Mousehole. A snippet from A Filigree of Gold.
By P.B. Phillips

The band played a simple tune and Isaac began one of his little comic songs;

‘In Launceston we have a little pamphlet’,

‘that we give to travelers heading further west’

‘A warning of What’s to come’,

‘We think it kind, and we think it best’.

‘It is written:'

‘There is a little town’

‘Small and tucked away.’

‘Best avoid it dear travelers’

‘It’s called Mousehole Bay.’

‘A population of munters’

‘Every child’s a lump.’

‘Mothers and fathers, all related’

‘The family tree’s a stump.’

‘The little rhyme took’

‘Everyone that read it laughed.’

‘Travelers indeed avoided poor Mousehole’

‘Its economy almost halved.’

‘By-and-by, the Mousehole folk were sick and tired’

‘of their unwanted reputation.’

‘Their mayor thought long and hard,’

‘and wrote to the King; a little disputation.’

‘Bring us your outcasts.’

‘Your ugly, your retarded,’

‘Your inbred, your deformed.’

‘Here they’ll have no shame’

‘No reason to feel forlorned.’

‘All of us are hideous,’

‘Repulsive to outsider’s nose and eye’

‘All are proud to call Mousehole;’

‘Our home,’

‘Our land,’

‘Our little,’

‘Cornish Pigsty.’

‘The King read the mayor’s note’

‘and took it as a boast’.

‘Now everyone calls Mousehole’

‘The center of the inbred Cornish coast!’