The Fairies Farewell

FAREWELL, rewards and fairies,  
 Good housewives now may say,  
For now foul sluts in dairies  
 Do fare as well as they.  
And though they sweep their hearths no less        
 Than maids were wont to do,  
Yet who of late for cleanness  
 Finds sixpence in her shoe?  
 
Lament, lament, old Abbeys,  
 The Fairies’ lost command!         
They did but change Priests’ babies,  
 But some have changed your land.  
And all your children, sprung from thence,  
 Are now grown Puritans,  
Who live as Changelings ever since        
 For love of your demains.  
 
At morning and at evening both  
 You merry were and glad,  
So little care of sleep or sloth  
 These pretty ladies had;        
When Tom came home from labour,  
 Or Cis to milking rose,  
Then merrily went their tabor,  
 And nimbly went their toes.  
 
Witness those rings and roundelays       
 Of theirs, which yet remain,  
Were footed in Queen Mary’s days  
 On many a grassy plain;  
But since of late, Elizabeth,  
 And later, James came in,        
They never danced on any heath  
 As when the time hath been.  
 
By which we note the Fairies  
 Were of the old Profession.  
Their songs were ‘Ave Mary’s’,        
 Their dances were Procession.  
But now, alas, they all are dead;  
 Or gone beyond the seas;  
Or farther for Religion fled;  
Or else they take their ease.        
 
A tell-tale in their company  
 They never could endure!  
And whoso kept not secretly  
 Their mirth, was punished, sure;  
It was a just and Christian deed        
 To pinch such black and blue.  
Oh how the commonwealth doth want  
 Such Justices as you!