If Your Wife Is Run Down, Give Her Cod Liver Oil
If Your Wife Is Run Down, Give Her Cod Liver Oil
1I'm a young married man,
2 Who is tired of my life,
3Ten years I'm glued on
4 To a pale sickly wife,
5She does nothing all day,
6 Only sit down and cry,
7And I hope to the Lord
8 She'll get better or die.
9A friend of my own
10 Came to see me one day,
11He said my dear wife
12 She was pining away,
13He afterwards told me
14 That she would get strong
15If I bought her a bottle
16 From dear Doctor John.
17Oh Doctor! Oh Doctor!
19You have Cod Liver Oil
20 It's so pure and so strong.
21I'm afraid of my life,
22 She'll go down to the soil
23If my wife keeps on thinking
24 Of Cod Liver Oil.
25I bought her a bottle
26 And just for to try,
27The way that she drank it
28 I thought she would die;
29I bought her another,
30 It vanished the same,
31And now she got
32 Cod Liver Oil on the brain.
33Since she took taking Cod Oil
34 She's gaining in weight,
35Five brace of rabbits
36 And a quarter of meat,
37She'll devour at each meal,
38 It's a sight for to see,
39And a Box Cart of Tarts
41If she keeps taking Oil
42 At the way she does now,
43At a sale of prime cattle
44 She won't leave a cow;
45She's a great master hand
46 For to make the grub fly,
47She can eat more Spare Ribs
48 Than ten men and a boy.
49Now young men getting married
50 Your judgement use keen,
51Don't ever get spliced
52 To a sausage machine,
53For to keep her in grub
54 Night and day you must toil,
56 Down Cod Liver Oil.
Notes
18] Doctor John: Ludovicus Josephus de Jongh, whose “Dr.de Jongh’s Light Brown Cod Liver Oil” was sold on both sides of the Atlantic in the second half of the nineteenth century as a medicine for consumption. Back to Line
40] Puncheon: large barrel. Back to Line
55] lowering: finishing bottom's-up. Back to Line
Publication Notes
John White's Collection of the Songs of Johnny Burke, ed. William J.
Kirwin (St. John's, Newfoundland: Harry Cuff, 1982): 97-98.
RPO poem Editors
Ian Lancashire / Sharine Leung
RPO Edition
2011
Rhyme
Form