Come all ye sailors bold, an’ when me tale is told, I know ye all will sadly pity me. Fer I wuz a darned young fool in the port o’ Liverpool, On the voyage when I first paid off from sea. Ooh! Maggie, Maggie Mae, they have taken ye away, Fer to slave upon Van Diemen’s cruel shore. Oh, ye robbed many a whaler - an’ many a drunken sailor, But ye’ll niver cruise down Paradise Street no more.
I paid off at the Home, from a trip from Sierra Leone, Two pound ten a month had been me pay. As it jingled in me tin, I wuz sadly taken in By a lady of the name of Maggie Mae.
When I steered down into her, I hadn’t any a care, I wuz cruisin’ up an’ down ol’ Canning Place. She wuz dressed in a gown so fine, like a frigate of the line, An’ bein’ a sailorman I gave ‘er chase.
She gave me a saucy nod, an’ I like a farmer’s clod, I let ‘er take me line abreast in tow. An’ under all plain sail, we ran before the gale, An’ to the Crow’s Nest Tavern did we go.
Next mornin’ when I woke, I found that I wuz broke, I hadn’t got a penny to me nyme. So I had to pop me suit, me Long Johns an’ me boots, down in the Park Lane pawn shop Number Nine.
Oh, you thievin’ Maggie Mae, ye robbed me of me pay, As I slept with you last night ashore, Oh, guilty the jury found ‘er, fer robbin’ a homeward-bounder, An’ she’ll niver sail down Paradise Street no more.
She wuz chained an’ sent away, from Liverpool that day, The lads they cheered as she sailed down the Bay. An’ every sailor lad, he only wuz too glad, They’d sent the ol’ whore out to Botany Bay.
