Jack Williams

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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)


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