He met with a man, and said, “I say, Perhaps you may know one Polly Gray? She lives somewhere hereabout:” the man said, “nay, I do not indeed,” to Jack Robinson. So says Jack to him, “I have left my ship, And all my messmates, they gave me the slip. Mayhap you’ll partake of a good can of flip? For you’re a good sort of fellow,” says Jack Robinson. In a public-house, then, they both sat down, And talked of Admirals of high renown, And drank as much grog as came to half a crown, This here strange man and Jack Robinson. Then Jack call’d out the reckoning to pay, The landlady came in, in fine array, “My eyes, and limbs, why here’s Polly Gray! Who’d thought of meeting here?” says Jack Robinson. The landlady staggered against the wall, And said, at first, she didn’t know him at all, “Shiver me,” says Jack, “why here’s a pretty squall, D----n me, don’t you know me? I’m Jack Robinson! Don’t you remember this handkerchief you giv’d me? ’Twas three years ago, before I went to sea, Every day I’ve looked at it, and then I thought of thee, Upon my soul, I have,” says Jack Robinson. Says the lady, says she “I have changed my state.” “Why! you don’t mean,” says Jack, “that you’ve got a mate? You know you promised----” Says she, “I could not wait, For no tidings could I gain of you, Jack Robinson, And somebody, one day, came up to me and said, That somebody else, had somewhere read In some newspaper, as how you were dead.” “I’ve not been dead at all,” says Jack Robinson. Then he turn’d his quid, and finish’d his glass, Hitch’d up his trousers, “Alas! alas! That ever I should live to be made such an ass! To be bilked by a woman,” says Jack Robinson. “But to fret and to stew about it’s all in vain, I’ll get a ship and go to Holland, France and Spain, No matter where, to Portsmouth I’ll ne’er come again.” And he was off before you could say Jack Robinson. HERE is a variation, such as I never met with before, of the time-honoured Ballad of _BOLD WILLIAM TAYLOR_.[47] I’LL sing you a song about two lovers, Who from Lichfield town did come, The young man’s name was William Taylor, The maiden’s name was Sarah Naylor. Now for a Sailor William enlisted, Now for a Sailor William’s gone, He’s gone and left his charming Sally, All alone, which made her mourn. She dressed herself in man’s apparel, Man’s apparel she put on, And set out to seek her own true lover, For to find him she is gone. One day she was exercising, Exercising among the rest, A silver locket flew from her jacket, And exposed her milk-white breast. O, then the Captain stept up to her, And asked her, what brought her there All for to seek for my own true lover, For he has proved to me severe.