Lyr Add: Mind Your Eye

Subject: Lyr Add: Mind Your Eye
From: shipcmo
Date: 25 Jan 11 - 01:42 PM

Just got my copy of "Manavillins" by Rex Clements, 1928.
"A muster of sea-songs, as distinguished from shanties, written for the most part by seamen, and sung on board Ship during the closing years of the Age of Sail."
Not much new, with the exception of:

                  "Mind Your Eye"
As Jack was a-strolling the street up and down,
He spied pretty Polly of Camberwell town;
She'd a basket on arm, and as she passed by
He hailed her: "What cheer?" Says she, "Mind your eye."

"Mind your eye, then" says Jack, "but what have we here?
For to know what it is I feel very queer."
""Tis the best of good liquors we sell on the sly,
And the name that it's called is just "Mind your eye."

The minute I read it I thought, "Quare Bungle Rye"

Now Jack was a sailor who roamed on the town,
And she was a damsel who skipped up and down,
Said the damsel to Jack as she passed him by,
"Would you care for to purchase some quare bungle rye, roddy rye?
Fol de diddle rye roddy rye, roddy rye.'