The Lawyer outwitted

This text tells an amusing story similar to the “Taylor’s Garland” in that a clever ruse eventually causes parents to approve a match. To gain the hand of a lawyer’s daughter, the young lover asks her father for his professional advice on how to win a bride whose father opposes the match. He is advised to have the girl provide a horse and “steal” him away and promises to back his words in court. The lovers follow the advice and it works. The lawyer admits he has been outwitted and gives his blessing to the young couple. The Thomas version omits the repeat of the last half of the next-to-last line of each verse that is needed to fill out the music.

A tune entitled “I Love You (Thee) More and More” was used for several seventeenth-century ballads, one being “The Crafty Lover; or, The Lawyer Outwitted.” It remained in memory beyond the middle of the eighteenth century and might have been intended for this text (Simpson 341-43; Lawyer Outwitted; Laws N26; Roud #188). The tune may be much older than the text as its title can be found in Shakespeare’s Cymbeline (5.5.109).