The Broken-hearted Milkman

I’m a hard-working milkman in grief I’m arrayed,
With the keeping of company with a young Irish maid,
Who lived on board wages to keep the house clean,
For that Irishman’s family near Erin so green.

Oh her eyes were as black as that pipe of a pier,
No rose in that garden with her cheeks could compare,
Her hair hung in ringlets so beautiful and long,
And I thought that she loved me, in fancy I was wrong.

Well she rattled in the morning and I cry: ‘Milk below!’
At the sound of that milk can her face she would show,
Will a smile on her countenance and a laugh in her eye,
If I thought she’d not love me, sure I’d lie down and die.

‘Oh the man that will wed me must have children and gold,
And a chariot to ride in, be handsome and bold,
His hair must be curly like any watch spring,
And his whiskers as long as that brush for clothing.’

When she uttered these words they went through to my heart,
Oh I sighed and I stung and from her I did part;
With a tear on my eyelid as big as that beam,
Bid goodbye to Molly and Erin so green.

In six months she married, oh that hard-hearted girl,
Now he was not a viscount, he was not an earl,
He was not a baronet but a cheater and worse,
He was bow-legged conductor on that two-penny bus.