259
SONGS.
Tinker's Song.
SUNG by the fool (called "Billy Bellzebub") in the "Guisers' Play," as performed yearly at Eccleshall, Staffordshire, and Newport, Shropshire.
Collated from three copies: two written out by John Bates, sawyer, Eccleshall, and Elijah Simpson, chimney-sweep, Newport, and the other taken down from recitation of Christopher Bennett labourer, Eccleshall, 20th Jan. 1886.
The air will appear in Shropshire Folk-Lore, part iii.
"I am a jovial tinker,
And have been all my life,
So now I think it's time
To seek a fresh young wife.
And it's then with a friend we'll a merry life spend,
Which I never did yet, I vow,
With my rink-a-tink tink, and a sup more drink,
I'll make your old kettles cry sound,
Sound, sound!
I'll make your old kettles cry sound.
"My jacket's all pitches and patches,
And on it I give a sly look,
My trousers all stitches and statches
[Wouldn't quite suit a lord or a duke];
But it's pitches and patches I wear
Till I can get better or new;
I take the wide world as I find it,
Brave boys, if I'm ragged I'm true,
True, true!
Brave boys, if I'm ragged I'm true.[1]
- ↑ Miss L. Toulmin Smith, in a letter to myself, mentions a ballad, "Ragged and Torn, and True," which she believes is to be found among the Roxburghe Ballads The lines in brackets are added to fill up the verses. The singers repeat lines and twist the verses mercilessly to "make them come into the tune."
