Digital Victorian Periodical Poetry

[Note.— “ It is evidently to this tune that Shakespeare alludes in the play of Henry the Fifth, Act iv., Scene 4, where
Pistol on meeting a French soldier exclaims, ‘ Quality ! Calen o custure me.’ In the folio we find ‘ Calline custure me,’
which has been turned, in the modern editions, into ‘ Call you me ?  Construe me.’ Malone found among ‘ Sundry new
Sonets in a Handefull of Pleasant Delites,’ 1584, a sonnet of a lover in praise of his lady, to ‘ Galen o custure me,’—sung at
every line’s end. In Mr. Lover’s ‘ Lyrics of Ireland,’ he notices the resemblance of the first word to the name ‘ Caillino,’
speaking of Mrs. Fitzsimon’s beautiful poem, ‘ The Woods of Caillino;’ and adds, ‘ Mr. Boswell, in his edition of
Shakespeare, says that Mr. Finnegan, Master of the school established in London for the education of the Irish, says the
words mean, “ Little Girl of my heart, for ever and ever.”’ Now this is not the meaning, and I cannot but wonder that, with
so much literary discussion as has taken place on the subject, the true spelling, and consequently the meaning of the burden,
have remained till now undiscovered. The burden, as given in the ‘ Handefull of Pleasant Delites,’ and copied by Malone, is
‘ Calen o custure me,’ which is an attempt to spell, and pretty nearly represents the sound of ‘ Colleen oge astore,’ and these
words mean, ‘ Young Girl, my Treasure’.”—Stokes’s “ Life of Petrie,” page 431, quoted by Hoffmann in his “ Ancient Music
of Ireland.”] This air is taken from Queen Elizabeth’s “ Virginal Book.” It has already been published by Mr. W. Chappell,
in his work on “ Popular Music of the Olden Time,” and is reprinted in Hoffmann’s Collection by his permission.