Lyrics:
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There was a rare ratcatcher,
Did about the country wander;
The soundest blade of all his trade,
Or I should him deeply slander:
Chorus
For still would he cry,
caught a rat, caught a rat,
caught a rat, Tara rat ever:
To catch a mouse, or to carouse,
Such a ratter I saw never.
Upon a pole he carried
Full forty fullsome vermin,
Whose cursed lives without any knives
To take he did determine.
Chorus
His talk was all of India,
The voyage and the Navy,
What mice or rats or wild polecats,
What stoats of weasels have ye.
Chorus
He knew the Nut of India,
That makes the Magpie stagger:
The Mercuries and Cantharies,
With Arsnicke and Roseaker.
Chorus
Full often with a Negro,
The Juice of Poppies drunk he:
Eat Poison frank with a Mountebanke,
And Spiders with a Monkey.
Chorus
In London he was well known:
In many a stately House
He lays a Bait; whose deadly fate,
Did kill both Ratt and Mouse.
Chorus
But on a time, a Damsel,
Did him so far enticed,
That for her, a Bait he laid straight,
Would kill no Rats nor Mice.
Chorus
And on the Bait she nibbled,
So pleasing in her taste,
She licked so long, that the Poison strong,
Did make her swell i'th waist.
Chorus
He eventually this perceiving,
To the Country straight doth hie him:
Where by his skill, he poisoneth still,
Such Vermine as come nie him.
Chorus
He never careth whether
He be sober, lame, or tipsie:
He can Collogue with any Rogue,
And Cant with any Gipsie.
Chorus
He was so brave a boozer,
That it was doubtful whether
He taught the Rats, or the Rats taught him,
to be drunck as Rats, together.
Chorus
When he had tript this Island,
From Bristow unto Dover ,
With painful Bagge and painted Flagg,
to France he sailed over.
Chorus
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