For Fidler's Green, where seamen true, When here they've done their duty, The bowl of grog shall still renew And pledge to love and beauty. Says the parson, I hear you've married three wives, Now do you not know, that that is a sin? You sailors, you lead such very bad lives, St Peter, to heaven, will ne'er let you in Parson, says I, in each port I've but _one_, And never had more, wherever I've been; Below I'm obliged to be chaste as a nun, But I'm promised a dozen at Fidler's Green. At Fidler's Green, where seamen true, When here they've done their duty, The bowl of grog shall still renew, And pledge to love and beauty. Says the parson, says he, you're drunk, my man, And do you not know that that is a sin? If you sailors will ever be swigging your can, To heaven you surely will never get in. (_Hiccup_.) Parson, you may as well be mum, 'Tis only on shore I'm this way seen; But oceans of punch, and rivers of rum, Await the sailor at Fidler's Green. At Fidler's Green, where seamen true, When here they've done their duty, The bowl of grog shall still renew, And pledge to love and beauty. "Well reeled off, Billy," cried Jemmy Ducks, finishing with a flourish on his fiddle, and a refrain of the air. I don't think we shall meet _him_ and his dog at Fidler's Green--heh!" "No," replied Short, taking his pipe from his lip. "No, no, Jemmy, a seaman true means one true in heart as well as in knowledge; but, like a blind fiddler, he'll be led by his dog somewhere else." "From vere de dog did come from," observed Jansen. The band now struck up again, and played a waltz--a dance new to our country, but older than the heptarchy. Jansen, with his pipe in his mouth, took one of the women by the waist, and steered round the room about as leisurely as a capstern heaving up. Dick Short also took another, made four turns, reeled up against a Dutchman who was doing it with _sang froid_, and then suddenly left his partner and dropped into his chair. "I say, Jemmy," said Obadiah Coble, "why don't you give a girl a twist round?" "Because I can't, Oby; my compasses arn't long enough to describe a circle. You and I are better here, old boy. I, because I've very little legs, and you, because you havn't a leg to stand upon." "Very true--not quite so young as I was forty years ago. Howsomever I mean this to be my last vessel. I shall bear up for one of the London dock-yards as a rigger." "Yes, that'll do; only keep clear of the girt-lines, you're too stiff for that." "No, that would not exactly tell; I shall pick my own work, and that's where I can bring my tarry trousers to an anchor--mousing the mainstay, or puddening the anchor, with the best of any. Dick, lend us a bit of 'baccy."