Notes 



" wood-note wild " of Shakespeare's songs. Whose it actually was remains still 

 undecided. 



The Milkmaid's Mother's Answer is generally atributed to Raleigh, but 

 some attribute it, with the imitation, to Shakespeare. Probably Walton himself 

 wrote the sixth verse. 



Page 87. Bleak Hall. Nicolas says : " A fishing house on the banks of the 

 Lea, about one mile from Edmonton, was called Bleak Hall, and is presumed to be 

 the place alluded to." 



This house still stands, and is shown on p. 37 ; later it seems to have borne the 

 name of Cook's Ferry. It is no longer an inn, and the name has been transferred 

 to a more pretentious building a little lower down the stream. 



Page 88. verjuice .... red con's milk. Verjuice is the acid of the crab- 

 apple, wild grapes, or other fruits, with which the good woman hoped, when the 

 season of them, * two months hence,' was come, to prepare her syllabub. B. 



In regard to "red cow's milk," Dr. Bethune quotes the following : "If asses' 

 milk cannot be conveniently obtained for the lung consumption, nor women's 

 milk for the liver consumption, use the milk of a meetly reddish cow, feeding in fine 

 leaze (wherein store of cowslaps, trifoil, cingfoil, elacampana, burnet, fillipendula, 

 meadtansy, horse-tail, plantain, lamb's tongue, scabiouse and lungwort groweth) ; 

 or on the sweetest hay ; but beware (as commonly fools do not) that you feed 

 them not with new, and much less with soure grains ; for it maketh their milk 

 strong, windy and unwholesome, especially for such as be weak or much consumed ; 

 likewise remember to rub and stroke down your cow every morning, and her milk 

 will be both sweeter and more nourishing." Health's Improvement, or Rules 

 Emprizing and Discovering the Nature, {Method, and {Manner of Preparing all Sorts 

 of Food used in this Nation. Written by that ever famous Thomas ZMuffet, Doctor 

 in Physick; Corrected and enlarged by Christopher TSennet, Doctor in Physick, ana 

 Fellow of the College of Physicians in London. London, 1655, p. 127. 



Page SS.fTas it "Come shepherds," etc.A& at Noon," "Chevy Chase," 

 " Johnny Armstrong," and " Troy Town," will be found in Percy's Reliques. 



" Phillida flouts me " and " Come shepherds " are at the present day among 

 the most popular of the old ballad revivals. The latter was first printed in Sir 

 Harris Nicolas's Appendix. 



Page 90. ^Maudlin. Diminutive for Matilda. B. 



Page 92. Sir Thomas Overbuys " {Milkmaid 1 s Wish" Sir Thomas Overbury 

 (15811613) is best known by his tragic death, having been imprisoned and 

 poisoned in the Tower, at the instigation of his sometime friend, the Earl of 

 Somerset, whom he had dissuaded from marrying the divorced Countess of Essex. 

 His poem entitled "The Wife" and his "Characters" were popular in their day. 



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