to life’s largest question: Who Am I—period—with

[MR. BIRKBECK, of Threapland House, Lintondale, in Craven, has favoured us with the following fragment. The tune is well known in the North, but all attempts on the part of Mr. Birkbeck to obtain the remaining verses have been unsuccessful. The song is evidently of the date of the first rebellion, 1715.]

LONG Preston Peg to proud Preston went, To see the Scotch rebels it was her intent. A noble Scotch lord, as he passed by, On this Yorkshire damsel did soon cast an eye.

He called to his servant, which on him did wait, 'Go down to yon girl who stands in the gate, (69) That sings with a voice so soft and so sweet, And in my name do her lovingly greet.'

Ballad: THE SWEET NIGHTINGALE; OR, DOWN IN THOSE VALLEYS BELOW. AN ANCIENT CORNISH SONG.

[THIS curious ditty, which may be confidently assigned to the seventeenth century, is said to be a translation from the ancient Cornish tongue. We first heard it in Germany, in the pleasure- gardens of the Marienberg, on the Moselle. The singers were four Cornish miners, who were at that time, 1854, employed at some lead mines near the town of Zell. The leader or 'Captain,' John Stocker, said that the song was an established favourite with the lead miners of Cornwall and Devonshire, and was always sung on the pay-days, and at the wakes; and that his grandfather, who died thirty years before, at the age of a hundred years, used to sing the song, and say that it was very old. Stocker promised to make a copy of it, but there was no opportunity of procuring it before we left Germany. The following version has been supplied by a gentleman in Plymouth, who writes:-

I have had a great deal of trouble about THE VALLEY BELOW. It is not in print. I first met with one person who knew one part, then with another person who knew another part, but nobody could sing the whole. At last, chance directed me to an old man at work on the roads, and he sung and recited it throughout, not exactly, however, as I send it, for I was obliged to supply a little here and there, but only where a bad rhyme, or rather none at all, made it evident what the real rhyme was. I have read it over to a mining gentleman at Truro, and he says 'It is pretty near the way we sing it.'

The tune is plaintive and original.]

'MY sweetheart, come along! Don't you hear the fond song, The sweet notes of the nightingale flow? Don't you hear the fond tale Of the sweet nightingale, As she sings in those valleys below? So be not afraid To walk in the shade, Nor yet in those valleys below, Nor yet in those valleys below.