My father was the keeper of the Eddystone light
And he slept with a mermaid one fine night
Out of this union there came three
A porpoise and a porgy and the other was me!
Yo ho ho, the wind blows free,
Oh for the life on the rolling sea*!*
One night, as I was a-trimming the glim
Singing a verse from the evening hymn
I heard a voice cry out "Ahoy!"
And there was my mother, sitting on a buoy.
"Oh, what has become of my children three?"
My mother then inquired of me.
“One's on exhibit as a talking fish
The other was served in a chafing dish.”
Then the phosphorus flashed in her seaweed hair.
I looked again, and my mother wasn't there
But her voice came angrily out of the night
"To Hell with the keeper of the Eddystone Light!"