London drollery, or, The wits academy being a select collection of the newest songs, lampoons, and airs alamode : with several other most ingenious peices [sic] of railery, never before published / by W.H.

On a Parsimonious Sheriff of Oxford.

FIe, Schollars, fie; have you such thirsty Souls, To swig, quaff, & carouse 'ith' Sheriffs Bowls? Tell me, mad Youngsters, what do you believe? D'ye think it cost him nothing to be Shrieve? To send so many Beefes, so many Weathers, Maintain so many Hats, so many Feathers? Again, is Malt so cheap this pinching year, That you should make such havock of his Beer? I hear you are so many, that you make Most of his Men turn Tapsters for your sake: And yet, when he even at the Bench doth sit, You tear his Meat from off the borrow'd Spit, And keep such hurly-burly as it passes, In gurgitating sometimes whole half Glasses.

And some of you forsooth are grown so fine, Or else so sawcy, as to call for Wine. As if the Sheriff had put men in trust, Which durst draw out more Wine than needs they must. In faith, in faith, it is not well, my Masters, Nor fit that you should be the Sheriffs Tasters. It were enough, you are such Gormandizers, To make the Sheriffs henceforth all turn Misers: Or to remove the Assize to th' Towns Disgrace, To Banbury, Henly, or else some such place, He never had complain'd, had it but been A pretty Firkin, or a Kilderkin: But when a Barrel daily is drunk out! My Masters then 'tis time to look about. Is this a lye d'ye think? I tell you no: My Lord High Chancellour was informed so: And O what would not all the Bread in Town Suffice to drive the Sheriffs Liquor down, But he in Hampers must from home it bring? O most prodigious, O most monstrous thing! Upon so many Loaves of Home-made Bread, How long might he and his ten men have fed? Which he, no doubt, intended to have fed With the sweet Morsels of his broken Bread. But when that they, poor Souls, for Bread did call, Answer was made, The Schollars eat up all: And when of broken Beer he crav'd a Cup, Answer was made, The Schollars drank it up.

And this I know not how they chang'd the Name, Cut did the Deed, and Longtail bears the blame.