Jack Williams

Jack Williams

Roud 1906

1. I am a boatman by my trade,
   And a waterman also
   Through keeping of such company
   I brought myself to woe.
   
2. I went a-robbing night and day,
   To keep Ena fine and gay
   And what I got I valued not,
   I took to her straightway.
   
3. Till at length to Newgate I got brought,
   Bound down in iron strong,
   With the rattling chains all round my legs,
   She longed to hear them on.
   
4. I wrote a letter to my love,
   Some comfort for to find,
   But instead of proving a friend to me
   She proved to me unkind.
   
5. She in a scornful manner wrote
   I'll shun their company;
   So just as you've made your bed, young man,
   Down on it you must lay.
   
6. I thought these words were very hard
   When I spent all my store,
   To think she had no more regard
   When I was low and poor.
   
7. But if ever I gain my liberty,
   ‘Tis a solemn vow I'll make,
   To shun all woman’s company,
   For my false lover’s sake.
   
8. The ‘sizes being over
   And hanged I thought to be
   But I burst from the prison walls,
   And gained my liberty.

Collected by Cecil Sharp from Mrs Elizabeth Smitherd, Tewkesbury, Gloucestershire, 11 April 1908.

(Cecil Sharp MSS, Folk Words pp.1494-1495 / Folk Tunes p.1641)

• See http://mudcat.org/thread.cfm?threadid=72295 for North American versions.

• Ballad sheets containing Jack Williams [the boatman / boatswain] from the Bodleian Library.

• 'Jack Williams' in 'The Star Song Book', New York: R. Marsh, 1857