The Bab Ballads, vol 2 | Page 3

that's drove
In the mind of a PRIVATE
JAMES!"
Said GENERAL JOHN, "Upon your claims
No need your breath to
waste;
If this is a joke, FULL-PRIVATE JAMES,
It's a joke of
doubtful taste.

"But, being a man of doubtless worth,
If you feel certain quite
That
we were probably changed at birth,
I'll venture to say you're right."
So GENERAL JOHN as PRIVATE JAMES
Fell in, parade upon;

And PRIVATE JAMES, by change of names,
Was
MAJOR-GENERAL JOHN.
To A Little Maid--By A Policeman
Come with me, little maid,
Nay, shrink not, thus afraid--
I'll harm
thee not!
Fly not, my love, from me--
I have a home for thee--
A
fairy grot,
Where mortal eye
Can rarely pry,
There shall thy
dwelling be!
List to me, while I tell
The pleasures of that cell,
Oh, little maid!

What though its couch be rude,
Homely the only food
Within its
shade?
No thought of care
Can enter there,
No vulgar swain
intrude!
Come with me, little maid,
Come to the rocky shade
I love to sing;

Live with us, maiden rare--
Come, for we "want" thee there,

Thou elfin thing,
To work thy spell,
In some cool cell
In stately
Pentonville!
John And Freddy
JOHN courted lovely MARY ANN,
So likewise did his brother,
FREDDY.
FRED was a very soft young man,
While JOHN, though
quick, was most unsteady.
FRED was a graceful kind of youth,
But JOHN was very much the
strongest.
"Oh, dance away," said she, "in truth,
I'll marry him who
dances longest."
JOHN tries the maiden's taste to strike
With gay, grotesque,
outrageous dresses,
And dances comically, like
CLODOCHE AND

Co., at the Princess's.
But FREDDY tries another style,
He knows some graceful steps and
does 'em--
A breathing Poem--Woman's smile--
A man all poesy
and buzzem.
Now FREDDY'S operatic pas--
Now JOHNNY'S hornpipe seems
entrapping:
Now FREDDY'S graceful entrechats--
Now
JOHNNY'S skilful "cellar-flapping."
For many hours--for many days--
For many weeks performed each
brother,
For each was active in his ways,
And neither would give in
to t'other.
After a month of this, they say
(The maid was getting bored and
moody)
A wandering curate passed that way
And talked a lot of
goody-goody.
"Oh my," said he, with solemn frown,
"I tremble for each dancing
frater,
Like unregenerated clown
And harlequin at some the-ayter."
He showed that men, in dancing, do
Both impiously and absurdly,

And proved his proposition true,
With Firstly, Secondly, and Thirdly.
For months both JOHN and FREDDY danced,
The curate's protests
little heeding;
For months the curate's words enhanced
The
sinfulness of their proceeding.
At length they bowed to Nature's rule--
Their steps grew feeble and
unsteady,
Till FREDDY fainted on a stool,
And JOHNNY on the
top of FREDDY.
"Decide!" quoth they, "let him be named,
Who henceforth as his wife
may rank you."
"I've changed my views," the maiden said,
"I only
marry curates, thank you!"

Says FREDDY, "Here is goings on!
To bust myself with rage I'm
ready."
"I'll be a curate!" whispers JOHN--
"And I," exclaimed
poetic FREDDY.
But while they read for it, these chaps,
The curate booked the maiden
bonny--
And when she's buried him, perhaps,
She'll marry
FREDERICK or JOHNNY.
Sir Guy The Crusader
Sir GUY was a doughty crusader,
A muscular knight,
Ever ready to
fight,
A very determined invader,
And DICKEY DE LION'S
delight.
LENORE was a Saracen maiden,
Brunette, statuesque,
The reverse
of grotesque,
Her pa was a bagman from Aden,
Her mother she
played in burlesque.
A coryphee, pretty and loyal,
In amber and red
The ballet she led;

Her mother performed at the Royal,
LENORE at the Saracen's
Head.
Of face and of figure majestic,
She dazzled the cits--
Ecstaticised
pits;--
Her troubles were only domestic,
But drove her half out of
her wits.
Her father incessantly lashed her,
On water and bread
She was
grudgingly fed;
Whenever her father he thrashed her
Her mother sat
down on her head.
GUY saw her, and loved her, with reason,
For beauty so bright
Sent
him mad with delight;
He purchased a stall for the season,
And sat
in it every night.
His views were exceedingly proper,
He wanted to wed,
So he called
at her shed
And saw her progenitor whop her--
Her mother sit down

on her head.
"So pretty," said he, "and so trusting!
You brute of a dad,
You
unprincipled cad,
Your conduct is really disgusting,
Come, come,
now admit it's too bad!
"You're a turbaned old Turk, and malignant--
Your daughter
LENORE
I intensely adore,
And I cannot help feeling indignant,

A fact that I hinted before;
"To see a fond father employing
A deuce of a knout
For to bang her
about,
To a sensitive lover's annoying."
Said the bagman, "Crusader,
get out."
Says GUY, "Shall a warrior laden
With a big spiky knob,
Sit in
peace on his cob
While a beautiful Saracen maiden
Is whipped by a
Saracen snob?
"To London I'll go from my charmer."
Which he did, with his loot

(Seven hats and a flute),
And was nabbed for his Sydenham armour

At MR. BEN-SAMUEL'S suit.
SIR GUY he was lodged in the Compter,
Her pa, in a rage,
Died
(don't know his age),
His daughter, she married the prompter,
Grew
bulky and quitted the stage.
Haunted
Haunted? Ay, in a social way
By a body of ghosts in dread array;

But no conventional spectres they--
Appalling, grim, and tricky:
I
quail at mine as I'd never quail
At a fine traditional spectre pale,

With a turnip head and a ghostly wail,
And a splash of blood on