A Song made by a Flash Cove the Evening before his Execution.
My blowen came here t'other night,
She fetch'd us a jorum of diddle,
To the prisoners it gave great delight,
And we hoppd it away to the fiddle.
But our trade of diving doth fail,
My blowen has chang'd habitations;
For now she pads in the gaol,
And laughs at the flats of the nation.
But at length the dull-gown's-man comes in
And tips me soft tales of repentance,
When on him I do cast my brow,
I care not one fig for his sentence.
By th' gullet I'll be ty'd very tight
To-morrow:--my blowen pray for us,
My peepers will be hid from the light,
The tumbler shoves off, so I morris.
... as presented by Thomas Mount shortly before he was hanged at Little
Rest, Rhode Island, in 1791.
I think this may be the earliest poem which mentions blowens. Possibly even
the earliest text, if we exclude Thomas Shadwell in _The Squire of Alsatia_
(1688), who refers to the ladies (as does Byron) as "blowings".
RH.
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