/ · John S. Farmer’s Canting Songs and Slang Rhymes
The Happy Pair
The Happy Pair
1789
By GEORGE PARKER in Life’s Painter of Variegated Characters.
Joe.
Ye slang-boys all, since wedlock’s nooze,
Together fast has tied
Moll Blabbermums and rowling Joe,
Each other’s joy and pride;
Your broomsticks and tin kettles bring,
With cannisters and stones:
Ye butchers bring your cleavers too,
Likewise your marrow-bones;
For ne’er a brace in marriage hitch’d,
By no one can be found,
That’s half so blest as Joe and Moll,
Search all St. Giles’s round.
Moll.
Though fancy queer-gamm’d smutty Muns
Was once my fav’rite man,
Though rugged-muzzle tink’ring Tom
For me left maw-mouth’d Nan:
Though padding Jack and diving Ned,
1 tramping; pick-pocket
With blink-ey’d buzzing Sam,
2 pickpocket
Have made me drunk with hot, and stood
3 paid for
The racket for a dram;
Though Scamp the ballad-singing kid,
Call’d me his darling frow,
4 woman, girl
I’ve tip’d them all the double, for
5 jilted
The sake of rowling Joe.
Chorus.
Therefore, in jolly chorus now,
Let’s chaunt it altogether,
And let each cull’s and doxy’s heart
6 man; woman
Be lighter than a feather;
And as the kelter runs quite flush,
7 money
Like
natty shining
kiddies,
To treat the coaxing, giggling brims,
8 whores
With spunk let’s post our
neddies;
9 spirit; spend our guineas
Then we’ll all roll in
bub and
grub,
10 drink; food
Till from this ken we go,
11 drinking-house
Since rowling Joe’s tuck’d up with Moll,
And Moll’s tuck’d up with Joe.
Notes
See note (ante) to “The Sandman’s Wedding”. Life’s Painter
etc. ran through several editions.
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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