Anonymous British

Health to the Farmer!

Here's a health unto our miaster The founder of the feast, And I hope to God wi' all my heart His soul in heaven mid rest; That every thing mid prosper That ever he tiak in hand, Vor we be all his sarvants, And all at his command. Found in the customs of Dorset, for Harvest Home. Quoted from Hone's Year Book, 1838, '. . . This plain English fare was eaten from wooden trenchers, by the side of which were put little cups of horn filled with beer or cider. When the cloth was removed, one of the men, putting forth his large hand like the gauntlet of an armed knight, would grasp the horn of beer, and standing on a pair of legs which had long out-grown the largest holes of the village stocks, and with a voice which, if he had not been speaking a dialect of the English language, you might have thought came from the deep-seated lungs of a lion, he would propose the health of the farmer in the following lines: -- [above quoted] . . . . After this would follow a course of jokes, anecdotes, and songs, in some of which the whole company joined, without attention to the technicalities of counterpoint. . . '