“Yes,” replied the Doctor, “and you know I can use mine.”
“I prithee be quiet, Master Wildrake,” said Sir Henry.
“Nay, good knight,” answered Wildrake, “be somewhat more cordial with a comrade in distress. This is a different scene from the Brentford storming-party. The jade Fortune has been a very step-mother to me. I will sing you a song I made on my own ill-luck.”
“At this moment, Captain Wildrake, we are not in a fitting mood for singing,” said Sir Henry, civilly and gravely.
“Nay, it will aid your devotions—Egad, it sounds like a penitential psalm.
‘When I was a young lad,
My fortune was bad,
If ere I do well ’tis a wonder.
I spent all my means
Amid sharpers and queans;
Then I got a commission to plunder.
I have stockings ’tis true,
But the devil a shoe,
I am forced to wear boots in all weather,
Be d——d the hoot sole,
Curse on the spur-roll.
Confounded be the upper-leather.’”[[3]]
[3] Such a song, or something very like it, may be found in Ramsay’s Tea-table Miscellany, among the wild slips of minstrelsy which are there collected.
The door opened as Wildrake finished this stanza at the top of his voice, and in rushed a sentinel, who, greeting him by the title of a “blasphemous bellowing bull of Bashan,” bestowed a severe blow, with his ramrod, on the shoulders of the songster, whose bonds permitted him no means of returning the compliment.
“Your humble servant again, sir,” said Wildrake, shrugging his shoulders,—“sorry I have no means of showing my gratitude. I am bound over to keep the peace, like Captain Bobadil—Ha, knight, did you hear my bones clatter? that blow came twankingly off—the fellow might inflict the bastinado, were it in presence of the Grand Seignior—he has no taste for music, knight—is no way moved by the ‘concord of sweet sounds.’ I will warrant him fit for treason, stratagem, and spoil— Eh?—all down in the mouth—well—I’ll go to sleep to-night on a bench, as I’ve done many a night, and I will be ready to be hanged decently in the morning, which never happened to me before in all my life—
When I was a young lad,
My fortune was bad—’