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American Ballads and Folk Songs
Wish he nuss heself up well and hearty
For Gen'ral Macomb
And Massa Donough home,
When he notion for anudder tea-party.
THE BUCCANEERS*
"The Dead Man's Chest"
Fifteen men on the Dead Man's Chest,
Yo-ho-ho and a bottle of rum! Drink and the devil had done for the rest,
Yo-ho-ho and a bottle of rum! The mate was fixed by the bo'sun's pike, An* the bo'sun brained by a marlinspike, And the cookie's throat was marked belike j It had been clutched by fingers ten, And there they lay, all good, dead men, Like break o' day in a boozin' ken—
Yo-ho-ho and a bottle of rum!
Fifteen men of a whole ship's list,
Yo-ho-ho and a bottle of rum! Dead and bedamned and their souls gone whist,
Yo-ho-ho and a bottle of rum! The skipper lay with his nob in gore Where the scullion's ax his cheek had shore, And the scullion he was stabbed times fourj And there they lay, and the soggy skies Dripped ceaselessly in upstaring eyes, By murk sunset and by foul sunrise— Yo-ho-ho and a bottle of rum!
Fifteen men of 'em stiff and stark,
Yo-ho-ho and a bottle of rum!
•From Seven Seas, September, 1915. Author unknown.
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