There's an argument unfinished
'twixt his lordship and the judge,
And the doctor takes a hand in
for to settle an old grudge;
It's about this Cabot landfall
they are making such a racket,
Some say he came as passenger
in Billy Coady's packet.
Some say 'twas Bonavista
he discovered after tea,
And more say 'twas Tommy Hawsays,
Bonavista's Sigaree.
"Sure I turned a coat for Cabot,"
says a woman on the settle,
"By the same he drank that evening
what cold tea was in the kettle;
And he eat enough pancakes
and pigs-heads in the larder,
For to feed the population
of Quebec and Moreton's Harbour.
"I remember well John Cabot
when he hadn't got a dollar,
And he used a wart was on his neck
to button on his collar;
And a shocking hand for smoking,
and a devil for tobaccy,
With a scattered foxey whisker
like an Upper Island cracky."
"I was to the ice with Cabot,"
says a man from Tilton Harbour,
"He was two springs in the Walrus
and another with Joe Barbour;
And another spring with Foley
in a schooner called the Blinker,
That's the spring the crew turned manus,
they said Cabot was a jinker."
"Sure I went to school with Cabot,"
says a man named Billy Brandon,
"It was called the Orphan Asylum
where St Patrick's Hall is standing;
He was duller than molasses,
and his tongue was like a clapper,
And his fingers were all broken
from the master's hardwood slapper."
"Sure I know John Cabot's mother,"
says a spinster named Kate Abbott,
"And her name is Patricia Morgan,
that's before she married Cabot;
I remember her three sisters:
Mary, Joe and Julia Johnson,
And another married Flavin
that was living in Wisconsin.
"I remembered well John Cabot,
in his younger days was a draper,
And the first that I remember
for to start a Sunday paper;
He was doing fine for one week,
and his business it was rising,
When the government had set in
and it stopped his advertising."
"I remember well John Cabot,"
says a woman from Seattle,
"Sure he worked two years at Pitt's
twisting tails and driving cattle;
And his father, old Sebastian,
came to live with Betsy Spooner,
And he'd drink enough of whisky
for to float a Yankee schooner."
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