Lyr Add: The Fancy Peeler (American)

Subject: RE: Lyr Add: THE FANCY PEELER (American)
From: GUEST,Q
Date: 11 Feb 03 - 08:16 PM

Another copy of the same broadside, (printed New York) is in the Bodleian Ballads Catalogue, Harding B 18(621) with a date of ca. 1860.

Subject: Lyr Add: THE FANCY PEELER (American)
From: GUEST,Q
Date: 11 Feb 03 - 05:27 PM

Looking for songs about "Whiskey in the Jar" I found this. I did not know that the term peeler (slang for a policeman in Britain) had been used in the United States.

Lyr. Add: THE FANCY PEELER

Come all, you gallant lov-iers, and listen to my ditty;
I'll tell you of a Peeler-man, the pride of New York City;
It took his pay to dress so gay, but yet he lived in clover;
His business, on the corner, was to tote the ladies over.

For, he was a ladies'-man;
He was a fancy peeler, oh!
He was a fancy peeler, oh!
His name was Teddy Rae.

There was a gal in love with him, she ofen used to meet him:
How are you, Johnny? was the cry with which she used to greet him;
The maiden was a waiter gal; her mother, it's a fact, Sir,
She kept a three cent rum mill in the street called Rue de Baxter.

But her lover was the man,
He was a dandy peeler, oh!
A fancy style of peeler, oh!
His name was Teddy Rae.

Her father was a junkman, and one day the fancy peeler
He nabbed him up before the Mayor, and swore he was a steeler (sic);
And when the maiden heard the news, she got quite broken-hearted;
She dropped right at the peeler's feet, she gave a sigh and fainted.

Oh! says she, you is the man,
You are a horrid peeler, oh!
You are a played out peeler, oh!
I hate you, Teddy Rae!

The junkman he got thirty days, the mother took to drinking,
The Sheriff took the rum mill, and he bust it up like winking;
Then a quart of prussic acid laid the maiden out, cold and silent;
The peeler soon was found dead...drunk; he's now on Blackwell's Island.

Breaking stones, the ladies'-man,
Played out, the fancy peeler, oh!
The handy, dandy peeler, oh!
Whose name was Teddy Rae.

Air: Whiskey in the Jar.
H. De Marsan, New York, 19th century (prob. after 1865). From American Memory, American Songs and Ballads, Series 1, Volume 1.
At that time, police and private cops kept the poor and riff-raff out of the better shopping blocks and financial district of New York City. Could Teddy Rae been a private cop?