Michael, the following is what Jimmy Crowley sings, according to the CD booklet. As it differs from the Essex version posted above in quite a few places I think it's ok to post it. (And you're right about the accent. I doubt I'd have worked it out by ear alone!)

THE FOX AND THE HARE
(Trad)

Chorus:
The fox and the hare and the badger and the bear
The birds in the greenwood tree
All the pretty little rabbits, so engaging in their habits
And they all having mates but me

Good Christians all both great and small
All you that feel inclined
Your care bestowed on a fellow full of gold
I'm almost out of my mind
The wives I had they're all gone and dead
My love has laboured in vain
I have married, I have buried, and very nearly married
And I'm sick from wives in the brain

Now the first on my page was the little Sally Sage
She once was a ladies' maid
And she ran away one very dark day
Wi' the fellow with the whitefish tray
The next she was a hook she was a beauty and a cook
And I'll tell you the reason why
On her back she had a hump, on her leg she had a stump
She had a little squint in the eye

The next she was a charm, a little girl with a farm
Well versed in harrows and ploughs
She gathered a rig of lots of little pigs
She squeezed new milk from the cows
She was sixteen stone all muscle and bone
She looked with an awful sneer
Alas! she would be mine but she fell into decline
She swallowed up a mouse in her beer

The next one that came was a bright and jolly dame
With a purse as long as my arm
It was full of yellow gold, a beauty to behold
For the heart of a miser's charm
Her only sin was a love for gin
It brought our hopes to wreck
For she slipped on her heel on a piece of orange peel
Fell down and she broke her neck

To add to my score I had half a dozen more
My list goes a long ways round
Some crossed o'er the sea for a better chap than me
While more of 'em were hanged and drowned
The last one I had through drink she went mad
In vain I tried to stop her
Sorrow was my tale, I discovered one day
She was slowly boiled to death in a coffer

[1998:] On first hearing it sounds harmless enough. Closer study discovers misogyny and murder most airy! John O'Connell from Baile Mhuirne, Co. Cork gave me the song, originally an English folk song and published in The Oxford Book of Traditional Verse. (Jimmy Crowley, notes 'Uncorked!')