[It appears that our early ballad writers do not give a very favourable
account of the locality of Croydon. Listen to Patrick Hannay, Gent., in
1662:--
"It seems of starved Sterilitie the seat,
Where barren downs do it environ round;
Whose parched tops in summer are not wet,
And only are with snow in winter crown'd,
Only with bareness they do still abound;
Or if on some of them we roughness find,
It's tawny heath, badge of the barren rinde.
"In midst of these stands CROYDON cloath'd in black,
In a low bottom sink of all these hills;
And is receipt of all the dirty wracke,
Which from their tops still in abundance trills,
The unpav'd lanes with muddy mire it fills
If one shower fall; or, if that blessing stay,
You may well smell, but never see your way."]
"_Gesmas et Desmas._"--What is the meaning of two terms, _Gesmas_ and
_Desmas_, in the following couplet, which I transcribe from MS. entries in
an old and rare volume lately bought, of date 1564, and the handwriting
would seem coeval with the printing of the book? The lines evidently relate
to the crucifixion of our Lord between the thieves; but I have never seen
any appellations given to these last, and cannot fix a meaning for the
terms with any certainty: they may have reference to the penitence of one,
and the hardened state of the other still "tied and bound in the chain of
his sins," but I know not to what language to refer them:
"Disparibus meritis pendit tria Corpora lignis
_Gesmas_ et _Desmas_, medius Divina Potestas."