"But if ever I strive merry story to tell,
Full of japeful and humorsome graces,
'T is as though I were tolling a funeral bell
As if dismally, dolefully tolling a knell,
So solemn and sad grow all faces.
"I hang, burn and torture the best that I may,
Ho pincers and thumbscrews and rack--oho!
And all heads I cut off in a headsmanlike way;
So I'll hang, burn and torment 'till cometh the day
That my kind heart within me shall crack--oho!
Well-a-wey! Well-a-wey!
Woe is me for the day
That my poor heart inside me shall crack! Oho!
"So there's my song! 'T is dull song and, striving to be merry song, is sad
song, yet might be worse song, for I have heard a worse song, ere now--but
't is poor song. So come, Fool, do thou sing us merry song to cheer us
'gainst my sad song."
"Why truly, Sir Headsman," said Jocelyn, "here be songs a-many, yet if thou
'rt for songs, songs will we sing thee, each and every of us. But first,
behold here is money shall buy us wine in plenty that we may grow merry
withal in very sooth.
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