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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Nearby

Overview
Forewords
. . .
The Canter’s Serenade
Retoure My Dear Dell
The Vain Dreamer
When My Dimber Dell I Courted
The Oath Of The Canting Crew
Come All You Buffers Gay
The Potato Man
A Slang Pastoral
Ye Scamps, Ye Pads, Ye Divers
The Sandman’s Wedding
The Happy Pair
The Bunter’s Christening
The Masqueraders
The Flash Man of St. Giles
A Leary Mot
The Night Before Larry was Stretched
The Song of the Young Prig
The Milling Match
Ya-Hip, My Hearties!
Sonnets For The Fancy: After The Manner Of Petrarch
The True Bottom’d Boxer
. . .
Appendix