f proof by
the credulous vulgar against the Robin Goodfellows, urchins, elves,
hags, and fairies of earlier superstition. I regret that I cannot
throw more light upon it. The concluding lines are not deficient in
poetical spirit.

K _b_ 2. "_Ligh in leath wand._"] Leath is no doubt lithe, flexible.
What "ligh in" is intended for, unless it be lykinge, which the
_Promptorium Parvulorum_ (_vide_ part i. p. 304) explains by lusty, or
craske, _Delicativus_, crassus, I am unable to conjecture. It is
clear, that the wand in one hand is to steck, _i.e._ stake, or fasten,
the latch of hell door, while the key in his other hand is to open
heaven's lock.

K _b_ 3. "_Let Crizum child goe to it Mother mild._"] The chrisom,
according to the usual explanation, was a white cloth placed upon the
head of an infant at baptism, when the chrism, or sacred oil of the
Romish Church, was used in that sacrament. If the child died within a
month of its birth, that cloth was used as a shroud; and children so
dying were called chrisoms in the old bills of mortality.

K _b_ 4. "_A light so farrandly._"] Farrandly, or farrantly, a word
still in use in Lancashire, and which is equivalent to fair, likely,
or handsome. (See _Lancashire Dialect and Glossary_.) "Harne panne,"
_i.e._, cranium.--_Promptorium Parvulorum_, p. 237.

K 2 _a_ 1. "_Vpon the ground of holy weepe._"] I know not how to
explain this, unless it mean the ground of holy weeping, _i.e._, the
Garden of Gethsemane.

K 2 _a_ 2. "_Shall neuer deere thee._"] The word to dere, or hurt,
says Mr. Way, _Promptorium Parvulorum_, p. 119, is commonly used by
Chaucer and most other writers until the sixteenth century:

"Fyr he schal hym nevyr dere."
_Coeur de Lion_, 1638.

Fabyan observes, under the year 1194, "So fast besyed this good Kyng
Richarde to vex and dere the infydelys of Sury." Palsgrave gives, "To
dere or hurte a noye nuire, I wyll never dere you by my good wyll."
Ang. Sax., [Anglo-Saxon: derian] _nocere_, [Anglo-Saxon: derung]
_laesio_.

K 3 _a_. "_The Witches of Salmesbvry._"] Or, more properly,
Samlesbury. This wicked attempt on the part of this priest, or Jesuit,
Thompson, _alias_ Southworth, to murder the three persons whose trial
is next reported, by suborning a child of the family to accuse them of
what, in the excited state of the public mind at the time, was almost
certain to consign them to a public execution, has few parallels in
the annal