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Last week I went down to Fogo,
Invited by friends to the Bay,
You're happened along just in time, sir,
There's a wedding is held on this day;
Betsy Stringer got married to Bill 'Effy,
They asked me that night to partake;
A gift from the bride was a-offered,
A cut of rich wedding cake.
There was insides of old concertinas,
And keys of second-hand flutes,
Trout hooks and bladders of putty,
And frosters and sealer's skin boots;
There was taxes and tails of tom-cods,
Herring and six bullocks' tongues;
You were forced to sing the sky-rocket
If a mouthful get caught on your lungs.
Every one in the house tried to cut it,
At last married men and their wives,
Till the legs fell from under the table,
And the handles fell off of their knives;
They brought in an old rusty cross-cut,
Two men got into the saw,
Not a budge could they get from the pastry,
Till a man took a cramp in his jaw.
The b'ys got 'round it with crow-bars,
For to stir it the most of them tried,
They loaded an old rusty cannon,
For to blow a spot off of the side;
I rushed like a tiger to eat it,
Myself being so raw for a taste,
My tooth crumbled off on a button
Of a trouser rolled up on the waist.
Johnny Burke (1851-1930) of St. John's, NL, wrote a song along a similar theme but with a different tune which was published as Trinity Cake in Gerald S. Doyle's Old-Time Songs And Poetry Of Newfoundland: Songs Of The People From The Days Of Our Forefathers (Third edition, p.62, 1955).
Kenneth Peacock noted that this native comic ditty is a good illustration of how a type of Irish humour has influenced local composition. Peacock suggested both Leather Britches and Grandfather Bryan for Irish examples.
