Here's the version from Ballads and Songs of Southern Michigan (Emelyn Elizabeth Gardner and Geraldine Jencks Chickering, 1939). As sung in 1935 by Mr. Otis Evilsizer, Alger, Michigan. Note the ending - very different from the others. (tune available upon request)

Jack Williams

O I am a boatman by my trade,
Jack Williams is my name;
And by a false, deluded girl
I was brought to grief and shame.

I went to robbing by night and day
To maintain her finery;
And all I got, I valued not,
But gave it to her straightway.

Till at last for Newport I was bound,
Bound down in iron strong;
O the rattling chains, they held me fast,
And she longed for to see them on.

O I wrote a letter to my love
Some comfort for to find,
But instead of proving a friend to me,
She proved to me unkind.

**** (missing line)
**** (missing line)
Says she, "Young man, as you made your bed,
So in it you must lie."

O in those lonesome cells I sobbed;
'Twas no more than I deserved,
But it makes my very blood run cold
To think how I've been served.

Come all young men, a warning take;
Never touch a flowing bowl;
'Twill drag you down to hell's dark hole
And ruin your poor soul.


Boy, I'll tell ya, she was some kind of girlfriend. I had an ex-wife kind of like that once....