hether Jesus passed by.

25.
'Why, the truth it must be spoke,
And the truth it must be known;
For Jesus passed by this way
When my seed was sown.

26.
'But now I have it reapen,
And some laid on my wain,
Ready to fetch and carry
Into my barn again.'

27.
'Turn back,' said the captain,
'Your labour and mine's in vain;
It's full three quarters of a year
Since he his seed hath sown.'

28.
So Herod was deceived,
By the work of God's own hand,
And further he proceeded
Into the Holy Land.

29.
There's thousands of children young
Which for his sake did die;
Do not forbid those little ones,
And do not them deny.

30.
The truth now I have spoken,
And the truth now I have shown;
Even the Blessed Virgin
She's now brought forth a son.

[Annotations:
1.2: 'reign' = renne, the old form of run.
1.4: 'Carnal,' jackdaw (? der. _cornicula_, _corneille_).
10.4: 'fences,' times.
21.4: _i.e._ though all (mankind) be undeserving.]

DIVES AND LAZARUS

+The Text+ is given from Joshua Sylvester's _A Garland of Christmas
Carols_, where it is printed from an old Birmingham broadside.

+The Story+ is one which naturally attracted the attention of the
popular ballad-maker, and parallel ballads exist in fairly wide European
distribution.

Like the _Carnal and the Crane_, the form in which this ballad is now
known is no witness of its antiquity. A 'ballet of the Ryche man and
poor Lazarus' was licensed to be printed in 1558; 'a ballett, Dyves and
Lazarus,' in 1570-1.

In Fletcher's _Monsieur Thomas_ (1639), a fiddler says he can sing the
merry ballad of _Diverus and Lazarus_. A correspondent in _Notes and
Queries_ (ser. IV. iii. 76) says he had heard only Diverus, never Dives,
and contributes from memory a version as sung by carol-singers at
Christmas in Worcestershire, in which the parallelism of the stanzas is
pushed so far that, in the lines corresponding to 13.3 and 13.4 in the
present version, we have the delightfully popular idea--

'There is a place prepared in hell,
For to sit upon a serpent's knee.'

Husk (_Songs of the Nativity_) also gives this version, from an
eighteenth-century Worcestershire broadside. I have no doubt but that
this feature is traditional from the unknown sixteenth-century ballad.

DIVES AND LAZARUS

1.
As it fell out upon a day,
Rich Dives he made a