Lyr Add: Spider and the Blue Bottle (Bawdy)

Subject: Lyr Add: Spider and the Blue Bottle (Bawdy)
From: Q (Frank Staplin)
Date: 30 Jul 08 - 02:45 PM

Lyr. Add: THE SPIDER AND THE BLUE BOTTLE

Mr. Benjamin Bolt was a trump at a feast,
And his paunch it would weigh 10 pound at least,

Tol de rol, &c.

When taking his nap, after taking his dinner,
In a snug elbow chair sat this gorging old sinner,
With his mouth open wide, like a huge butter boat,
A precious large spider popped bang down his throat,

Now at night Mr. B. he felt in a sad pickle,
For he felt in his guts a most comical tickle,

Not a little alarmed, yet not at all funky,
This tickling affair made the old boy quite funky,
Mrs. B. quite surprised said, 'you fumbling old fool
If you want a put in give us hold of your tool,

Says he 'Mrs. B, sure there's something alive,
For it bustles about like a bee in a hive,

'It follows the flies when they light on my belly,'
Says she, 'you have swallowed a spider, I tell' e,'
So she physick'd him well with purging and and pucking
But the devil a bit of spider she took in,

Next morning to Dr. O'Shanker she hied
To tell what had got in her husband's inside,

Says he, ''tis no use pouring drug down his throttle
The first thing you do, get a fine large bluebottle
And holding it tight to the hole in his b-m,
Catch him when he comes down with your finger and thumb,'

Next night Mrs. Bolt put Benny to bed,
Then she up with his fanny and shov'd down his head,

With the barnacles on and the blue-bottle ready,
Says she 'Mr B. hold your bottom quite steady;'
After tickling his rump, half the night with a fly,
He let go, and the spider went bang in her eye,

Now poor Mrs. Bolt, I have heard some folks say
Was, at nine months gone in the family way,

She lay in of a boy, though you may think it droll,
But all that I am sayin is true, 'pon my soul,
He'd the marks of the barnacles round either eye
And on the cheeks of his a-----e was a spider and fly,
Tol de rol, &c.
(Add Tol de rol, &c., to each verse).

Johnson Ballad 2879, 2880, 2881; no date, no publisher, coupled with a short poem titled "The Wanderer," "Cease your winds to blow...."
Probably mid-19th c. or somewhat earlier.

Grose's Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue (1811 ed.) provides several meanings for barnacles, including-
-A nickname for Spectacles (the meaning here)
-An instrument like a pair of pinchers, (to fix on the noses of vicious horses while shoeing).

Subject: RE: Lyr Add: Spider and the Blue Bottle (Bawdy)
From: Q (Frank Staplin)
Date: 30 Jul 08 - 02:52 PM

Somehow it didn't seem right to put this with Mary Howitt's "The Spider and the Fly."

Subject: RE: Lyr Add: Spider and the Blue Bottle (Bawdy)
From: Charley Noble
Date: 31 Jul 08 - 08:37 AM

Q-

I certainly agree with you. This is a unique ditty.

Cheerily,
Charley Noble