equivalent to making merry. with a cushion is, that he who takes the ale must drink it off without spilling it, or without allowing the cushion to fall.

The idea of the crowning

I am the Duke of Nor folk, Newly come to Suf-folk, Say shall I be at

Gaily.

If a man should be drunk to-night,

And laid in his grave to-morrow,
Will you or any man say

That he died of care and sorrow?
Then hang up all sorrow and care,
'Tis able to kill a cat,

And he that will drink all right

Is never afraid of that;

For drinking will make a man quaff,
And quaffing will make a man sing,
And singing will make a man laugh,
And laughing long life will bring,
Says Old Simon the king.

Chorus.

In an excellent article on English convivial song writers in the Irish Quarterly Review for 1885, the following remarks occur :

The true poet loves all nature, and all her gifts. . . . Thus it is that the poet becomes a convivial song writer; and as there can be no great bard in a state of barbarism, so there can be no good convivial songs in any language unless the people who speak it have arrived at that phase of civilisation at least where the interchange of thoughts and feelings is held to form a considerable portion of the enjoyment which rational beings experience when, gathered together, they "sit at good men's feasts." The savage who gorges himself with the grilled buttock of his captured enemy has, in his wild gibberish, no melody of a convivial character. He has his songs which tell him that his opponents have been scalped, or which relate the stories of savage wooings, but these are only the natural feelings of every heart beating in the great theatre of the world-revenge and love.

Passing from the savage to the semi-civilised, we come to the Russian serf and to the English railway navvy. They sing of eating and of drinking; they sing, too, of love—that is, they sing of women-but of convivial songs they are entirely ignoThe navvy has no song that speaks to his heart, save through the medium of his palate or of his eyes. Of that which pleases his palate he sings:

rant.

Oh! I wish I had a piece o' pork,

With fat three inches thick,

I'd tuck it in, 'twould blow me out,

And swell me like a tick.

Of his sweetheart, and how he means to please her, he bellows :

Oh! my wesket it is red,

And my jacket it is blue,

This is repeated three times, and then he goes on:

I'm a chick-a-leary cove,

And she loves me too.

The writer of the article goes from these refined specimens of song to the lyrics of the peasants, nor pauses to give a word to the rollicking Bacchanalian choruses of some of the sailors' chanties. In these we find some of the true characteristics of the convivial song ; the tars have an inordinate affection for the German students' triumvirate, "Wein, Weib, und Gesang."

The favourite drinking song of our British sailors is one of the best known of their hauling chanties. The name speaks for its

and so on.

There is a great deal of repetition and a very little common sense in this ditty; but nevertheless it is immensely popular, and is always received with much delight by the blue-jackets.

Rabelais' "Chanson à boire" is such an epitome of the sentiments of the true convivial song that I cannot refrain from quoting four lines of it:

Remplis ton verre vuide,

Vuide ton verre plein;

Je ne puis souffrir dans la main,

Un verre ni vuide ni plein.

and surely the merest sketch on the subject of drinking songs would be incomplete without an allusion to Ben Jonson's incomparable verses, which have been perhaps more quoted than any others within recent times:

Drink to me only with thine eyes,

And I will pledge with mine;
Or leave a kiss but in the cup,

And I'll not look for wine.

LAURA ALEX. SMITH.

IN A SCOTCH FARM KITCHEN.

Din

O not think that I am going to write of culinary mysteries in this Carglen kitchen. I am no adept in the cookery art, but would refer you, if you are interested in such matters, to the Kaim of Derncleugh in "Guy Mannering," where you will find Meg Merrilies brewing a decoction as savoury and well-flavoured as that now simmering in the pot on the kitchen "crook" of any housewife or maid in all the North Country farmsteads. But I purpose telling a little of what happens when the evening meal is over and satisfaction reigns in the stomachs of all who sit around the fireplace in the old farmhouse of Linkerstown.

Linkerstown! The place was the symbol, and the reality too, of that which was oldest and most venerable in our parochial world. It was a straggling place at the top of a windy brae, steeper than any in Carglen, where fruitful fields had taken the place of barren lands and bracken-covered picturesque slopes. Standing on the blasty side of the "auld wuid," it had no shelter from the bleak northerly gale. It was all right when one had raced through the cornyard, jumped the dyke, and taken refuge amongst the fir-trees, but only a strong chest and well-clad body could withstand the storm-shower that swept with icy chill from the high hills of Kinvoir and the broad plain at the foot of the brae through which wandered the long winding tollroad. The winter gales were fierce and sharp, as we shall presently see; but for precision of purpose, if we may apply such a phrase to "the wind that bloweth where it listeth, and thou hearest the sound thereof, but canst not tell whence it cometh nor whither it goeth," the storms in late spring or early autumn fairly bore away the palm. In an equinoctial tempest I have more than once seen the barn and the long byre, with the back of the dwelling-house, bereft of their brand new coat of thatch, notwithstanding the protecting grip of the newly twisted straw ropes that bound it down. Many trees, too, in the "new wuid," and some even in the "auld," torn up by the roots and laid prone on the ground, bore testimony to the force of member the corrving away of a

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