From the Belfast Newsletter, 26 May 1835
Katie Barclay wonders if any women took this advice and if so what the reaction was? She is a historian of marriage at the University of Warwick.
Why don’t the girls propose?
The men are shy- the ladies cry
Their minds they won’t disclose;
If it be so, I’d like to know
Why don’t the girls propose?
At splendid balls, in dazzling halls
amid a host o beaux,
with speaking eye and will-timed sighs
The ladies might propose.
Ye maidens fair, now laughing there,
So coyly with your beaux,
Take my advice, don’t be o’er nice,
They’ll wed- do you propose.
When Stern papas and cross mamas,
All marriage schemes oppose,
And beaux are shy, there’s no cause why
The belles should not propose.
Poor Martha Mears for forty years,
To wedlock was opposed;
But now she sighs, and whimpering cries,
“I wish I had proposed,”
To pity take, for Hymen’s sake,
On those unhappy beaux
Who are, poor elves, too shy themselves,
A marriage to propose.
Pray, ladies, do propose!
