The Poems of Jonathan Swift

-A Ballad to the tune of the Cutpurse

[1] WRITTEN IN AUGUST, 1702

[Footnote 1: Lady Betty Berkeley, finding the preceding verses in the author's room unfinished, wrote under them the concluding stanza, which gave occasion to this ballad, written by the author in a counterfeit hand, as if a third person had done it.--Swift.

The Cut-Purse is a ballad sung by Nightingale, the ballad-singer, in Ben Jonson's "Bartholomew Fair," Act III, Sc. I. The burthen of the ballad is:

"Youth, youth, thou had'st better been starv'd by thy nurse

Than live to be hang'd for cutting a purse."--W. E. B.]