/ · John S. Farmer’s Canting Songs and Slang Rhymes
Come All You Buffers Gay
Come All You Buffers Gay
1760
From The Humourist .... a choice collection o£ songs. ’A New Flash Song’, p. 2.
I
Come all you buffers gay,
1 rogue or horse-thief
That rumly do pad the city,
2 prowl about
Come listen to what I do say,
And it will make you wond’rous wity.
II
The praps are at Drury Lane,
And at Covent Garden also,
Therefore I tell you plain,
It will not be safe for to go.
III
But if after a rum cull you pad
3 well-dressed victim; walk
Pray follow him brave and bold;
For many a buffer has been grab’d,
For fear, as I’ve been told.
IV
Let your pal that follows behind,
Tip your bulk pretty soon;
And to slap his whip in time,
4 give signal to confederate
For fear the cull should be down.
5 Notes
V
For if the cull should be down.
And catch you a fileing his bag,
6 robbing
Then at the Old Bailey you’re found,
And d—m you, he’ll tip you the lag.
7 get you transported
VI
But if you should slape his staunch wipe
8 steal; handkerchief
Then away to the fence you may go,
9 receiver of stolen property
From thence to the ken of one T—
10 house
Where you in full bumpers may flow.
VII
But now I have finish’d my rhime,
And of you all must take my leave;
I would have you to leave off in time,
Or they will make your poor hearts to bleed.
Notes
In the Roxburghe Collection (ii. 504) is a ballad upon which the
present song is clearly based. It is called The West Country Nymph,
or the little maid of Bristol to the time of Young Jemmy
(i.e. the Duke of Monmouth, Charles II’s natural son). The
first stanza runs—
Come all you maidens fair,
And listen to my ditty,
In Bristol city fair
There liv’d a damsel pretty.
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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