The songs of Joseph Mather

Last Friday, at dinner time, who should I see,
But Jezebel's daughter come riding so free:
As soon as she did nearer approach
I found she had got into Watson's stage coach.
Thought I to myself, thou seem'st for to swell,
A sow would become a king's palace as well.
We don't need to wonder the world is at strife,
Since beggars can imitate folks of high life.

I wonder, says one, who they've got in the stage,
That looks so much like an old woman in rage:
Her fine spotted habit, I think for my share,
Would look full as decent upon a cart mare.
She also was dress'd in a cap trim'd with wire,
A sponge in her topping to raise it the higher.
Some of the militia men wickedly swore
She was a great masculine coarse-featured whore.

Besides, she had got a conspicuous head:
No horse-flesh, I'm certain, that's been a month dead
In scorching hot weather stinks worse than her breath;
She ought to be weather-cock'd deep in the earth.
At Leeds she was taken for old mother Bunch,
By some for the wife of my friend Mr. Punch.
Some thought she belonged to a mountebank fool,
While other some thought she was John Addy's doll.

When she had fill'd the whole town with surprise
By telling great numbers of audacious lies,
Her clothes which she borrow'd or bought upon strap
She bundled them up and put under her lap.
A little short pipe in her mus she did screw,
As though she belonged to some pedlar or Jew.
Then came slobbing home in a large pair of shoes—
Stout Wharton's the person that brought me the news.

She lobs up and down in a white petticoat,
She bares it nine inches in order to show't.
She told many strangers she bought it when new,
But it sprung from the “pop shop” I know to be true;
Yet, here's the misfortune, it not being wide,
She hasn't got liberty for a great stride.
The reason,—it bound her so fast o'er the rump,
When crossing the sink she was forced to jump.

Astride of a water pot, often half drunk,
Two lusty men's shoes and her stockings much sunk,
A pair of scabbed hands and her head dress'd in taste,
To be big with child, she appear'd in the waist.
Her haft-pipe she rested upon a large wem,
A pipe black as charcoal, two inches the stem,
Confined in her mus-hole; prepared to suck biles,
'Twas Jezebel's daughter I saw chopping files.

University of Virginia Library

Song XI. JEZEBEL'S DAUGHTER.

Part I.