My father was the keeper of the Eddystone light,
And he slept with a mermaid one fine night,
And of that union there came three,
A porky and a porpoise and the other was me.
Yo ho ho, the wind blows free,
Oh for a life on the rolling sea.
Late one night when I was a trimmin' of the glim,
And singing a verse of the evening hymn,
A voice from the starboard shouted "Ahoy,"
And there was my mother, sitting on a buoy.
"Oh what has become of my children three,"
My mother then she asked of me,
"Oh, one was exhibited as a talking fish,
The other was served on a chafing dish."
The phosphorus flashed in her seaweed hair,
I looked again and my mother wasn't there,
A voice came echoing out of the night,
"To hell with the keeper of the Eddystone Light."