"About your shooting, isn't it?"
"Yees, moästlins."
"And you have got tunes to them?"
"Yees. It's easy to maäke the tunes up o' the fiddle, but the words is a straänge hard job oftens."
"Well now, will you let us hear one of them?"
"To be sewer I will," and he took his fiddle and sat on the gunwale, while we listened to the following:—
It was in the iambic metre—which befits a ballad—with occasional anapæsts.
THE SWAN "It's called The Swan this 'ere un," he said, and, with a preliminary flourish on the fiddle, he went off.
I should say that we got the words in his own writing afterwards spelt as I give them.
THE SWAN.
Now it Gentel men hall cum lisen to me,
And ile tell you of a spre,
When Sam and Tom Gose in there boats,
Tha never dise a Gre.
Chorus.
For the Halls they are upon the spre,
Tha'll do the best tha can,
Am when tha goä to seä my boys
Tha meäns to shoot a Swan.
Then a storking down clay-'ole,[1]
And laying as snug as tha can,
For it' Slap Bang went both the guns
And down come the Swan.
Now Sam and Tom 'as got this Swan,
Tha do not now repent;
Tha will pull up to Fosedyke Brige,
And sell him to Hary Kemp.
Now Sam and Tom they got a shere
Tha dow not see no Feer,
Tha will call too the Public-house,
An git a Galling of Beer.
Sam says to Tom here's luck my lad,
We will drink hall we can;
And then wele pull down Spalding sett
To loke for another Swan.
- ↑ Near Boston Haven.
