It began, I remember:
Come list me sing a famous battle,
A dustbin and a watchman's rattle;
The hero he was nominate Cyrus,
The scene was Shrewsbury, not Epirus.
The rhymester introduced all the characters; for instance:
Another who the dust has bitten
Was a brawny putt by name Ralph Mytton;
And Richard Cludde, a Cambridge lubber,
He ran away home to his mam to blubber;
and so the doggerel went on, chronicling the details (more or less
imaginary) of the fight, the entrance of Mr. Benbow and Punchard on
the scene:
And Nelly Hind's bashed portal closes
On bandy legs and Roman noses;
and ending thus:
Carmen concludo sine mora:
"Intus si recte ne labora,"
which being the school motto (dragged in by the hair of the head,
so to speak), pleased Mr. Lloyd, the master, mightily.
The rage of the persons chiefly concerned knew no bounds, and this
good came of it, that the Mohocks troubled Shrewsbury streets no
more.
Captain Benbow, and with him Joe Punchard, stayed but a few days in
the town. They had come on a flying visit in an interval of the war
against the French on the high seas, and very proud we were that
the captain, one of ourselves, was winning himself a name for
prowess and gallantry in his country's service.
Before he departed, however, I got from Joe a relation of what had
befallen him since the night he stole away. He arrived in Bristowe
footsore and ragged, and there came nigh to starving before he
found employment.
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