Ban and Arrière Ban

A RALLY OF FUGITIVE RHYMES

BY ANDREW LANG

LONDON
LONGMANS, GREEN & CO.
AND NEW YORK: 15 EAST 16TH STREET
1894

[All rights reserved]

Edinburgh: T. and A. Constable, Printers to Her Majesty

TO
ELEANOR CHARLOTTE SELLAR

‘Ban and Arrière Ban!’ a host
   Broken, beaten, all unled,
They return as doth a ghost
   From the dead.

Sad or glad my rallied rhymes,
   Sought our dusty papers through,
For the sake of other times
   Come to you.

Times and places new we know,
   Faces fresh and seasons strange
But the friends of long ago
   Do not change.

Many of the verses in this collection have appeared in Magazines: ‘How they held the Bass’ was in ‘Blackwood’s Magazine’; the ‘Ballad of the Philanthropist’ in ‘Punch’; ‘Calais Sands’ in ‘The Magazine of Art’ (Messrs. Cassell and Co.); and others are recaptured from ‘Longman’s Magazine,’ ‘Scribner’s,’ ‘The Illustrated London News,’ ‘The English Illustrated Magazine,’ ‘Wit and Wisdom’ (lines from Omar Khayyam), ‘The St. James’s Gazette,’ and possibly other serials.  Some pieces are from commendatory verses for books, as for Mr. Jacobs’s ‘Æsop’; some are from Mr. Rider Haggard’s ‘World’s Desire,’ and ‘Cleopatra,’ two are from Kirk’s ‘Secret Commonwealth’ (Nutt, 1893), and ‘Neiges d’Antan,’ are from the author’s ‘Ballads and Lyrics of Old France,’ now long out of print.

CONTENTS