The wenches with their wassail bowls
About the streets are singing;
The boys are come to catch the owls,
The wild mare in is bringing.
Our kitchen-boy hath broke his box,[74]
And to the dealing of the ox
Our honest neighbours come by flocks,
And here they will be merry.

Now kings and queens poor sheep cotes have,
And mate with everybody;
The honest now may play the knave,
And wise men play the noddy.
Some youths will now a mumming go,
Some others play at Rowland-ho
And twenty other gambols mo,
Because they will be merry.

Then wherefore in these merry days
Should we, I pray, be duller?
No, let us sing some roundelays,
To make our mirth the fuller.
And, whilst thus inspired we sing,
Let all the streets with echoes ring,
Woods and hills, and everything,
Bear witness we are merry.

The preceding poem was evidently written by Wither before the Civil
War troubles of the reign of Charles the First had interfered to damp
the national hilarity, or check the rejoicings at the festive season
of Christmas.

THE DEFEAT OF THE ROYALISTS,

the overthrow of the monarchy, and the changes resulting therefrom at
Christmastide are alluded to in "The Complaint of Christmas, written
after Twelftide, and printed before Candlemas, 1646," by old John
Taylor, the Water Poet, who says: "All the liberty and harmless
sports, the merry gambols, dances and friscols, with which the toiling
ploughman and labourer once a year were wont to be recreated, and
their spirits and hopes revived for a whole twelvemonth, are now
extinct and put out of use, in such a fashion as if they never had
been. Thus are the merry lords of bad rule at Westminster; nay, more,
their madness hath extended itself to the very vegetables; senseless
trees, herbs, and weeds, are in a profane estimation amongst
them--holly, ivy, mistletoe, rosemary, bays, are accounted ungodly
branches of superstition for your entertainment. And to roast a
sirloin of beef, to touch a collar of brawn, to take a pie, to put a
plum in the pottage pot, to burn a great candle, or to lay one block
the more in the fire for your sake, Master Christmas, is enough to
make a man to be suspected and taken for a Christian, for which he
shall be apprehended for committing high Parliament Treason and mighty
malignancy against the general Council of the Directorian private
Presbyterian Conventicle."

With the success of the Par