The Bodleian Library has 4 versions of this song as a broadside.

This text is taken from Melodist, and Mirthful Olio, Vol. 4 (London: H. Arliss, 1829), page 261.


OH, CRUEL.
Sung in character, by W. H. Freeman.

Oh! cruel were my parents that tore my love from me,
And cruel was the press-gang that took him off to sea;
And cruel was the little boat that rowed him from the strand.
And cruel was the big ship that sail'd him from the land.

Oh! cruel was the water that bore my love from Mary,
And cruel was the fair wind that didn't blow contrary;
And cruel was the captain, the boatswain, and the men,
They didn't care a farden if we never met again.

Oh! cruel was the splinter that broke my deary's leg,
Now he's obliged to fiddle and I'm obliged to beg;
A vagabond, a vagrant, a rantipoling wife,
We fiddle, limp, and scrape it through the ups and downs of life.

Oh! cruel was the engagement in which my true love fought,
And cruel was the cannonball that knocked his right eye out;
He used to leer and ogle me with peepers full of fun,
But now he looks askew at me because he’s got but one.

My love he plays the fiddle as he wanders up and down,
And I sing at his elbow through all the streets in town;
We spend our days in harmony and very seldom fight,
Except when he gets grog aboard and I gets queer - at night.

Then, ladies all, take warning by my true love and me,
Though cruel fate should flurry you, remember constancy;
Like me you’ll be rewarded and have your heart’s delight,
With a fiddle in a morning and a drop of gin at might.