ANONYMOUS

  “Kitty”
To the tune of, What tho’ I am a country lass.

Of all the girls in our street,
There’s none like charming Kitty;
She is so lovely fair and sweet,
So exquisitely pretty.
That all the beaux, where’er she goes,                                   5
Portest they all adore her;
A girl so fair, so debonair,
Was never seen before her.
Whene’er she speaks, or smiles, or moves,
Or when she sweetly sings, sir,                                       10
Ten thousand little sportive loves
For pleasure Slap their wings, sir.
Then who can shun so sweet a snare,
Or chuse but to adore her?
A girl so fair, so debonair                                                         15
Was never seen before her.
The lilly whiteness of her hand,
The sparkling of her eye—Sir,
That face which none can look upon,
And Cupid’s power defy,—sir,                                            20
With all these charms and beauties blest,
In spite of all my art—sir,
Sh’ has pierc’d, alas! my lovesick breast,
And stole away my heart—sir,

The rest of this Song is lost.

NOTES:

 Title What tho’ I am a country lass An early seventeenth-century ballad, possibly written by Martin Parker, and collected in William Thomson’s Orpheus Caledonius (London, 1725), p. 85.

5 Beaux “Fashionable men” (OED).

7 Debonair “Of gentle disposition, mild, gracious, kindly” (OED).

4 Chuse Variant spelling of “choose” (OED).

20 Cupid’s “In Roman Mythology, the god of love” (OED).

SOURCE: The Gentleman’s Magazine (December 1740), p. 619. [J. Paul Leonard Library]

Edited by Masaki Kaneko