Lyr Add: Revolutionary Tea (Seba Smith)

Subject: Lyr Add: REVOLUTIONARY TEA (Seba Smith)
From: Jim Dixon
Date: 23 Dec 08 - 02:41 PM

This is very similar to the version in DT. It is the oldest copy I can find with Google Book Search.

From The Wide-Awake Gift: A Know-Nothing Token for 1855, edited by "One of 'Em" (New York: J. C. Derby, 1855):

REVOLUTIONARY TEA.
By Seba Smith.

There was an old lady lived over the sea,
And she was an Island Queen;
Her daughter lived off in a new countrie,
With an ocean of water between.

The old lady's pockets were full of gold,
But never contented was she;
So she called to her daughter to pay her a tax
Of "thrippence" a pound on her tea.

"Now, mother, dear mother," the daughter replied,
"I shan't do the thing that you ax;
I'm willing to pay a fair price for the tea,
But never the thrippenny tax.

"You shall," quoth the mother, and reddened with rage,
"For you're my own daughter, ye see;
And sure 'tis quite proper the daughter should pay
Her mother a tax on her tea."

And so the old lady her servants called up,
And pack'd off a budget of tea,
And, eager for thrippence a pound, she put in
Enough for a large familie.

She ordered her servants to bring home the tax,
Declaring her child should obey,
Or, old as she was, and almost woman-grown,
She'd half whip her life away.

The tea was conveyed to the daughter's door,
All down by the ocean side,
And the bouncing girl poured out every pound
In the dark and boiling tide.

And then she called out to the Island Queen,
"Oh, mother, dear mother," quoth she,
"Your tea you may have, when 'tis steeped enough,
But never a tax from me—
No, never a tax from me."

Subject: RE: Lyr Add: Revolutionary Tea (Seba Smith)
From: Nerd
Date: 23 Dec 08 - 02:43 PM

I believe Seba Smith also wrote "Young Charlotte."

(Posted from the land of taxation without representation, Washington, DC)

Subject: RE: Lyr Add: Revolutionary Tea (Seba Smith)
From: GUEST,julia
Date: 23 Dec 08 - 07:33 PM

He did , indeed

Seba Smith was an early 19th century socialist commentator from Maine who also used the pseudonym Jack Downing

I've been working on finding melodies to the lyrics he printed in Jack Downing's songbook circa 1840

Julia