Re: Lyrics wanted: The Handsome Cabin Boy

[gobbel@cogsci.ucsd.edu (Randy Gobbel)]

This version is from Gordon Bok's first album, on Folk-Legacy Records:

_Handsome Cabin Boy_

It's just a pretty female
As you may understand,
Her mind being bent on rambling
Unto a foreign land,
She dressed herself in sailor's clothes,
Or so it does appear,
And she signed with a captain
To serve him for a year.

The captain's wife she being on board,
She seemed in great joy
To think the captain had engaged
Such a handsome cabin boy,
And now and then she'd slip him a kiss
And she'd have liked to toy,
But 'twas the captain found out the secret
Of the handsome cabin boy.

Whose cheeks they were like roses
And her hair all in a curl.
The sailors often smiled and said
He looked just like a girl.
But eating of the captain's biscuits
Her color did destroy,
And the waist did swell on pretty Nell,
The handsome cabin boy.

"Oh doctor, dear, oh, doctor,"
The cabin boy did cry,
"My time has come, I am undone,
And I must surely die."
The doctor come a-running
And smiling at the fun,
For to think a sailor lad should have
A daughter or a son.

The sailors, when they heard the news,
They all did stand and stare.
The child belonged to none of them,
They solemnly did swear.
the captains's wife, she says to him,
"My dear, I wish you joy,
For 'tis either you or I have betrayed
The handsome cabin boy."

Now sailors, take your tot of rum
And drink success to trade,
And likewise to the cabin boy
That was neither man nor maid.
Here's hoping the wars don't rise again
Our sailors to destroy,
And here's hoping for a jolly lot more
Like the handsome cabin boy.

-Randy
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Internet: gobbel@ucsd.edu