Ballad of “Molasses Bill”

                                                            By Joe Cone

I wonder if you’ve ever heard of old “Molasses Bill”,

Who used to live in Gungawamp just south o’ “Miller’s Hill”?

He was as queer a popinjay as ever crooked his arm,

An’ though he never did much good ‘twas said he did no harm.

He had peculiar notions did this old “Molasses Bill”;

For years he’d ‘lieved molasses was a cure for ev’ry ill.

For toothache or consumption Bill would always recommend

A dose of black molasses to his enemy or friend.

Bill never used to labor cuz he said life was too short

To waste  his precious moments with a job of any sort,

An’ how he got a livin’ was a sort of mystery

To which the native Gungyites could never find the key.

Each day he come along the road about a certain time,

Bound for the village gin saloon with all its liquor prime,

Oft stoppin’ on the way along if anyone was sick

To leave a sample of his cure, molasses black an’ thick.

“I tell you,” said “Molasses Bill”, “don’t matter what you’ve got,

Molasses is a certain cure, an’ cures you on the spot;

I had an uncle, once,” said he, “was shipwrecked on an isle

Down round West Injys, so he said, an’ lived there quite a while

Afore a vessel took him off, an’ all the cure they had

The natives there, for all their ills, an’ some was pretty bad,

Was jist molasses ev’rywhere, molasses for a chill,

Molasses for the yaller jack,” said ol’ “Molasses Bill”.

The fellers round the gin saloon got tired of Bill’s old game,

Got tired of treatin’ him each round, An ev’ry day the same;

Says one: “If that will cure disease the way he says it will,

Why won’t it cure the gin complaint that’s got a-holt of Bill?”

An’ so they conjured up a scheme, next time he come down town

They’d fill him up with all the stuff that he could swaller down,

An’ then they’d give him sech a dose of his molasses cure

That he would never drink again while (blank) should endure.

An’ sure enough, when Bill came down they filled him to the brim

An’ took him to a barn close by an’ stripped him arm an’ limb,

An’ bathed him in molasses there the blackest they could buy

Until he was the sweetest thing that ever met the eye.

They rubbed his ears an’ whiskers full, his eyebrows an’ his hair,

Then left him on the hay to sleep an’ wake in his own despair.

An’ wake he did the commin’ morn, but words can ne’er portray

The tortures an’ the hours of math that Bill went through that day.

He came half-clad in hay an’ clothes up through the village street,

A-tryin’ hard to dodge each man or woman he would meet;

He raved an’ swore he’d spend his life in runnin’ down the crew

Who gave him that molasses bath, the gist of which is true.

An’ Bill was cured of drinkin’ gin, an’ cured for ever more

Of talkin of his molasses cure in bar-room, street an’ store.

An’ though he lived to good ol’ age, an’s still ‘neath Miller’s Hill,

He never lost the sobriquet of ol’ “Molasses Bill”.

Feb. 24, ‘10

pop·in·jay    [pop-in-jey] –noun

1. a person given to vain, pretentious displays and empty chatter; coxcomb; fop. 2. British Dialect. a woodpecker, esp. the green woodpecker. 3 Archaic. the figure of a parrot usually fixed on a pole and used as a target in archery and gun shooting. 4. Archaic. a parrot.

Origin: 1275–1325; ME papejay, popingay, papinjai(e) < MF papegai, papingayparrot < Sp papagayo < Ar bab(ba)ghā'