No wonder. She put it to him straight:
“Oh, why are you not at the wedding?” she cried,
“For to wait on the squoire, and to give him his bride.”
He was as prompt and as delightfully unconventional in his reply as the
young lady in Covent Gardings:
“Oh, no! and oh, no! For the truth I must sa-a-y,
I love her too well for to give her a-w-a-a-y!”
which was satisfactory to the disguised “virging”.
“.... and I'd take sword in hand,
And by honour I'd win her if she would command.”
Which was still more satisfactory.
Now this virging, being--
(Jimmy Nowlett: “Maiden, Pinter--” Jim is thrown on a stool and sat on
by several diggers.)
Now this maiding, being please-ed to see him so bold,
She gave him her glove that was flowered with gold,
and explained that she found it in his field while hunting around with
her dog and her gun. It is understood that he promised to look up
the owner. Then she went home and put an advertisement in the local
'Herald'; and that ad. must have caused considerable sensation. She
stated that she had lost her golden glove, and
The young man that finds it and brings it to me,
Hoh! that very young man my husband shall be!
She had a saving clause in case the young farmer mislaid the glove
before he saw the ad., and an OLD bloke got holt of it and fetched it
along. But everything went all right. The young farmer turned up with
the glove. He was a very respectable young farmer, and expressed his
gratitude to her for having “honour-ed him with her love.” They were
married, and the song ends with a picture of the young farmeress milking
the cow, and the young farmer going whistling to plough. The fact that
they lived and grafted on the selection proves that I hit the right nail
on the head when I guessed, in the first place, that the old nobleman
was “stony”.
In after years,
... she told him of the fun,
How she hunted him up with her dog and her gun.
But whether he was pleased or otherwise to hear it, after years of
matrimonial experiences, the old song doesn't say, for it ends there.
Flash Jack is more successful with “Saint Patrick's Day”.
I come to the river, I jumped it quite clever!
Me wife tumbled in, and I lost her for ever,
St. Patrick's own day in the mornin'!
This is greatly appreciated by Jimmy Nowlett, who is suspected,
especially by his wife, of being more cheerful when on the roads than
when at home.
. . . . .
“Sam Holt” was a great favourite with Jimmy Nowlett in after years.
Oh, do you remember Black Alice, Sam Holt?
Black Alice so dirty and dark--
Who'd a nose on her face--I forget how it goes--
And teeth like a Moreton Bay shark.
Sam Holt must have been very hard up for tucker as well as beauty then,
for
Do you remember the 'possums and grubs
She baked for you down by the creek?
Sam Holt was, apparently, a hardened flash Jack.
You were not quite the cleanly potato, Sam Holt.
Reference is made to his “manner of holding a flush”, and he is asked
to remember several things which he, no doubt, would rather forget,
including
... the hiding you got from the boys.
The song is decidedly personal.
But Sam Holt makes a pile and goes home, leaving many a better and worse
man to pad the hoof Out Back. And--Jim Nowlett sang this with so much
feeling as to make it appear a personal affair between him and the
absent Holt--
And, don't you remember the fiver, Sam Holt,
You borrowed so careless and free?
I reckon I'll whistle a good many tunes
(with increasing feeling)
Ere you think of that fiver and me.