The Poems of Jonathan Swift: -A Ballad to the tune of the Cutpurse

-A Ballad to the tune of the Cutpurse

[1] WRITTEN IN AUGUST, 1702

I
Once on a time, as old stories rehearse,
  A friar would need show his talent in Latin;
But was sorely put to 't in the midst of a verse,
  Because he could find no word to come pat in;
           Then all in the place
           He left a void space,
    And so went to bed in a desperate case:
When behold the next morning a wonderful riddle!
He found it was strangely fill'd up in the middle.
  CHO. Let censuring critics then think what they list on't;
    Who would not write verses with such an assistant?

II
This put me the friar into an amazement;
  For he wisely consider'd it must be a sprite;
That he came through the keyhole, or in at the casement;
  And it needs must be one that could both read and write;
         Yet he did not know,
         If it were friend or foe,
  Or whether it came from above or below;
Howe'er, it was civil, in angel or elf,
For he ne'er could have fill'd it so well of himself.
    CHO. Let censuring, &c.

III
Even so Master Doctor had puzzled his brains
  In making a ballad, but was at a stand;
He had mixt little wit with a great deal of pains,
  When he found a new help from invisible hand.
        Then, good Doctor Swift
        Pay thanks for the gift,
  For you freely must own you were at a dead lift;
And, though some malicious young spirit did do't,
You may know by the hand it had no cloven foot.
    CHO. Let censuring, &c.

[Footnote 1: Lady Betty Berkeley, finding the preceding verses in the author's room unfinished, wrote under them the concluding stanza, which gave occasion to this ballad, written by the author in a counterfeit hand, as if a third person had done it.--Swift.

The Cut-Purse is a ballad sung by Nightingale, the ballad-singer, in Ben Jonson's "Bartholomew Fair," Act III, Sc. I. The burthen of the ballad is:

"Youth, youth, thou had'st better been starv'd by thy nurse
Than live to be hang'd for cutting a purse."--W. E. B.]

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