Chorus.
First cock up your right leg so,
Balance on your left great toe,
Stamp your heels and off you go,
To the original Polka. Oh!
There’s Mrs. Tibbs the tailor’s wife,
With Mother Briggs is sore at strife,
As if the first and last of life,
Was but to learn the Polka.
Quadrilles and Waltzes all give way,
For Jullien’s Polkas bear the sway,
The chimney sweeps, on the first of May,
Do in London dance the Polka.
If a pretty girl you chance to meet,
With sparkling eyes and rosy cheek,
She’ll say, young man we’ll have a treat,
If you can dance the Polka.
A lady who lives in this town,
Went and bought a Polka gown,
And for the same she gave five pound
All for to dance the Polka.
But going to the ball one night,
On the way she got a dreadful fright,
She tumbled down, and ruined quite,
The gown to dance the Polka.
A Frenchman he has arrived from France
To teach the English how to dance,
And fill his pocket,—“what a chance”—
By gammoning the Polka.
Professors swarm in every street,
’Tis ground on barrel organs sweet,
And every friend you chance to meet,
Asks if you dance the Polka.
Then over Fanny Ellsler came,
Brilliant with trans-Atlantic fame,
Says she I’m German by my name,
So best I know the Polka.
And the row de dow she danced,
And in short clothes and red heels pranced,
And, as she skipped, her red heels glanced
In the Bohemian Polka.
But now my song is near its close,
A secret, now, I will disclose,
Don’t tell, for it’s beneath the rose,
A humbug is the Polka.
Then heigh for humbug France or Spain,
Who brings back our old steps again,
Which John Bull will applaud amain
Just as he does the Polka.
A “Hoy” was a one-masted vessel, sometimes with a boom to the mainsail, and sometimes not; rigged very much like a cutter. They are said to have taken their name from being hailed (“Ahoy”) to stop to take in passengers. The good people of that date were rather given to stay at home, or not go farther seawards than Gravesend. Ramsgate and Margate were long voyages, and in truth they were so sometimes; in rough weather they were sometimes two days or more making the passage. But there were other dangers, vide Drakard’s Paper, October 3, 1813:—“The British Queen, Margate Hoy, detained full of passengers, for having accidentally had communication with a vessel performing quarantine, has been since released by orders from the Admiralty. The distresses of the passengers partook of the serio-comic: at first provisions were very scanty, and they had no prospect but seven weeks of durance. This to the trippers to the seaside for a week would have been a serious affair.”