When You Had Left Our Pirate Fold

[RUTH]
When you had left our pirate fold,
We tried to raise our spirits faint
According to our customs old,
With quip and quibbles quaint
But all in vain the quips we heard,
We lay and sobb'd upon the rocks,
Until to somebody occurred a startling paradox

[FREDERIC]
A paradox?

[RUTH]
A paradox a most ingenious paradox!
We've quips and quibbles heard in flocks,
But none to beat this paradox!

[RUTH, FREDERIC & PIRATE KING]
A paradox, a paradox,
A most ingenious paradox
Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha!
This paradox!

[PIRATE KING]
We knew your taste for curious quips,
For cranks and contradictions queer;
And with the laughter on your lips
We wish'd you there to hear
We said "if we could tell it him,
How Fre'ric would the joke enjoy"
And so we've risk'd both life and limb
To tell it to our boy!

[FREDERIC]
A paradox?

[PIRATE KING]
A paradox a most ingenious paradox!
We've quips and quibbles heard in flocks,
But none to beat this paradox!

[RUTH, FREDERIC & PIRATE KING]
A paradox, a paradox,
A most ingenious paradox
Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha!
This paradox!

[PIRATE KING]
For some ridiculous reason, to which however, I've no desire to be disloyal, some person in authority-- I don't know who--very likely the Astronomer Royal, has decided, that, although for such a beastly month as February, twenty-eight days as a rule are plenty: One year in every four his days shall be reckoned as nine and twenty. Through some singular coincidence--I shouldn't be surprised if it were owing to the agency of an ill-natured fairy, you are the victim of this clumsy arrangement, having been born in leap year on the twenty-ninth of February. And so, by a simple arithmetical process, you'll easily discover, that tho' you've lived twenty-one years, yet, if we go by birthdays, you're only five and a little bit..
Over!

[RUTH & PIRATE KING]
Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha!
Ho, ho, ho, ho!

[FREDERIC]
Dear me, let's see!
Yes, yes, with yours my figured do agree!

[RUTH & PIRATE KING]
Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha!

[FREDERIC]
How quaint the ways of paradox!
At common sense she gaily mocks!
Though counting in the usual way,
Years twenty-one I've been alive,
Yet, reck'ning by my natal day,
Yet, reck'ning by my natal day,
I am a little boy of five.

[RUTH & PIRATE KING]
He is a little boy of five!

[RUTH, FREDERIC & PIRATE KING]
Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha!
That paradox, that paradox,
That most ingenious paradox,
Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha!
That paradox!
Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha!
That curious paradox!
Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha!
That most ingenious paradox!