Rewards and Fairies - Penn State University

King Henry VII and the Shipwrights
HARRY our King in England from London town is gone,
And comen to Hamull on the Hoke in the countie of
Suthampton.
For there lay the Mary of the Tower, his ship of war so strong,
And he would discover, certaynely, if his shipwrights did him
wrong.
He told not none of his setting forth, nor yet where he would go
(But only my Lord of Arundel), and meanly did he show,
In an old jerkin and patched hose that no man might him mark;
With his frieze hood and cloak about, he looked like any clerk.
He was at Hamull on the Hoke about the hour of the tide,
And saw the Mary haled into dock, the winter to abide,
With all her tackle and habiliments which are the King his own;
But then ran on his false shipwrights and stripped her to the bone.
They heaved the main-mast overboard, that was of a trusty tree,
And they wrote down it was spent and lost by force of weather
Rudyard Kipling
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at sea.
But they sawen it into planks and strakes as far as it might go,
To maken beds for their own wives and little children also.
There was a knave called Slingawai, he crope beneath the deck,
Crying: ‘Good felawes, come and see! The ship is nigh a wreck!
For the storm that took our tall main-mast, it blew so fierce
and fell,
Alack! it hath taken the kettles and pans, and this brass pott as
well!’
With that he set the pott on his head and hied him up the
hatch,
While all the shipwrights ran below to find what they might
snatch;
All except Bob Brygandyne and he was a yeoman good,
He caught Slingawai round the waist and threw him on to
the mud.
‘I have taken plank and rope and nail, without the King his leave,
After the custom of Portesmouth, but I will not suffer a thief.