/ · John S. Farmer’s Canting Songs and Slang Rhymes
The Thieves’ Chaunt
The Thieves’ Chaunt
1836
By W. H. SMITH in The Individual.
I
There is a nook in the boozing ken,
1 public house
Where many a mug I fog,
2 pipe; smoke
And the smoke curls gently, while cousin Ben
Keeps filling the pots again and again,
If the coves have stump’d their hog.
3 paid a shilling
II
The liquors around are diamond bright,
And the diddle is best of all;
4 gin
But I never in liquors took delight,
For liquors I think is all a bite,
5 humbug
So for heavy wet I call.
6 porter
III
The heavy wet in a pewter quart,
As brown as a badger’s hue,
More than Bristol milk or gin,
7 sherry
Brandy or rum, I tipple in,
With my darling blowen, Sue.
8 mistress
IV
Oh! grunting peck in its eating
9 pork
Is a richly soft and savoury thing;
A Norfolk capon is jolly grub
10 red-herring
When you wash it down with strength of bub:
11 lots of beer
But dearer to me Sue’s kisses far,
Than grunting peck or other grub are,
And I never funks the lambskin men,
12 judges
When I sits with her in the boozing ken.
V
Her duds are bob—she’s a kinchin crack,
13 clothes; neat; fine young woman
And I hopes as how she’ll never back;
For she never lushes dog’s-soup or lap,
14 drinks water or tea
But she loves my cousin the bluffer’s tap.
15 inn-keeper
She’s wide-awake, and her prating cheat, [16 ]
For humming a cove was never beat;
17 fooling a man
But because she lately nimm’d some tin,
18 stole; money
They have sent her to lodge at the King’s Head Inn.
19 Newgate; Notes
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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