• Tell your beads, (quoth the priest) and be fairly truss'd up; For you surely to-night shall in Paradise sup.' Derry down, &c. 'Alas! (quoth the squire) howe'er sumptuous the treat, 'Parbleu! I shall have little stomach to eat : 'I should therefore esteem it great favour and grace, 'Would you be so kind as to go in my place.' Derry down, &c. That I would, (quoth the father) and thank you to boot; 'But our actions, you know, with our duty must suit : The feast I propos'd to you, I cannot taste; For this night, by our order, is mark'd for a fast.' Then, turning about to the hangman, he said, ' And we live by the gold for which other men die." SONG LXII. IN Tyburn-road a man there liv'd And there he might have lived still, But she, to vicious ways inclin'd, She oft defil'd his bed. Full twice a day to church he went, This vex'd his wife unto the heart; But then her heart 'gan to relent, All in the dark and dead of night His marrowbones she laid. His head, at Westminster, she threw Says she, my dear, the wind sets fair, But Heav'n, whose pow'r no limit knows, On earth, or in the main ; Soon caus'd this head for to be thrown Upon the land again. This head being found, the justices And all agreed, there must have been But, since no body could be found, High mounted on a shelf A witness for itself. Next, that it no self-murder was, For no man could cut off his head, Ere many days had gone and pass'd, God prosper long our noble king, * She was burned alive for this murder, 9th May, 1726. The ballad will scarcely be thought void of merit: but it is to be hoped that its author is the only one who ever attempted to be witty on so shocking a subject. Tune-' Come and listen to my ditty.' As near Porto-Bello lying On the gently-swelling flood, On a sudden, shrilly sounding, Hideous yells and shrieks were heard; * These elegant stanzas were written (chiefly, perhaps, with a design to incense the public against the mal-administration of Sir Robert Walpole) on the taking of Porto-Bello from the Spaniards, by admiral Vernon, in 1739. The circumstances attending the death of admiral Hosier, which happened in those parts, 1726, are recorded in history nearly in the same manner as they are repre. sented in the song. On them gleam'd the moon's wan lustre, His pale bands was seen to muster, ▾ Heed, oh! heed our fatal story; 'You now triumph, free from fears, Whose wan cheeks are stain'd with weeping; 'These were English captains brave : 'Mark those numbers, pale and horrid, 'I, by twenty sail attended, Did this Spanish town affright, 'Nothing then its wealth defended, 'But my orders, not to fight: 'Oh! that in this rolling ocean I had cast them with disdain, VOL. II. |