Dr. Brown enters :-

Here come I, old Dr. Brown, the foremost doctor in

the town.

Wallace :

What makes you so good, sir?

Doctor

Why, my travels.

Wallace :

And where have you travelled?

Doctor :

From Hickerty-pickerty-hedgehog, three times round the West Indies, and back to old Scotland.

Wallace :

Is that all?

Doctor :

No sir. I have travelled from fireside to chairside, from chairside to stoolside, from stoolside to tableside, from tableside to bedside, from bedside to press-side, and got many a lump of bread and butter from my mother; and that's the way my belly's so big.

Wallace :

Well, what can you cure?

Doctor :

I can cure the rurvy-scurvy, and the rumble-gumption of a man who has been seven years dead or more, and can make an old woman of sixty look like a girl of sixteen.

Wallace :

How much would you take to cure this dead man? Would five pounds do?

Doctor (turning away) :

Five pounds! No, five pounds would not get a good kit of brose.

Yes, perhaps ten pounds would do that, and a pint of wine. I have a bottle of inky-pinkie in my pocket. (Approaches Goloshan.) By the hocuspocus and the magical touch of my little finger; heigh ho! start up, Jack, and sing!

Goloshan (rises and sings):-

Oh, once I was dead, sir, but now I am alive,
And blessed be the doctor that made me revive;
We'll all join hands, and never fight no more,
We'll all be good fellows, as we have been before.

All four

We'll all shake hands and agree, and never fight no

more,

We'll all be like brothers, as we were once before;

God bless the master of this house, the mistress fair likewise,

And all the pretty children that round the table rise. Go down into your cellar and see what you can find, Your barrels being not empty, we hope you will prove kind;

We hope you will prove kind, with whisky and with
beer,

We wish you a Merry Christmas, likewise a good New
Year.

Enter Beelzebub (for the collection) :-

Here come I, Old Beelzebub, over my shoulder I carry a club,

And in my hand a frying-pan. Am not I a jolly old

It's

If

man?

money

I want, and money I crave,

ye don't give me money I'll sweep ye to your grave.

Old Beelzebub's appeal not being resisted (for who might dare to resist such?), the picturesque players retire, and proceed from thence merrily to occupy another stage.

Mr. Sandys, it may be noted, in his elegant volume of Christmas Carols (1833), transcribes a play called “St. George," which still is, or used to be, acted at the New Year in Cornwall, exactly after the manner of our Scottish play of " Goloshan," which it resembles as much as various versions of "Goloshan" in Scotland resemble each other. The leading characters, besides St. George himself and the Dragon, which is twice killed, are a Turkish knight and the King of Egypt. It is curious thus, as Dr. Chambers remarks, to find one play, with unimportant variations, preserved traditionally by the common people in parts of the island so distant from each other, and in many respects so different.

It is curious further, and of much interest to note, that in these singing-games, if nowhere else, the

2841881

country and the city child, the children of the mansion and the children of the alley, meet all, beautifully, on common ground. And, how the out-door ones lie dormant for spaces, and spring simultaneously into action in widely separated parts-town and country alike—is a problem which may not be easily solved. It seems to us that, like the songs of birds, they certain seasons, and are suggested, each in its turn, or class by class, by the feeling in the air. But mark,

belong to

I say only seems, for who may dogmatize on such

matters!

CHILDREN'S

SONGS AND BALLADS.

NOT the more exalted songs of child life here not "Willie Winkie," and "Cuddle Doon," and "Castles in the Air," and all that widely esteemed band, which, collectively, would themselves tax the limits of a large volume—but some of the ruder ditties only which the children for many generations have delighted to sing, and been no less charmed by hearing sung, and which of late have not been so frequently seen in print. These rude old favourites, too, with slight comment

little being required. And of such, surely "Cock Robin may well be awarded the place of honour—a song which, together with the more elaborate tale of "The Babes in the Wood," has done more to make its pert and dapper red-waistcoated subject the general favourite he is with old and young, than any virtue that may be claimed for the little tyrant himself.