There was 'Chevy Chase, and 'King John
and his Barons,' and 'Merry Sherwood,' all of them exquisite chants;
conveying information to the mind, and relating some grand historical
fact, while they charmed the ear. But ~262~~your modern kickshaws are
all about 'No, my love, no,' or 'Sigh no more, lady,' or some such silly
stuff that nobody cares to learn the words of, or can understand if they
did. I remember composing a ballad in this town myself, some few
years since, on a very strange adventure that happened to one of our
commercial brethren. He had bought an old hunter at Bristol to finish
his journey homeward with, on account of his former horse proving lame,
and just as he was entering Cheltenham by the turnpike-gate at the end
of the town, the whole of the Berkeley Hunt were turning out for a day's
run, and having found, shot across the road in full cry. Away went the
dogs, and away went the huntsmen, and plague of any other way would
the old hunter go: so, despite of the two hundred weight of perfumery
samples contained in his saddle-bags, away went Delcroix's deputy over
hedge and ditch, and straight forward for a steeple chase up the Cleigh
Hills; but in coming down rather briskly, the courage of the old horse
gave way, and down he came as groggy before as a Chelsea pensioner,
smashing all the appendages of trade, and spilling their contents upon
the ground, besides raising such an odoriferous effluvia on the field,
that every one present smelt the joke.
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