"
Lloyd's 2 verses were just given as an example of the song. All he says is that "the song was heard in Dublin in the 1790s". The confusion lies with the fact that this comes immediately after the 2 verses. There is no suggestion that the verses and the phrase are related.

:-)
"

Actually, there are more problems than this.

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Moreover, the text of "The flash lad" recalls a still hardier song, for the 'Tyburn Fair' aspect with its ordering of a ceremonial funeral connects the dashing young blade to the soldier dying of wounds received not on the battlefield but in Venus's train, who demands to go down with more than military honours, as described in the ballad called "The unfortunate rake":

Get six of my comrades to carry my coffin,
Six girls of the city to bear me on,
And each of them carry a bunch of red roses,
So they don't smell me as they walk along.

And muffle your drums, and play your fifes lowly,
Play the dead march as you carry me on,
And fire your bright muskets all over my coffin,
Saying: 'There goes an unfortunate rake to his doom!'

The song was heard in Dublin in the 1790s, and a version of the tune was printed, in London in 1808 but the first full text of it appeared only on a Such broadside of the 1860s though the piece was probably a good century old by then (oddly enough, a broadside of it had appeared in Czech before it emerged in print on the London streets).

[A.L.Lloyd, _Folksong in England_ (London, 1967), pp. 219-220]

Problem One: The wording Lloyd gives above doesn't +quite+ correspond to the version he's given as singing on the Folkways record:

"Get six young soldiers to carry my coffin,
Six young girls to sing me a song,
And each of them carry a bunch of green laurel
So they don't smell me as they bear me along.

"Don't muffle your drums, and play your fifes merrily,
Play a quick march as you carry me along,
And fire your bright muskets all over my coffin,
Saying: There goes an unfortunate lad to his home."

Full text here

But the wording is close enough that we can presume that Lloyd was referring to this.   

So bang go the two 1790s Dublin quatrains -- as IanC points out, what we have here is confused wording.

But there's still a problem around a song titled "The Unfortunate Rake". Is there a broadside printing? Are there any versions independent of Lloyd? It's not, I still think, the earliest printed version.

Lloyd writes:

"
the first full text of it appeared only on a Such broadside of the 1860s
"

This is presumably a reference to "The Unfortunate Lad" Such broadsheets. But were these the earliest? Wasn't "The Buck's Elegy" earlier?

[And has anyone come on a cite to the Buck other than in Holloway and Black or Root&Branch?]

So dismissing the two so-called Dublin 1790s stanzas as a ghost, can we still sustain the 1790 Cork quatrain that Malcolm referenced?

My jewel, my joy, don't trouble me with the drum
Sound the dead march as my corpse goes along;
And over my body throw handfuls of laurel,
And let them all know that I'm going to my rest.

Sorry to keep on recapping, which I realise irritates the hell out of Malcolm , but I'm thinking aloud and trying to get this straight in my head.

So where are we now?

A possible 1790s Cork quatrain.

Then, sequentially, dating from London in the early/mid 19thC:

The Buck's Elegy
The Unfortunate Lad
The Trooper Cut Down in his Prime

... and "The Rake's Lament" somehow mixed in here.

Robin