"That piece of song,
That old and antique song we heard last night."
--'Twelfth Night,' II. iv.
This old song was lately taken down from the lips of an old Suffolk (Monk
Soham) labourer, who has known it and sung it since he was a boy. The
song is of much repute in the parish where he lives, and may possibly be
already in print. At all events it is a genuine "old and antique" song,
whose hero may have been one of the sea captains or rovers who continued
their privateering in the Spanish Main and elsewhere, and upon all
comers, long after all licence from the Crown had ceased. The Rainbow
was the name of one of the ships which formed the English fleet when they
defeated the Spanish Armada in 1588, and she was re-commissioned,
apparently about 1618. The two verses in brackets are from the version
of another labourer in my parish, who also furnished some minor _variae
lectiones_, as "robber" for "rover," "Blake" for "Wake," &c.