[Music]
Poor drunkards, poor drunkards, take warning by me,
The fruits of transgression behold now I see;
My soul is tormented, my body confin'd;
My friends and my children left weeping behind.
Much intoxication my ruin has been,
And my dear companion I've barbarously slain;
In yonder cold graveyard her body doth lie,
And I am confined and must shortly die.
A solemn death warning to drunkards I leave,
While my poor body lies cold in the dark grave;
Remember John Adkins, his death and reform,
Lest justice o'ertakes you and sorrow comes on.
A whole life of sorrow can never atone,
For that cruel murder that my hands have done;
I am justly condemned, it's right that I should die,
Therefore, let all drunkards take warning hereby.
Farewell, my dear children, wherever you be;
Though quite young and tender and dear unto me;
I leave you exposed in nature's wide field,
In which God is able poor orphans to shield.
No mother to teach you, no mother to guide
Your tender affections from sin's awful tide;
No portion to shun you from hunger or cold,
My poor little orphans are cast on the world.
When sorrows oppress you and sickness comes on,
You'll cry for your mother, but, oh, she is gone;
Your father, in anger, struck her on the head,
She bled, groan'd, and languish'd, and now she is dead.
My heart swells with sorrow, my eyes overflow,
Soon, oh my dear children, I'll bid you adieu;
Oh may my kind neighbors your guardians prove,
And heaven, kind heaven, protect you above.
My soul to His pleasure I humbly submit,
And with my last burthen fall down at His feet;
To plead for His mercy that flows from above,
That pardons poor drunkards, and crowns them above.
John G. McCurry, compiler of the _Social Harp_, claims this song and
dates it 1851. The tune is identical with that of 'When Boys Go
A-Courting', Sharp, ii., 206. The "drunkard" theme may have been the
textual source of 'Way Up On Clinch Mountain', where, to the same
tune, the singer glories in his excesses including that of whiskey
drinking. See Sandburg, 307. Miss Scarbrough has a negro adoption of
the same tune in 'Noble Skewball'; see _On the Trail of the Negro
Folk-Song_, 63. An English folk-song 'Sweet England' has a variant
tune. See _English Folk-Songs for Schools_, 46. For an Irish variant
see Petrie, No. 1172. A Scotch variant is 'My Ain Fireside', _Lyric
Gems of Scotland_, 186, which in turn borrowed its tune from 'Todlen
Hame'.
No. 12
REDEMPTION (C), KHN 185