The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #49155   Message #2865701
Posted By: Jim Dixon
16-Mar-10 - 09:25 PM
Thread Name: Lyr Add: The Irishman's Epistle to the Officers...
Subject: Lyr Add: THE IRISHMAN'S EPISTLE TO THE OFFICERS...
Here' how the "song" (or poem?) appears in The London Magazine or Gentleman's Monthly Intelligencer, Volume 44 (London: R. Baldwin, November, 1775), page 599:

[No tune is given.]

From the SOUTH CAROLINA GAZETTE.
The IRISHMAN'S Epistle to the Officers and Troops at Boston.

By my faith, but I think ye're all makers of bulls,
With your brains in your breeches, your guts in your skulls,
Get home with your muskets, and put up your swords,
And look in your books for the meaning of words.
Ye see now, my honies, how much your mistaken,
For Concord by Discord can never be beaten.

How brave you went out with your muskets all bright,
And thought to befrighten the folks with the sight;
But when you got there, how they powder'd your pums*,
And all the way home how they pepper'd your bums,
And is it not, honies, a comical farce,
To be proud in the face, and be shot in the ——?

How came you to think now, they did not know how,
To be after their firelocks as smartly as you?
Why ye see now, my honies, 'tis nothing at all,
But to pull at the trigger, and pop goes the ball.

And what have you got now with all your designing,
But a town** without victuals to sit down and dine in;
And to look on the ground like a parcel of noodles,
And sing, how the yankies have beaten the doodles.
I'm sure if you're wise you'll make peace for a dinner,
For fighting and fasting will soon make ye thinner.
PADDY.

* Heads.
** Boston.