Burlesques William Makepeace Thackeray

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One evening—it was the evening of the 27th March, 1199, indeed—his Majesty, who was
in the musical mood, treated the court with a quantity of his so-called composition, until the
people were fairly tired of clapping with their hands and laughing in their sleeves. First he
sang an ORIGINAL air and poem, beginning
"Cherries nice, cherries nice, nice, come choose,
Fresh and fair ones, who'll refuse?" &c.
The which he was ready to take his affidavit he had composed the day before yesterday.
Then he sang an equally ORIGINAL heroic melody, of which the chorus was
"Rule Britannia, Britannia rules the sea,
For Britons never, never, never slaves shall be," &c.
The courtiers applauded this song as they did the other, all except Ivanhoe, who sat without
changing a muscle of his features, until the King questioned him, when the knight, with a
bow said "he thought he had heard something very like the air and the words elsewhere."
His Majesty scowled at him a savage glance from under his red bushy eyebrows; but
Ivanhoe had saved the royal life that day, and the King, therefore, with difficulty controlled
his indignation.
"Well," said he, "by St. Richard and St. George, but ye never heard THIS song, for I
composed it this very afternoon as I took my bath after the melee. Did I not, Blondel?"
Blondel, of course, was ready to take an affidavit that his Majesty had done as he said, and
the King, thrumming on his guitar with his great red fingers and thumbs, began to sing out
of tune and as follows:—
"COMMANDERS OF THE FAITHFUL.
"The Pope he is a happy man,
His Palace is the Vatican,
And there he sits and drains his can:
The Pope he is a happy man.
I often say when I'm at home,
I'd like to be the Pope of Rome.
"And then there's Sultan Saladin,
That Turkish Soldan full of sin;
He has a hundred wives at least,
By which his pleasure is increased: