A nigger cook with earrings who neither chewed nor drank,
Who wore a red bandanna and was handy on the fiddle,
I would take a piping bos'un and a cabin-boy to spank.
Then some fine Summer morning when the Falmouth cocks were crowing
I would set my capstan spinning to the chanting of all hands,
And the milkmaids on the uplands would lament to see me going
As I beat for open Channel and away to foreign lands,
Singing—
Fare ye well, O lady mine,
Fare ye well, my pretty one,