Ballads, English -- Texts; English poetry -- 19th century; Street literature -- Great Britain
He says my wages are all gone, and it does me perplex,
Indeed, said she, then list to me, my bonny cock of wax.
Continually you make a noise, and fill the house with strife,
I’ll tell you where your money goes; I will upon my life.
There’s three and twopence house rent; now attend to me she said,
There’s four shillings goes for meat, and three and ninepence, bread,
To wash your nasty dirty shirt, there’s half a pound of soap,
There’s eightpence goes for Coals, old boy, and sixpence wood and Coke.
There’s fourpence for milk and cream, and one and fourpence malt,
Three halfpence goes for vinegar, one halfpenny for salt;
A penny goes for mustard, a halfpenny for thread,
And you gave threepence the other night, for a piece of pig’s head.
A red herring every morning is sevenpence a week,
Sometimes you send me out for fish, you say you can’t eat meat,
Last Monday night you got so drunk, amongst your dirty crew,
It cost two pence next morning for a basin of hot stew.
There’s a penny goes for pepper too, as you shall understand,
Twopence soda, starch and blue, and a halfpenny for sand,
Sevenpence for Candles, a halfpenny for matches,
And a penny worth of Corduroy, I bought to mend your breeches.
A shilling potatoes and greens, with tenpence butter, you see,
Sixpence Coffee, ninepence Sugar, and sevenpence for tea,
There’s a penny goes for this thing, and twopence that and t’other,
Last week you broke a water jug, and I had to buy another.
There’s sixpence for tobacco, and a halfpenny for pipes,
Seven farthings goes for snuff, and twopence halfpenny swipes;
A penny you owed for shaving, over at the Barber’s shop,
And you know last Sunday morning, you’d a bottle of ginger pop.
There’s a penny goes for blacking, and eight pence halfpenny cheese,
A three farthing rushlight every night, to catch the bugs and fleas;
And when you go to the public house, and sit to drink and sing,
I pop into the liquor vaults, to have a drop of gin.
THE only reason why the subjoined is given, is to show the numerous
small industries by which people could manage to eke out a living
in the first half of the century.
_THE WAY TO LIVE._
_Chorus._
_A man and a woman got married one day,
And thus unto each other did say,
As we the world must now begin,
We will deal in every following thing._
_She._ We will deal in apples, plums and pears,
_He._ We will mend old bellows and bottom old chairs,
_She._ We will buy old metal, rope and bags,
_He._ Yes, and I’ll go out a gathering rags.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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