A Mort’s Drinking Song

A Mort’s Drinking Song
1641

From A Jovial Crew, by RICHARD BROME: Enter Patrico with his old wife with a wooden bowle of drink. She is drunk. She sings:—.

I

This is bien bowse, this is bien bowse, 1 strong ale
  Too little is my Skew. 2 cup or platter
I bowse no lage, but a whole gage 3 water; pot
  Of this I’ll bowse to you.

II

This bowse is better than rom-bowse, 4 wine
  It sets the gan a-gigling, 5 mouth
The autum-mort finds better sport 6 wife
  In bowsing than in nigling. 7 fornicating
    This is bien bowse, etc.

[She tosses off her bowle, falls back and is carried out.]

Notes

See Note to “The Merry Beggars,” ante.

Taken from Musa Pedestris, Three Centuries of Canting Songs and Slang Rhymes [1536―1896], collected and annotated by John S. Farmer.

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Nearby

1811 Dictionary of UK Slang, originally by Captain Francis Grose
1736 Dictionary of Thieving Slang by Nathan Bailey