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THE SALT (TRAD) This version stops short of the one on Mudcat, wherein the farmer tries to kill and salt the narrator too! NAPPER vocal, mandolin, tenor banjo BLISS mandocello
Come all you romantic young fellows Thinking to work on a farm Listen a while to me story It may serve to keep you from harm I was a dashing young fellow Me age it was just seventeen I hired meself to a farmer At a Horse Fair in Ballinascreen
His farm was way up the mountains There amidst heather and bog The stock I had to look after A donkey a goat and a dog The master meself and his mother We lived in a tumbledown shack She wasn't a day under ninety Her bones were beginning to crack
She sat in a chair by the fire And never would go to her bed And when I arose every morning She'd be sitting there nodding her head! The master turned out an old miser His heart was as hard as a stone He worked me from dawn till dark In a month I was just skin and bone
For we never ate nothing but porridge Says he that'll make you a man It very near made me a dead one We sucked it straight out of the pan We'd two oul hens and a rooster One day they all died of the croup So he plucked em, boiled em salted em Fed us all week on the soup!
Misfortunes they rarely comes single For then the old nanny goat died So he skint it, he boiled it and salted it And made himself shoes from the hide He was the most frugal of farmers But me I was going insane Fido he died of distemper And I was sent for the salt once again
When I saw what became of the dog Not a wink could I sleep all that night Up with the lark in the morning I got the most terrible fright! His poor mother was laid by the fire When I made for the door he cried "Halt" "Where are ye going so early? Come back here and fetch me the salt!"
tntb usually follow this with THE HUMOURS OF WEST MEATH | ||
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