Tobacco is Like Love

This is from An Elizabethan Song Book, ed. Noah Greenberg, Doubleday 1955). The infamous Catherine de Medici cured her headaches using a snuff tobacco; she was introduced to the stuff by the French ambassador to Spain: Jean Nicot. (I don't have to explain that further, do I?) Thomas Harriot (the mathematician) Thomas Harriot, the English mathematician who was also part of the first Roanoke colony (the one that demanded return to England; Drake obliged them) said its virtues could fill a book. Meanwhile James I, called by Henry IV of France “the wisest fool in Christendom,” wrote a treatise decrying the “stinking subfumigation” of tobacco.

Tobacco, tobacco

Sing sweetly for tobacco

Tobacco is like love

Oh love it

For you see I will prove it

Love maketh lean the fat man's tumor

So doth tobacco

Love still dries up the wanton humor

So doth tobacco

Love makes men sail from shore to shore

So doth tobacco

Tis fond love often makes men poor