So, we'll go no more a roving the latter part of it, and sitting up late o' nights--had knocked me up a little. But it is over--and it is now Lent, with all its abstinence and sacred music... Though I did not dissipate much upon the whole, yet I find 'the sword wearing out the scabbard,' though I have but just turned the corner of twenty nine." The poem seems to have been suggested in part by the refrain of a Scottish song known as "The Jolly Beggar." The Jolly Beggar was published in Herd's "Scots Songs" in 1776, 41 years before Byron's letter, and goes partially
Jolly Roving Tar as the sailors rowed away, she wav'd her lily hand,<br> "Farewell, ye girls of Liverpool, I fear no wound nor scar."<br> And away went pretty Susan to her jolly, roving Tar. Jolly Roving Tar Jolly Roving Tar is a traditional Newfoundland folk song. In its 19th-century version, the song relates the story of Susan, lamenting the wanderings of her beloved "tar", or sailor, William, who is at sea, and deciding to follow him in her father's boat. The title is also applied to the folk song* "Get up, Jack! John, sit down!", a reel of unknown provenance in which some,