[
{"created_timestamp": "01-01-1719", "downloaded_timestamp": "10-18-2021", "url": "https://founders.archives.gov/API/docdata/Franklin/01-01-02-0007", "content": "Title: The Taking of Teach the Pirate, 1719\nFrom: Franklin, Benjamin\nTo: \nThe second ballad which Franklin wrote and hawked through the streets of Boston was \u201ca Sailor Song on the Taking of Teach or Blackbeard the Pirate.\u201d This may have been written in March 1719, after the Boston News-Letter carried a full account of the last fight and death of Captain Edward Teach on November 22, 1718. In the middle of the nineteenth century the Boston physician George Hayward remembered a stanza which he thought was part of Franklin\u2019s ballad:\nSo each man to his gun,\nFor the work must be done\nWith cutlass, sword, or pistol.\nAnd when we no longer can strike a blow,\nThen fire the magazine, boys, and up we go!\nIt\u2019s better to swim in the sea below\nThan to swing in the air and feed the crow,\nSays jolly Ned Teach of Bristol.\nIn 1898 Edward Everett Hale (\u201cBen Franklin\u2019s Ballads,\u201d New England Magazine, XXIV, 505\u20137) suggested that the verses Franklin composed were actually those entitled \u201cThe Downfal of Pyracy,\u201d printed in The Worcestershire Garland (Newcastle, 1765?) and reprinted in John Ashton, ed., Real Sailor-Songs (London, 1891), p. 79. Nothing in the ballad is inconsistent with this view. The first stanza is:\nWill you hear of a bloody Battle,\nLately fought upon the Seas,\nIt will make your Ears to rattle,\nAnd your Admiration cease:\nHave you heard of Teach the Rover,\nAnd his Knavery on the Main;\nHow of Gold he was a Lover,\nHow he loved ill got Gain.", "culture": "English", "source_dataset": "Pile_of_Law", "source_dataset_detailed": "Pile_of_Law_founding_docs", "source_dataset_detailed_explanation": "Letters from U.S. founders.", "creation_year": 1719}
]