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I'd be your guardian thro' those desarts unknown,Until with your parents I'd leave you at home.

Sir, where is your country, I'd wish for to know,And what's the misfortunes you did undergo?That caus'd you to wander so far from your home,And made us meet strangers in this desart alone.

He says, my sweet fair one the truth I will tell,If I was in my own country near Newry I dwell,But yet to misfortunes my love I was prone,Which made many a hero go far from his home.

Sir the lads of sweet Newry are all roving blades,And take great delight in courting fair maids,They kiss them & press them, & call them their own,And perhaps your darling lies mourning at home.

Believe me my jewel, the case is not so,I never was married, the truth you must know,So these strangers agreed as the case it is known,And I with them both happy & safe to their home.

Text divider from 'The Humble Beggar', a chapbook printed in Glasgow in 1802

OBSERVATIONS on the TIMES.

King William in Ireland you plainly do know,He conquer'd old Jamie with a martial blow;For the Protestant int'rest, he firmly did stand,To banish black Pap'ry quite out of the land.Derry down, down, hey derry down.

Since now Pope & Prelate has join'd hand in hand,And are partly concerned as I understand,To a free toleration of black Popery,Which now like a cloud o'er Britain does flie, etc.

Our Worthies of Scotland in the days of old,The events of Popery they often foretold;