Rhymes of Northern Bards: Being a Curious Collection of Old and New Songs and Poems, Peculiar to the Counties of Newcastle upon Tyne, Northumberland, and Durham
General
Rhymes of Northern Bards: Being a Curious Collection of Old and New Songs and Poems, Peculiar to the Counties of Newcastle upon Tyne, Northumberland, and Durham
Join, O ye pay clerks, my loud lamentations,
Come my ill luck sympathetic deplore:
On discount you reckon’d, but such expectations,
Alas! my good friends, you must cherish no more.
Tokens! God help me! why, why should I make them!
Neither will Pitmen or Keelmen now take them;
E’en in their wagers, they scruple to stake them,
Oh! none must I issue but tokens of woe!
No more of his sorrows the muse hath recorded,
Tho’ tunefully still he bewail’d his sad fate;
For listning no longer enjoyment afforded;
The evening was chilly, the hour it was late.
Ah, thought I, as quick homeward I now was repairing,
’Tis just with all _wrong-heads_, presumptious and daring,
In their projects, the end with the means never squaring,
Still baffled, they issue the tokens of woe.
[36] A caution against the tokens, signed by 118 persons, was published
26th November, 1811.
_The following Dialogue, in bad Prose, was overheard by the Person who
now attempts it in bad Verse._
(December, 1811.)
“Hey, Jacky, ma honey, hae ye seen the new money,
The money, that’s made, mun, at Newcastle town?
It’s bonie an’ breet, man, an’ tho’ it’s but leet, man,
Folks like it sae weel, that the notes are off flown.
“I frae the chap got, man, a score for a note, man;
An’ smash me! I thought him a thick headed feul;
T’ gie siller for paper, is sure a queer caper:
We knaw which is better, Jack, we were at skeul.”
“But, Will, I’ve a notion, you han’t seen the caution,[37]
The grocer folks up i’ their windows hae put;
They say they’ll be broken, if they take a token;
An’ seun that their shops they will hae for to shut.”
“Why, Jack, sure they’re feulish, to refuse them is cullish,
Why siller, man’s, siller, and paper’s but rags;
And as lang as we knaw that, there’s nane o’ them a’ that
Will make us put paper stead sill i’ wor bags.
“The bank there of Surtees, ye knaw how it hurt hus;
And, for the five score pund I’d laid by for’t lass,
They’re now off’ring twenty, an thinking it plenty;
Tho’ years ago, Jack, I was starving for’t brass.
“An Jack i’ the raw, ye very weel knaw,
The loss he cam too, when his house it was brunt:
His kistful of paper, went up in a vapour,
An of his sixscore pund he heard na mair on’t.
“No, no more their notes, shall they cram down our throats,
When we siller can get, man, to put i’ wour kists:
A f----t for their signing, an cautions sae whining,
Let them who won’t take them, wey, do it that lists.”
[37] The caution was mostly signed by the grocers of the town; it
having been devised at their trade meeting.
FOOTY AGAIN THE WALL.
_A Song much sung some Years ago, by the Pitmen about Long Benton._
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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