Never was there a more popular song: you heard it everywhere.

I recollect one verse: 'O Saturday money is slippery metal, And Saturday ale it is tipsy stuff At home the old woman is boiling her kettle, She thinks we don't know when we've tippled enough.
We drink, and of never a man are we jealous, And never a man against us will he speak For who can be hard on a set of poor fellows Who only see Saturday once a week! You chorus the last two lines.
That was the very song the unfortunate coachman of Kirby Hall joined in singing before he went out to face his end for the woman he loved.

He believed in her virtue to the very last.
'The ravished wife of my bosom,' he calls her all through the latter half of the play.

It is a real tragedy.

The songs of that day have lost their effect now, I suppose.