For the crime called debt,
Where our bodies and brains we do season,
And that is ne'er taken for murder or treason.

Where our ditties still be, Give's more drink, give's more drink,
boys.
Let those that are frugal take care;
Our gaolers and we will live by our chink, boys,
While our creditors live by the air;
Here we live at our ease,
And get craft and grease,
'Till we've merrily spent all our store;
Then, as drink brought us in,
'Twill redeem us agen;
We got in because we were poor,
And swear ourselves out on the very same score.



Ballad: The Protecting Brewer



This was apparently written as a parody on the Brewer, in Pills to
purge Melancholy, 1682. The original was too complimentary to
Oliver Cromwell, asserted by the Royalists to have been a brewer in
early life, to suit the taste of the Cavaliers, and hence the
alteration made in it. Such compliments as the following must have
proceeded from a writer of the opposite party.