BALLAD. (When I comes to town with a…)

When I comes to town with a load of hay, Mean and lowly though I seem, I knows pretty well how they figures away, While I whistles and drives my team: Your natty sparks and flashy dames How I do love to queer, I runs my rigs, And patters, and gigs, And plays a hundred comical games To all that I comes near:

Then in a pet To hear 'em fret, A mobbing away they go— (" The scoundrel deserves to be horse whipt!" ' Who, me ma'am?'—) Wo Ball, wo! So to mind them I ne'er seem, But whistles and drives my team!

So as I seems thinking of nothing at all, And driving as fast as I can, I pins a queer thing against the wall, Half a monkey, and half a man! The mob come round him to put up his blood, While he's trembling from top to toe, My whip it goes spank, I tips Ball on the flank, Ball plunges, and paints him all over with mud, Queers his stockings, and spoils the beau!

Then the sweet pretty dear Ah could you but hear, (" Odds curse you, I'll make you know, " you infernal villain!" ' Lord bless your baby face, I would not hurt ' your spindle shanks for the world!') Wo Ball, wo! So to mind 'em I ne'er seem, But whistles and drives my team.

And so I gets the finest fun And frisk that ever you saw, Of all I meets I can queer ev'ry one But your gemmen of the law: Though they can scarcely put me down, Says I, to their courts when I'm led, Where their tails of a pig They hide with a wig, How many ways in London town They dresses a calf's head.

Then ev'ry dunce To hear open at once, Like mill-clacks their clappers go, (" Oh that's the fellow I saw grinning through " the horse collar in the country." ' I fancy you're the fellow I saw grinning through ' the pillory in London!') Wo Ball, wo! So to mind 'em I ne'er seem, But whistles, and drives my team.