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An Excellent New Song[1]; On A Seditious Pamphlet.
By Jonathan Swift
1720-21
To the tune of "Packington's Pound."
Brocades, and damasks, and tabbies, and gauzes,
Are, by Robert Ballantine, lately brought over,
With forty things more: now hear what the law says,
Whoe'er will not wear them is not the king's lover.
Though a printer and Dean,
Seditiously mean,
Our true Irish hearts from Old England to wean,
We'll buy English silks for our wives and our daughters,
In spite of his deanship and journeyman Waters.
In England the dead in woollen are clad,
The Dean and his printer then let us cry fie on;
To be clothed like a carcass would make a Teague mad,
Since a living dog better is than a dead lion.
Our wives they grow sullen
At wearing of woollen,
And all we poor shopkeepers must our horns pull in.
Then we'll buy English silks for our wives and our daughters,
In spite of his deanship and journeyman Waters.
Whoever our trading with England would hinder,
To inflame both the nations do plainly conspire,
Because Irish linen will soon turn to tinder,
And wool it is greasy, and quickly takes fire.
Therefore, I assure ye,
Our noble grand jury,
When they saw the Dean's book, they were in a great fury;
They would buy English silks for their wives and their daughters,
In spite of his deanship and journeyman Waters.
This wicked rogue Waters, who always is sinning,
And before coram nobis so oft has been call'd,
Henceforward shall print neither pamphlets nor linen,
And if swearing can do't shall be swingingly maul'd:
And as for the Dean,
You know whom I mean,
If the printer will peach him, he'll scarce come off clean.
Then we'll buy English silks for our wives and our daughters,
In spite of his deanship and journeyman Waters.
Extra Info:
[Footnote 1: This ballad alludes to the Dean's "Proposal for the use of Irish Manufactures," for which the printer was prosecuted with great violence. Lord Chief-Justice Whitshed sent the jury repeatedly out of court, until he had wearied them into a special verdict. See Swift's Letter to Pope, Jan. 1721, and "Prose Works," vii, 13.]
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