THE DIRGE OF THE DRAGSMEN
Farewell to the Coach-box, farewell to the Vip!
By Fate most unkindly we’re cotch’d on the hip;
Brother Dragsmen, come join in a general chorus,
For there’s nothing at present but ruin before us.
Once who were so gay as we trumps of the team?
Now our glory hath vanish’d away, like a dream;
Doom’d to suffer adversity’s punishing lash,
For the villainous Railroads have settled our hash.
Patricians no more of our craft will be backers,
And our elegant cattle must go to the knackers;
Guards, porters, and stablemen now on a level,
And all the road innkeepers book’d for the devil.
We four-in-hand worthies, however desarving, Will have nothing in hand to prevent us from starving,
Compell’d by hard treatment our colours to strike,
We may shortly turn Chartists and handle the pike.
Our beavers broad-brimm’d, and our togs out and out,
Must, the needful to raise, be soon shov’d up the spout;
Our fine, portly forms will be meagre as spectres,—
So much for these steam and these railroad projectors.
By Heavens! ’tis a cruel affair, and the nation
In justice are bound to afford compensation;
And, as on the shelf we must shortly be laid,
To found an asylum for Dragsmen decay’d.
There, taking our pint in all brotherly love,
We may chaff at the swells and the prads as we druv,
While spectators, admiring, exclaim’d with a shout,
“We’re bless’d if that ’ere ain’t a spicy turn-out!”
And how, as we tied round our necks the silk fogle,
The rosy-cheek’d barmaids would tip us the ogle;
And when all was ready the ribbons to seize,
How slyly the darlings would give us a squeeze.
A plague upon Railways! the system be blowed!
Grim engineers now are the lords of the road;
And passengers now are conveyed to their goal,
Not by steaming of cattle, but steaming of coal.