A Gob is a Slob After three centuries this seems to have fallen out of favor, despite a veiled recording by Oscar Brand on his Bawdy Songs and Backroom Ballads series, and a commercially successful rewrite with words and music credited to Brand released as "A Guy is a Guy" on a popular record in 1952. I walked down the street like a nice girl should, He followed me down the street like I knew he would, Because a gob is a slob, wherever he may be. Listen, my children, to what this sailor did to me. For some hint of the historicity of this, see D'Urfey's 1709 edition of Pills to Purge Melancholy for "A Knave Is a Knave" and "I Went to the Alehouse As an Honest Woman Should" in Farmer, Merry Songs, I, p. 179. Folklorist Herbert Halpert recorded a version of this for the Library of Congress' Archive of American Folk Song. A text is in the Gordon Oregon collection, No. 3773, as forwarded by J. Barre Toelken. Brand's recording is on volume II of his bawdy song series (Audio Fidelity 1806). Randolph's "Unprintable," pp. 293-296, has two texts, one said to date from the late 1880's. His headnote cites an article in Saturday Review for December 12, 1953, p. 43, is which Brand acknowledges basing his song on D'Urfey's "original."