A jolly landlord once was I,
And kept the Old King's Head hard by,
Sold mead and gin, cider and beer,
And eke all other kinds of cheer,
Till Death my license took away,
And put me in this house of clay:
A house at which you all must call,
Sooner or later, great or small.
It is stated in Mr. J. Potter Briscoe's entertaining volume,
"Nottinghamshire Facts and Fictions," that in the churchyard of Edwalton
is a gravestone to the memory of Mrs. Freland, a considerable land-owner,
who died in 1741; but who, it would appear from the inscription, was a
very free liver, for her memorial says:
She drank good ale, strong punch and wine,
And lived to the age of ninety-nine.
A gravestone in Darneth Churchyard, near Dartford, bears the following
epitaph:--
Oh, the liquor he did love, but never will no more,
For what he lov'd did turn his foe:
For on the 28th of January 1741, that fatal day,
The Debt he owed he then did pay.