To my dear wife,
My joy and life,
I freely now do give her
My whole estate
With all my plate,
Being just about to leave her.
My tub of soap,
A long cart-rope,
A frying-pan and kettle,
An ashes pail,
A threshing flail,
An iron wedge and beetle.
To-day such doggerel is interesting only as giving a useful inventory of an ordinary small household of the time, and as showing the sort of thing that could be fobbed off for wit on a public satiated with the Assembly Catechism and Bishop Bull’s Sermons. Nevertheless (and this is the monstrous part of it), wretched as the stuff was, by some inscrutable perversion of popular taste, it outdistanced all its competitors, and swept through the country amid a roar of laughter and applause. It was copied and recopied by hand, and printed and reprinted in penny broadsides, of which at least four editions survive. It was forwarded to England by Governor Belcher himself, was published in the London magazines, and hailed with delight in court, camp, and cottage. It crossed the water again, and appeared with undiminished success in the “Massachusetts Magazine” as late as 1794. Up to a few generations ago it was
