Lyr. Add: Rocking the Cradle
Bodleian Collection

As I roved out on a fine summer morning
Down by a clear river I walked alone
I heard a man making a most sad lamentation
And this he began to make his sad moan.

Chorus-
Crying ochone that I ever was married
Leaves me in sorrow alas to bemoan
Weeping, wealing and rocking the cradle
Pleasing the child that is none of my own.
2
I listen awhile to his sad lamentation
Perhaps that his story might be my own
So fondly he hugged and dandled the baby
And thus he began to make a sad moan.
3
When first I met with your inconstant mother
I thought myself happy and blessed with a wife
But to my relexation sure I soon was mistaken
She was a torture and plague to my life.
4
My wife comes in, in the heel of the evening
She says to her concert the kettle put down
For she sits to her table, and to tea drinking
Saying you old cuckold rock the child round.
5
Every evening 'tis true she walks with her bullies
And leaves me the cradle to rock all alone
The innocent baby it calls me its dady
But little it knows its none of my own.
6
If I was single once more to my glory
No element of pleasure would e'er me invoke
I'd rather be a slave in wild Guinea
Then to any drunkard or deceit be a cloak.
7
So now to conclude and to finish my story
All men that are single ne'er take a wife
For if you do they will surely torment you
Likewise be a torture all the days of your life.
8
Crying ochon that I ever was married
Leaves me in sorrow alas to bemoan
Hush a-by baby be still and be easy
I fear that your father will never be known.

Nugent, J. F. & Co. (Dublin) between 1850 and 1899, a.o.
Bodleian Collection, 2806 b.9(282), Harding B 19(65) and 2806 c.15(202).

Sings easily to the same tune as "Streets of Laredo," etc.