Anne Jemima Yorker 7 64 Percy, Thomas O F ANCIENT ENGLISH POETRY: CONSISTING OF Old Heroic BALLADS, SONGS, and other (Chiefly of the LYRIC kind.) Together with fome few of later Date. VOLUME THE FIRST. DURAT OPUS VATUM LONDON: Printed for J. DODSLEY in Pall-Mall. ESPERANCE EN DIEU ΤΟ THE RIGHT HONOURABLE ELIZABETH COUNTESS OF NORTHUMBERLAND: IN HER OWN RIGHT BARONESS PERCY, LUCY,POYNINGS,FITZ-PAYNE, BRYAN, AND LATIMER, MADAM, HOSE writers, who folicit the protec writers, we THO tion of the noble and the great, are often expofed to cenfure by the impropriety of their addreffes is a remark that will perhaps fuch reception, as is usually shewn to poets and hiftorians, by those whose consciousness of merit makes it their intereft to be long remembered. I am, MADAM, Your LADYSHIP'S Moft Humble And most devoted Servant, THOMAS PERCY. (ix) The PREFACE. THE "HE Reader is here presented with select remains of our ancient English Bards and Minstrels, an order of men who were once greatly respected by our ancestors, and contributed to foften the roughness of a martial and unlettered people by their songs and by their music. The greater part of them are extracted from an ancient folio manufcript, in the Editor's poffeffion, which contains near 200 poems, fongs, and metrical romances. This MS. was written about the middle of the last century, but contains compofitions of all times and dates, from the ages prior to Chaucer, to the conclusion of the reign of Charles I. This manuscript was fhown to feveral learned and ingenious friends, who thought the contents too curious to be configned to oblivion, and importuned the poífeffor to select some of them, and give them to the prefs. As most of them are of great fimplicity, and feem to have been meerly written for the people, he was long in doubt, whether in the prefent flate of improved literature, they could be deemed worthy the attention of the public. At length the importunity of his friends prevailed, and he could refufe nothing to fuch judges as the author of the RAMBLER, and the late Mr. SHIN STONE. Accordingly fuch fpecimens of ancient poetry have been selected as either fhew the gradation of our language, exhibit the progress of popular cataloni, # play the peculiar manners and cufoms of former aga, or throw light on our earlier clafical poets. |