The Cheaters Cheated: I. The Friar and the Nun

Tune: The Friar and the Nun

Nim: Good morrow fellow Filcher,

What, do we sink or swim?

Thou look’st so like a Pilcher—

Filch: Good morrow fellow Nim,

The Devil’s in our destiny,

I cannot get a pluck

Nim: No, surely if the Devil were in’t

We should have better luck.

Filch: What Star is my director,

I am in such a state?

Nim: Nay prethe brother Hector

Do not fall out with fate;

For we are Fortune’s minions

And fight under her banner,

’Tis she is queen of all the world

Filch: A mischief light upon her.

Filch: No money is reveal’d yet

I wonder where it lingers?

Nim: The souldier hath conceal’d it

Tis fast in iron fingers

From whence, if we could get it

By fury or by fraud,

We had as good attempt to pick

The pocket of a baud. [thieves’ cant for ‘magistrate’]

Filch: Your roaring cavalier

Who, when he had the chink,

Would bravely domineer

In dicing, drabs and drink,

Go ask him now for money

And he hath none at all

But cries: ’Tis in my Compting House

In Haberdashers Hall! [a financial centre during Civil War]

Nim: Our sly trappanning [conning, trickery] trade

Maintain’d with so much fury

Is openly bewray’d

Both by the judge and jury

For lawyers have so many quirks

And are such curious skanners [scrutinisers]

That they grow cunninger than we

And do trappan trappanners.

Filch: Our dyceing trade is down too,

For when we do begin

By drilling wayes, to draw

A yonger brother in,

The souldier falls upon us

And proves the best projector [money-making schemer]

Nim: Faith, every Red-coat now can make

A puppy of a Hector.

They spy Wat

Filch: Stay, prethee who comes here?

Nim: A gaping Country Clown.

Filch: Look how the slave doth stare;

Nim: He’s newly come to town

Filch: He gazeth in the air as if

The sky was full of rockets

Let’s fleece him. Nim: But how shall we get

His hands out of his pockets?

Filch: Let me alone for that:

I lately bought a glass, [cut glass prism, sold as a curiosity at fairs]

Wherein all several colours may

Be seen that ever was,

If held up thus with both hands.

Nim: A pretty new design,

This trick will fetch his fingers out—

Filch: And hey, then in go mine!