From Our Navvies: A Dozen Years Ago and To-Day by Elizabeth Garnett (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1885):

THE ENGLISH NAVVY.
A NEW TEMPERANCE SONG.

Tune:—"The days we went a-gipsying."

1. I AM an English navvy, and I tell the tale with glee,
Tho' thousand curl their lips in scorn, and mock at chaps like me;
But round and round our kingly isle, on meadow, glen, and hill,
Ten thousand mighty monuments proclaim our strength and skill.

CHORUS:
Yes, I am an English navvy; but, oh, not an English sot.
I have run my pick through alcohol, in bottle, glass, or pot;
And with the spade of abstinence, and all the power I can,
I am spreading out a better road for every working man.

2. We have set the light-house on the rock, the harbour on the strand,
And run the tunnels through the hill, that commerce might expand;
But while Britannia holds aloft her flag of old renown,
This cruel drink, with crushing might, keeps British workmen down.

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