John Keats

Dawlish Fair

Over the hill and over the dale, And over the bourn to Dawlish-- Where gingerbread wives have a scanty sale And gingerbread nuts are smallish. ------------- Rantipole Betty she ran down a hill And kicked up her petticoats fairly; Says I I'll be Jack if you will be Gill-- So she sat on the grass debonairly. Here's somebody coming, here's somebody coming! Says I 'tis the wind at a parley; So without any fuss any hawing and humming She lay on the grass debonairly. Here's somebody here and here's somebody there! Says I hold your tongue you young Gipsey; So she held her tongue and lay plump and fair And dead as a Venus tipsy. O who wouldn't hie to Dawlish fair, O who wouldn't stop in a Meadow, O who would not rumple the daisies there And make the wild fern for a bed do! 'This scrap occurs in a letter to James Rice, written from Teignmouth on the 25th of March, 1818, and published by Lord Houghton in the first volume of the Life, Letters &c. (1848). Keats closes his letter with, "I went yesterday to Dawlish fair," and this quatrain. The hilly walk to Dawlish is recorded with topographical accuracy. Whether the rest is observation (as is more probable) mere rhyme, I cannot say. ' ~ Poetical Works of John Keats, ed. H. Buxton Forman, Crowell publ. 1895.