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[Pg 69]

And he sank high and he sank low Until he came to the side. 'Take hold of my hand, my pretty ladye, And I will make you my bride.' 'Lie there, lie there, you false-hearted man, Lie there instead of me, For six pretty maids hast thou drowned here And the seventh hath drowned thee.' So then she mounted the milk-white steed And led the dapple grey, And she rode till she came to her own father's door, An hour before it was day.

As this last song was piped out in the aged voice, women at their cottage doors on summer evenings would say: 'They'll soon be out now. Poor old Dave's just singing his "Outlandish Knight".'

Songs and singers all have gone, and in their places the wireless blares out variety and swing music, or informs the company in cultured tones of what is happening in China or Spain. Children no longer listen outside. There are very few who could listen, for the thirty or forty which throve there in those days have dwindled to about half a dozen, and these, happily, have books, wireless, and a good fire in their own homes. But, to one of an older generation, it seems that a faint echo of those songs must still linger round the inn doorway. The singers were rude and untaught and poor beyond modern imagining; but they deserve to be remembered, for they knew the now lost secret of being happy on little.