/ · John S. Farmer’s Canting Songs and Slang Rhymes
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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