It is hoped, too, that the
reader may find much that is interesting in the singing-games, verses and
the rhymes which throw light upon the vanishing customs, folklore, and
faiths of the county. They serve to lift the veil which hides the past
from the present, and to give us visions of a world which is fast passing
out of sight and out of memory. It is a world where one may still
faintly hear the horns of elfland blowing, and where Hob-trush Hob and
little Nanny Button-cap wander on printless feet through the star-lit
glades; where charms are still recited when the moon is new, and where on
St. Agnes' Eve the milkmaid lets the twelve sage-leaves fall from her
casement-window and, like Keats's Madeline, peers through "the honey'd
middle of the night "for a glimpse of the Porphyro to whom she must
pledge her troth.

1. Some years before Thoresby's letter was written, another
Yorkshireman, Francis Brokesby, rector of Rowley in the East
Riding, communicated with Ray about dialect words in use in
his district. See Ray's Collection of English Words, second
edition, pp. 170-73 (1691).

2. It has been republished by the late Professor Skeat in
the English Dialect Society's volume, Nine Specimens of
English Dialects.

3. Two editions of this ballad-opera were published in 1736.
The title of the first (? pirated) edition runs as follows:
A Wonder; or, An Honest Yorkshire-man. A Ballad Opera; As it
is Performed at the Theatres with Universal Applause. In the
second edition the words, "A Wonder," disappear from the
title.

4. Edited by J. O. Halliwell in his Yorkshire Anthology,
1851.

5. The first edition of Ben Preston's poems appeared in 1860
with the title, Poems and Songs in the Dialect of Bradford
Dale.

6. A. Holroyd: A Collection of Yorkshire Ballads, ed. by C.
F. Forshaw. (G. Bell, 1892.)

7. The reader will find a reprint of the West Riding version
of The Peace Egg, with an attempt by the editor of this
anthology to throw light upon its inner meaning, in the
second volume of Essays and Studies of the English
Association (Clarendon Press, 1911).

POEMS.

A Yorkshire Dialogue between an awd Wife a Lass and a butcher. (1673)

Anonymous

Printed at York as a broadside by Stephen Bulkley in 1673.
The original broadside is lost, but a manuscript transcript of it
was pur