| lyric | When first I saw sweet Peggy
'twas on a market day.
A low backed car she drove,
and sat upon a truss of hay.
But when that hay was blooming
grass and deck’d with flowers of spring.
No flower was there that could compare
with the blooming flower I sing.
As she sat in her low-back’d car,
The man at the turnpike bar,
Never asked for his toll
but just rubbed his old pole
and looked after the low-backed car.
In battle’s wild commotion, the proud and mighty Mars
With hostile scythes demands the tithes of death
in warlike cars;
While Peggy, peaceful goddess, has darts in bright eye,
That knock men down in the market is town,
as right and left they fly;
While she sits in her low back’d ear,
Than battle more dangerous far,
For the doctor’s art cannot cure
The heart that is hit from the low back’d car.
Sweet Peggy round her car, sir, has strings of ducks and geese
But the scores of hearts she slaughters by far outnumbered these.
While she among her poultry sits, just like a turtle dove,
Well worth the cage, I do engage, of the blooming god of love:
While she sits in her low back’d car,
The lovers come near and far,
And envy the chicken that Peggy is picking,
As she sits in the low-back’d car.
I’d rather own that car, sir, with Peggy by my side,
Than a coach and four, and gold galore, and a lady for my bride;
For the lady would sit forenenst me on a cushion made with taste,
While Peggy would sit beside me with my arm around her waist:
While we drive in the low back’d car,
To be married by Father Mahar;
Oh, my heart would beat high at her glance and sigh,
Though it beat in a low-back’d car. |