Well Said, Davy

He went to the city and goosed all the girls With a stall on his finger for whittling the wills To a clause in his favour and Come to me Sally, One head in my chambers and one up your alley And I am as old as my master. I followed him further and lost all my friends, The grease still thick on his fistful of pens. I laced up his mutton and paddled his lake In the game of Get-off-me and Just-for-my-sake And I am as old as my master. I sang in his service a farewell to sorrow With rolled black stockings, the bone and the marrow. The Law was a devil to cheat as you pleased As we knelt on the backs of the city girls’ knees And I am as old as my master. So back to the country where birds are squawking, With possets for pensions and witless talking Of walloped starvelings and soldiers’ fortunes From his nodding bench in the smothered orchards And I am as old as my master. Age turns the cheek of a buried scandal In a nightmare of cheese and a quarter of candle. When the servant is privy he’s good as a guest, The first to be carved to and last to be pressed And I am as old as my master. Country or city, no pleasure can last: It’s farewell to the future and beckon the past. Though he that we drink with is sometimes a fool, A single grey tooth may furnish a smile And I am as old as my master.