Under the greenwood tree."
"By my hand, friend Woodcock," said the page, "though I know you for a
hardy gospeller, that fear neither saint nor devil, yet, if I were
you, I would not sing your profane songs in this valley of Glendearg,
considering what has happened here before our time."
"A straw for your wandering spirits!" said Adam Woodcock; "I mind them
no more than an earn cares for a string of wild-geese--they have all
fled since the pulpits were filled with honest men, and the people's
ears with sound doctrine. Nay, I have a touch at them in my ballad, an
I had but had the good luck to have it sung to end;" and again he set
off in the same key:
From haunted spring and grassy ring,
Troop goblin, elf, and fairy;
And the kelpie must flit from the black bog-pit,
And the brownie must not tarry;
To Limbo-lake,
Their way they take,
With scarce the pith to flee.
Sing hay trix, trim-go-trix,
Under the greenwood tree.
"I think," he added, "that could Sir Halbert's patience have stretched
till we came that length, he would have had a hearty laugh, and that
is what he seldom enjoys."
"If it be all true that men tell of his early life," said Roland, "he
has less right to laugh at goblins than most men."
"Ay, _if_ it be all true," answered Adam Woodcock; "but who can
ensure us of that? Moreover, these were but tales the monks used to
gull us simple laymen withal; they knew that fairies and hobgoblins
brought aves and paternosters into repute; but, now we have given up
worship of images in wood and stone, methinks it were no time to be
afraid of bubbles in the water, or shadows in the air.
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