172 



NOTES AND QUERIES. 



[2'>d S. VIII. Aug. 27. '5P, 



nature to the death-warrant of the King. He died in 

 1659, the year before the Restoration. Clarendon's Hist, 

 of the Rebellion, iv. 636., ed. 1849. Faulkner's Chelsea, 

 i. 172. ; ii. 143., ed. 1829; and «N. & Q." 2"-» S. ii. 449. ; 

 iii. 495.] 



Song. — In days of yore my father sung some 

 lines. Where can I find the song — 



"The ploughman Avliistles o'er the furrow. 

 The hedger joins the vacant strain, 

 The woodman sings the woodland thorough, 

 The shepherd's pipe delights the plain." 



Sen EX. 

 [This beautiful ballad is by Charles Dibdin the elder, 

 or, as we may style him, the Dibdin. His name is chiefly 

 retained in our memories by his inimitable Nautical Bal- 

 lads; but Dibdin deserves more than that, he was a 

 universal lyrist and melodist ; in every scene of nature 

 he poured out his melodies with the spontaneous richness 

 of the minstrels of the wood. We must quote it, al- 

 though the words and music are so closely united as to 

 be almost incapable of separation : — 



" The Labouker's Welcome Home. 

 " The ploughman whistles o'er the furrow, 

 The hedger joins the vacant strain, 

 The woodman sings the woodland thorough. 



The shepherd's pipe delights the plain : 

 Where'er the anxious eye can roam. 

 Or ear receive the jocund pleasure. 



Myriads of beings thronging flock, 

 Of Nature's song to join the measure ; 

 Till, to keep time, the village clock 

 Sounds sweet the lab'rer's welcome home. 



" The hearth swept clean, his partner smiling. 

 Upon the shining table smokes 

 The frugal meal : while, time beguiling, 



The ale the harmless jest provokes : 

 Ye inmates of the lofty dome. 



Admire his lot — his children plaj-ing. 



To share his smiles around him flock ; 

 And faithful Traj', since morn, that straying, 

 Trudg'd with him, till the village clock 

 Proclaim'd the lab'rer's welcome home. 



" The cheering fagot burnt to embers. 

 While lares round their vigils keep. 

 That Pow'r that poor and rich remembers, 



Each thanks, and then retires to sleep : 

 And now the lark climbs heav'n's high dome. 

 Fresh from repose, toil's kind reliever ; 

 And furnish'd with his daily stock, — 

 His dog, his staff, his keg, his beaver, — 

 He travels, till the village clock 

 Sounds sweet the lab'rer's welcome home."] 



Blewman. — What is the origin of the word 

 blewman, attendants on a sheriff? W. C. 



[Blue, says Pliny, was the colour in which the Gauls 

 cloathed their slaves, and, for many ages, blue coats 

 were the liveries of servants and apprentices. Hence the 

 proverb in Ra}', « He's in his better blue clothes," ?. e. 

 he thinks himself wondrous fine. Nares says, that " a 

 blue coat, with a silver badge on the arms, was uni- 

 formly the livery of servants." In fact it was the ordi- 

 nary livery of javelin and serving-men in the sixteenth 

 and seventeenth centuries. 



"A velvet justice, with a long 

 Great train of blue-coats, twelve or fourteen strong.". . 



Donne's Satires. 

 A bine-coat is also the dress of a beadle. Doll Tear- 



sheet, in the Second Part of Henry IV., calls the beadle 

 " Blue-coat rogue;" and in Nabbes' Microcosmus, 1G37> 

 it is said, " The whips of furies are not half so terrible as 

 a blue-coat."Il 



Lady Capel. — Who was a Lady Capel, living 

 at Oxted in January, 1646, and an aunt of Loi'd- 

 Keeper Coventry's children ? She also lived at 

 Stubbers (?) in Essex. W. C. 



[Under an achievement fixed to the south wall of 

 Oxted Church is an inscription to Dorothy Lady Capell, 

 wife first to Sir Thomas Hoskins, of Oxted in Surrey, 

 knight ; afterwards the wife of Sir Henry Capell, of Had- 

 ham, in the county of Hertford, knight, died the 23rd 

 December, 1651, being of the age of sixty-six years and 

 six months. — Manning and Bray's Surrey, ii. 390.] 



" MOLLT MOG.' 



(2'"' S. viii. 84. 129. 145.) 

 The design of " N. & Q." being to_ assist, not to 

 supersede the literary researches of its readers, it 

 presupposes that the querist has first consulted 

 the ordinary works of reference on any particular 

 subject, before recourse is had to its pages for 

 farther assistance. It is gratifying to find that 

 your correspondents, M. M. and M. M. 2., have 

 duly observed this distinctive characteristic of 

 your periodical, as their incidental notices of 

 works likely to afford information respecting the 

 authorship of " pretty Molly Mog" fully attest. 



The publication of this popular song preceded 

 that of the Travels of Lemuel Gulliver by two 

 months. It was first printed in Mist's Weekly 

 Journal, No. 70., August 27, 1726, and prefaced 

 with the following editorial note : — 



" In our last we presented our readers with a short 

 poem upon Molly Mog : as few have seen that which oc- 

 casioned it, it having never been printed, we shall give it 

 the public now, which will make the other better under- 

 stood. We shall only observe, it was writ by two or 

 three men of wit (who have diverted the publick both in 

 prose and verse) upon the occasion of their lying at a 

 certain inn at Ockinghara, where the daughter of the 

 house was remarkably pretty, and whose name is Molly 

 Mog." 



In April of this year, 1726, Swift paid a visit to 

 England, and had brought with him the manu- 

 script of Gulliver's Travels. For four months, 

 that is, from April to August, he resided with 

 Pope at Twickenham, where he was occasionally 

 favoured with the society of Gay, Arbuthnot, and 

 Bolingbroke. Pope had quitted Binfield ten years ; 

 and we can only account for the convivial meet- 

 ing at the Rose Inn at Oakingham, by supposing 

 that, in company with Swift and (jay. Pope paid 

 a flying visit to the scenes of his youthful days- 

 Mist assures us that the song "was writ by two 

 or three men of wit;" and this accounts for its 

 having been severally attributed to Pope, Swift, 



