A Change! The Lusty Young Smith.

Lyrics courtesy of Songs of and About Elizabethan Times.



A lusty young smith at his vise stood a filing,


His hammer laid by but his forge still aglow,


When to him a buxom young damsel came smiling and asked if to work at her forge he would go.


With a jingle, bang jingle, bang jingle, bang jingle,


With a jingle, bang jingle, bang jingle, hi ho!


“I will,” said the smith, and they went off together
Along to the young damsel’s forge they did go,
They stripped to go to it, ’twas hot work and hot weather;
She kindled a fire and she soon made him blow.


Her Husband, she said, no good work could afford her;
His strength and his tools were worn out long ago.
The smith said, “Well mine are in very good order,
And now I am ready my skill for to show
Red hot grew his iron, as both did desire
and he was to wise not too strike while ’twas so.
Quoth she, “What I get, I get out of the fire,
Then prithee, strike hard and redouble the blow.”




Six times did his iron, by vigorous heating
Grow soft in the forge in a minute or so,
And often was hardened, still beating and beating,
But each time it softened it hardened more slow.




The smith then would go; quoth the dame, full of sorrow,
“Oh, what would I give, could my husband do so!
Good lad, with your hammer come hither tomorrow
But, pray, can’t you use it one more, ere you go?”


This song first appeared in Thomas D’Urfey’s ‘Wit and Mirth: Pills to Purge Melancholy’ in 1698.
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