The next was John Blythman, esquire; Indeed he was much to blame, To kill a hare with a gun is right cruel, Tho’ gentlefolks may think it game.
Then Grundy came cursing and swearing, Which is the chief end of his talk, He shot her, and swore by his maker, He’d kill’d her as dead as a mawk.
But when that he went for to seize her, And found it a skin stuff’d with hay, He flung her down in a passion, And cursed, and so went away.
Now I’d have you all take care for the future, And mind very well what I say; Before that you fire, see the hare run, Lest it prove a hare skin stuff’d with hay.
But I think they were all finely tricked, Beside wasting powder and shot: Let us have a good drink at the fancy, So, landlady, fill us the pot.
Here’s the gentleman’s health that contriv’d it, For he is a right honest soul; We’ll laugh and we’ll merrily sing, When we’re over a full flowing bowl. Fal lal, &c.
Tune.--_On a time I was great, now little I’m grown._
I’ll tell you a story, if you please to attend, When my heart was afflicted with sorrow, The song it is new, but it’s absolute true; It’s for nothing that I did buy or borrow: But I was sent for to Preston’s one day the last week, There I little expected with what I did meet, But the country’s all rogues, and the world is a cheat, And there they confin’d me in Limbo.
Like an innocent lamb to the slaughter I went, Not knowing what was their intention, But when I came there, O how I did stare, When I found out their damned invention. There was Preston the bailiff, Joe Craggs was his bum, And there they did seize me, as sure as a gun, Upstairs then they haul’d me into the back room, And there they confin’d me in Limbo.
My belly was empty, though my stomach was full, For to think there how I was _trepanned_, Preston pull’d out a paper and made a long scrawl, And he forc’d me to set my hand to’t. Then I open’d his closet, I got out a pie, Then I call’d for liquor, while I was a dry, I knew somebody would pay for’t, but what cared I? I wasn’t to starve, though in Limbo.
Another poor fellow there happen’d to be, Which they had confined in Limbo; Brother prisoner, says I, how shall we get free, For want of this thing called rhino? The poor fellow sat like one was half dead, Then I gave him claret to dye his nose red; But I never knew yet how the reck’ning was paid; I was resolv’d to live well, though in Limbo.