Ballads and Songs

Whilst the greatest effort has been made to ensure the quality of this text, due to the historical nature of this content, in some rare cases there may be minor issues with legibility. In the following pages will be found many rustic songs. The Author is desirous that these should be judged as songs, originally written to be sung rather than to be read. Their style is homely, for their subjects are so. He has endeavoured to illustrate that singing element which still lingers in the northern district of his native county; and amply has he been rewarded for his labour of love. Written generally to simple melodies of his own, he has had the delight of hearing them sung, in many a cottage, by some of those village maidens whose charms he has endeavoured to celebrate. A Devonshire man, and proud of his birth in that beautiful county, he has found most of his subjects in the district where he resides. He has stood by the stone near which tradition states that Hubba fell; he has seen the window from which Kitty Lile of Clovelly held out her signal; he has talked to the old Stone-breaker at his work. Whether his poems deal with sorrow or joy, they have ever been written under the influence of sincere emotion. He has sought that no word of his should tend to foment class jealousies; and, whilst singing of the sorrows and the trials of the poor, he has never forgotten how many men there are who, prosperous themselves, sympathise with such sorrows as much as he.