The Tinker

[ C ]

A comely dame of Islington had got a leaking copper.
The hole that let the liquor run was wanting of a stopper.
A jolly tinker undertook and promised her most fairly
With a thump, thump, thump and a nick-nak-knock to do her
business rarely.

He turned the vessel to the ground, said he, "A good old
copper.
But it well may leak for I have found a hole in't that's a
whopper.
But never doubt a tinker's stroke although he's black and
surly.
With a thump, thump, thump and a nick-nak-knock, he'll do
your business rarely ["purely" in the original]."

The man of metal ["mettle" in the original] opened wide his
budget's mouth to please her.
Says he, "This tool I've [we] oft employed about such jobs as
these are."
With that the jolly tinker took a stroke or two most kindly.
With a thump, thump, thump and a nick-nak-knock, he did her
business finely.

As soon as he [Crock] had done the feat, he cried, "It's very
hot-O.
This thrifty labor makes me sweat. Give me a cooling pot-o."
Says she, "Bestow the other stroke before you take your
farewell
With a thump, thump, thump and a nick-nak-knock and you may
drink a barrel."

This is an intermediate form between the Child ballad and the modern song about a tinker "lashing piss against the wall." Published in Thomas D'Urfey's 1720 edition of Pills to Purge Melancholy, Vol VI, p. 296, its original title(s) was "The Traveling Tinker, and the Country Ale-Wife; or The Lucky Mending of the Leaky Copper."
¯ Until recently, it was believed to have fallen from oral tradition.
As "The Jolly Tinker&quot; however, this has enjoyed a resurrection in popularity, sung by strolling players and entertainers at Southern California's Renaissance Pleasure Faires. It was furnished in 1994 by Roger Gray, a Pasadena, California, attorney, who moonlights during summer months as one of these traveling minstrels, wearing authentic costume and singing these old ballads.
Gray learned the song from a tape recording made prior to 1990. (See too his versions of "The Baffled Knight" and "The Trooper and the Maid," below.)
It is interesting to note the working of oral/aural transmission even when, as in this instance, the singer is deliberately seeking to preserve or recreate the archaic.
In particular, incomprehensible words -- the last stanza's "crock," dialect for a metal pot -- shift to the understandable.
Legman asserts that Robert Burns' "Clout the Cauldron&quot; is the direct antecedent to "The Tinker" here. In fact, the Burns song itself is descended from "The Tinker" as printed in Merry Drollery of 1661, p. 134; and reprinted in John S. Farmer's Merry Songs and Ballads, Vol. I, pp. 142-147. That same volume, pp. 41-46, reprints the more likely progenitor of the modern bawdy song, "Room for a Jovial Tinker: Old Brass to Mend," from the Roxburghe Ballads, Vol. III, p. 230.

[ D ]

This is a rather more modern version, sent in an e-mail by Marc Ortlieb on June 15, 1996, with the following note:

"Damned if I can remember where this one came from. It's to the tune of
"Ghost Riders in the Sky." I vaguely remember singing it to fans in
Birmingham, Alabama, when I was over that way in 1981.

The editor has inserted punctuation.

A lady in a carriage was returning from a ball
,
When she came upon a tinker pissing up against the wall

Chorus

:
With his one long kidney wiper
,
And his balls as big as three
,
And a yard and a half of foreskin

Hanging down below his knee

(Add on alternate choruses)

Hanging low
,
Swinging free
,
With a yard and a half of foreskin

Hanging down below his knee

She dismounted from her carriage and to him she did say
,
"I'd rather have a tinker than a vicar any day

Chorus

Well, he mounted up his thoroughbred and to the hall did ride

With his prick upon the pommel and a ball on either side

Chorus

He dismounted from his thoroughbred and strode into the hall
.
"God help us!" cried the butler. "He's come to fuck us all!"

Chorus

Well, he fucked the fair young lady and he fucked the servants all

But the bumming of the butler was the bottler of them all.

Chorus

[ E ]

Similarly, version this from Air Force and hasher circles is sung to the same popular song melody, "Ghost Riders in the Sky." A headnote advises the singers "take turns leading verses." The chorus, with its "syphil-i-o, syphil-i-a" directly parodies "yippie-i-o, yippie-i-a" of the original song.

The lady of the manor
Was dressing for the ball (for the ball, for the ball),
When she spied a tinker,
Pissing up against the wall (against the wall, against the wall).

CHORUS:
With his great big kidney wiper,
And his balls the size of three,
And a yard and a half of foreskin (fiveskin, sixskin)
Hanging down below his knees.
Syphil-I-O, syphil-I-A,
Muff divers in the sky.

The lady wrote a letter,
And in it she did say,
"I'd rather be fucked by you, sir,
Then his lordship any day."

The tinker got the letter,
And then it he did read,
His balls began to fester,
And his prick began to bleed.

He mounted on his donkey,
And he rode up to the strand,
His balls across his shoulders,
And his penis in his hand.

He rode up to the mansion,
The rode up to the hall,
The butler cried, "God save us!
He's come to fuck us all!"

He fucked the cook in the kitchen,
He fucked the maid in the hall,
And then he fucked the butler,
The dirtiest trick of all.

And then he fucked the mistress,
In ten minutes she was dead,
With a yard and a half of foreskin,
Hanging round her head.

The tinker is now dead, sir,
They say he's gone to hell,
And there he fucks the devil,
I hope he fucks him well.

This is from Paul Woodford's large anthology of "Hash Hymns II," gathered while on tours of duty with the air force around the Pacific Basin, and published by Xerox in Honolulu, Hawaii, 1994.

The Tinker II

Mature reflection suggests that this is a secondary version of "The Tinker" rather than a variant of "The Tinker" as published in the second edition of The Erotic Muse.

Oh, there was a little tinker and he came from France;
He came to America to fiddle, fuck, and dance
With his long, lean liver,
Kidney-wash and baby maker
Hanging to his knees.

The ship that he came over on, the women were but few.
So first he fucked the captain and then he fucked the crew
With his long, etc.

The little tinker died and he went to hell;
He swore he'd fuck the Devil if he didn't treat him well.
With his long, etc.

"How do you do, Mr. Devil; God bless you to your soul.
Let me exercise my pecker in your hairy ass hole."
With his long, etc.

Then all the little devils went shouting through the hall,
"We'd better get him out of here before he fucks us all!"
With his long, etc.

J. Kenneth Larson's "Barnyard" typescript credits this to an otherwise unidentified Phenoi Deschamps. It was collected om southwestern Idaho sometime between 1920 and 1952.
It is unusual, in that it owes something to "The Farmer's Curst Wife&quot; (Child 278), in which the Devil makes off with the farmer's wife, takes her to hell, where she so asserts herself that the little devils fear she "will kill us all," and the Devil returns her to the farmer.