Lyrics and commentary copied from http://www.informatik.uni-hamburg.de/~zierke/watersons/songs/thewantonwifeofcastlegate.html

THE WANTON WIFE OF CASTLEGATE
(Trad. arr. Watersons)

Oh, there was a wife in Castlegate but I won't tell of her name,
For she is both brisk and buxom and she likes a fumbling game.
She can nip and she can trip, me boys, as she runs over the plain,
Till she meets with the jolly boating man and she's off with him again.

"Well," he says, "me Molly honey, and could you fancy me?
Come on up to my ship's cabin and contented we will be,
For I have got gold and silver and of you I will take care,
And a whopping great pair of horns, me gal, your husband he shall wear.

"For your husband he's a silly old fool and blind as blind can be,
And so to wear the horns, me gal, contented he must be.
He can wriggle them at his leisure. He can do the best he can
While his wife she takes her pleasure with the jolly boating man.

"Well, at Pomfret clock and tower, me gal, we've silver in great store,
And I wish that I could find it, for then we'd have us a roar,
For we'd supper, wine, and whisky. Keep the beer ale in store.
Here's to you, me lads and lasses, and to tipplers evermore!"

[Sung by The Watersons (Lal, Mike and Norma Waterson and John Harrison) on "A Yorkshire Garland." Like most of the tracks from this LP, it was re-released in 1994 on the CD "Early Days."

[A. L. Lloyd said in the "A Yorkshire Garland" sleeve notes:

[A saucy song, this one, originating in York probably in the early years of the seventeenth century, and published as a broadside by the London printers Milbourn and Thackeray in the 1670s. In the course of time, as commonly happens, generations of singers trimmed off many inessentials and improved the song while slightly roughening it. The come-all-ye style tune probably got attached early in the nineteenth century. It's of a kind hardly known before on this side of the Irish Channel.

[Acknowledgements: Transcribed from the singing of The Watersons by Garry Gillard.]