So when they'd made their game of her, And taken off her elf, She roused, and found she only was A coming to herself. "And is he gone, and is he gone?" A waterman came up to her, "Alas! they've taken my beau, Ben, Says he, "They 've only taken him To the Tender-ship, you see;' "The Tender-ship," cried Sally Brown, "What a hard-ship that must be! "Oh! would 1 were a mermaid now, For then I'd follow him; But Oh!-I'm not a fish-woman, And so I cannot swim. "Alas! I was not born beneath The virgin and the scales, Now Ben had sail'd to many a place But when he call'd on Sally Brown, He found she'd got another Ben, "Oh, Sally Brown, Oh, Sally Brown, Then reading on his 'bacco box, And then he tried to sing "All's Well," But could not, though he tried; His head was turn'd, and so he chew'd His pigtail till he died. His death, which happen'd in his birth, They went and told the sexton, and FAITHLESS NELLY GRAY. A PATHETIC BALLAD. BEN BATTLE was a soldier bold, Now as they bore him off the field, The army-surgeons made him limbs: Now Ben he loved a pretty maid, But when he called on Nelly Gray, "Oh, Nelly Gray! Oh, Nelly Gray! Said she, "I loved a soldier once, But I will never have a man "Before you had those timber toes, But then, you know, you stand upon "Oh, Nelly Gray! Oh, Nelly Gray! For all your jeering speeches, At duty's call, I left my legs, "Why then," said she," you 've lost the feet Of legs in war's alarms, And now you cannot wear your shoes Upon your feats of arms !' |