Transcription
The Ill Wife
As soon as I got married a happy man to be,
My wife turned out a sorrow jade, we never could agree,
For what I thought my greatest bliss was grief beyond compare,
And all the cause of my complain, she is my forever more.
Chorus-
For she’s a plague plaguing and she’s a plaguing me,
She’s a plague plaguing and never let’s me be.
About a week or something less, a bonny thing she was,
But err the second Sunday came, she made me cry alas!
Oh! often times I cry alas! ‘tis needless here to tell,
The wright of it lies all on this, the jade she knows herself.
My house I dare not call my own, nor anything that is in it,
And if I chance to speak a word, she flies like fire from flint.
My very hair I dare not cut, my clothes I dare not wear,
And all, both clothes and money too, she keeps me naked bare.
Right well she knows I dearly love a dainty dish of meat,
She cooks it up so dirtily, the devil abit I eat,
And if I turn my mouth awry, or chance to shake my head,
She calls me filthy boor, and says I am very ill to feed.
When I am for merriment, oh! then she’s very sad,
And when I am for soberness, she goes distracted mad.
When I wish to hear her speak, she silent sits and dumb,
And when I am for quietness, she rattles like a drum.
Yesterday my neighbor Tom and I went our throats to wet,
She thundered in my ears so loud I think I hear her yet,
And when her barleyhood is on, whicH often is the case,
The first thing that comes to her hands she dashes in my face.
That marriage is a paradise I have often heard folks tell,
But for my own part - first and last - I think its worse than hell-
And yet there is a comfort left - a comfort and no more,
The pangs of death will break the bonds and bury all my care.
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