Then old Mother Brown got the horrors around her:
(I think it was pineapple rum drove her daft)
She cleared out one night, and next morning they found her,
A mummified mass, in a forty-foot shaft.
And Sammy? Well, Sammy was wailing and weeping,
And raving, and raising the devil’s own row:
He was only too glad to give into our keeping
His motherless babe—we’d have kept her till now;
But Jimmy Maloney thought proper to court her:
Among all the lasses he loved but this one:
She’s no longer Polly, our golden-haired daughter;
She’s Mrs. Maloney, of Packsaddle Run.
Our little girl Polly’s no end of a swell (you
Must know Jimmy shears fifty thousand odd sheep)—
But I’m clean off the track: I was going to tell you
The way in which Polly paid us for her keep.
It was this way: My wife’s living in Tumbarumba,
And I’m down at Germanton yards, for a sale,
Inspecting coach-horses (I wanted a number)
When they flashed down a message that made me turn pale.
’Twas from Polly, to say that the old wife had fallen
Down-stairs, and in falling had fractured a bone:
There was no doctor nearer than Tumut to call on,
So she and the blacksmith had set it alone.
