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Ulysses vocabulary

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The Night Before Larry Was Stretched: tags: [music]

► definition

Definition:

an Irish execution ballad written in the Newgate cant.
[...]
Donagh MacDonagh gives the following sleeve note 'One of a group of Execution Songs written in Newgate Cant or Slang Style in the 1780s, others being The Kilmainham Minuet, Luke Caffrey's Ghost and Larry's Ghost in which, as promised in the seventh stanza of the present ballad, Larry comes "in a sheet to sweet Molly"!' The Newgate Cant or Slang Style is not unique to Dublin and all the cant and slang is to be found in Partridge's A Dictionary of Slang and Unconventional English (1937). Nubbing cheat or Nubbin chit is cant for the gallows, while Darkmans is cant for night.

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► uses

Uses:

Considerable amusement was caused by the favourite Dublin streetsingers L-n-h-n and M-ll-g-n who sang The Night before Larry was stretched in their usual mirth-provoking fashion.

James Joyce. Ulysses

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The Night Before Larry was Stretched (first stanza)

The night before Larry was stretch’d,

The boys they all paid him a visit;

A bit in their sacks, too, they fetch’d—

They sweated their duds till they riz it;

For Larry was always the lad,

When a friend was condemn’d to the squeezer,

But he’d pawn, all the togs that he had,

Just to help the poor boy to a sneezer,

And moisten his gob ’fore he died.