The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #8460 Message #1777301
Posted By: Jim Dixon
06-Jul-06 - 12:52 AM
Thread Name: Origins: Good Ship Kangaroo
Subject: Lyr Add: ON BOARD OF THE KANGAROO (Harry Clifton)
Transcribed from the sheet music at The National Library of Australia (I have corrected some "eye dialect" such as "forrin" for "foreign" etc.):
ON BOARD OF THE KANGAROO
Harry Clifton [1865?]
1. Once I was a waterman and lived at home in ease.
Now I am a mariner and plough the angry seas.
I thought I'd like seafarin' life, so bid my love adieu,
And shipped as cook and steward, boys, on board o' the Kangaroo.
CHORUS: I never thought she would be false or ever prove untrue
When we sailed away from Milford Bay on board o' the Kangaroo.
2. My love she was no foolish girl; her age it was two score.
My love was not a spinster; she'd been married twice before.
And they could not say it was her wealth that stole my heart away;
She was a starcher at a laundress's for eighteen pence a day.
3. "Oh, think of me, oh, think of me," she mournfully did say,
"When you are in a foreign land carousin' far away;
And take this lucky thrup'ny bit. 'Twill make you bear in mind
The loving, faithful, trusting heart you leave in tears behind."
4. "Cheer up, cheer up, my own true love. Don't weep so bitterly."
But she sobbed, and sighed, and choked, and cried, and couldn't say goodbye.
"I shan't be gone so very long, only months a few.
And when I does come back again, in course, I'll marry you."
5. Our vessel it was homeward bound from many a foreign shore,
And many a foreign present unto my love I bore.
There was tortoises from Tenerife, and toys from Timbuktu,
A Chinese rat, and a Bengal cat, and a Bombay cockatoo.
6. Paid off, I sought her dwellin' in the suburbs of the town.
A hancient dame upon a line was hanging out a gown.
"Where is my love?" "She's married, sir, about six months ago,
To a smart young man what drives a van for Chaplin, Horne and Co."
7. Farewell to dreams of married life, to soap, to suds and blue;
To Glenfield starch and Harper Twelvetrees' washing powder too.
I'll seek some far and distant clime. I can no longer stay,
And on some Chinese Hottentot I'll throw myself away.