Nicholas Folwell Follow

OH! a private buffoon is a light hearted loon if you listen to popular rumour;
From the morn to the night he's so joyous and bright and he bubbles with wit and good humour!
He's so quaint and so terse, both in prose and in verse, yet though people forgive his transgressions;
There are one or two rules that all family fools must observe if they love their profession!
There are one or two rules, half a dozen maybe, that all family fools of what ever degree, must observe if they love their profession.

If you wish to succeed as a jester you'll need to consider each person's auricular:
What is all right for B would quite scandalize C for C is so very particular;
And D may be dull and E's very thick skull is as empty of brains as a ladle;
While F is F sharp and will cry with a carp that he's known your best joke from his cradle!
When your humour they flout, you can't let yourself go and it does put you out when person says, "Oh! I've known that old joke from my cradle!"

If your master is surly from getting up early (and tempers are short in the morning;)
An inopportune joke is enough to provoke him to give you at once a month's warning.
Then if you refrain he is at you again for he likes to get value for money;
He'll ask then and there, with an insolent stare, if you know that your paid to be funny.
It adds to the task of a merry-man's place when your principal asks with a scowl on his face,
If you know that you're paid to be funny.

Comes a Bishop, maybe, or a solemn D.D. Oh, beware of his anger provoking!
Better not pull his hair, don't stick pins in his chair: he don't understand practical joking.
If the jests that you crack have an orthodox smack, you may get a bland smile form these sages;
but should they by chance be imported from France, half a crown is stopped of from your wages!
It's a general rule, though your zeal it may quench, if the family fool tells a joke that's too French,
half a crown is stopped out of his wages!

Though your head it may rack with a bilious attack,and your senses with tooth ache your losing,
don't be mopy and flat, they don't fine you for that, if your properly quaint and amusing!
Though your wife ran away with a soldier that day and took with her your trifle of money;
Bless your heart, they don't mind, they're exceedingly kind, they don't blame you as long as you're funny!
It's a comfort to feel if your partner should flit, though you suffer a deal, they don't mind it a bit,
they don't blame you so long as your funny!