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I Am the King and Prince of Drinkers
Last updated: 22.01.22
I Am the King and Prince of Drinkers, a great old drinking song can be found as song XLII in Joseph Ritson's A Select Collection of English Songs Vol. 2: Drinking Songs (1783). It is boastful song of the singer and his friend and their insatiable thirst for any manner of alcohol out-supping all and sundry. Great stuff indeed!

This song is included in We're Only Here For The Beer! - Light by Dr. Rosteck and myself.
Please note that when reading the letter s is printed as an f. Confused? Please see below:
I am the king and prince of drinkers, Ranting, rattling, jovial boys :
We defpife your fullen thinkers, And fill the tavern with our noife.
We fing and we roar, And we drink and call for more,
And make more noife than twenty can; 'Tis therefore all we fwear,
That the man who knows no caret He only deferves the name of a man.

My friend and I we drank whole pifspots Full of fack up to the brim:
I drank to my friend, and he drank his pot, So we put about the whim:
Three bottles and a quart, We fwallow'd down our throat,
But hang fuch puny fips as thefe; We laid us all along,
With our mouths unto the bung, And tipp'd whole hogmeads off with eafe.

I heard of a fop that drank whole tankards, Stil'd himfelf the prince of fots :
But I fay now hang fuch filly drunkards, Melt their flaggons, break their pots.
My friend and I did join For a cellar full of wine,
And we drank the vintner out of door ; We drank it all up,
In the morning, at a fup, And greedily rov'd about for more.
My friend to me did make this motion, Let us to the vintage fkip :
Then we embark'd upon the ocean, Where we found a Spanifh fhip,
Deep laden with wine, Which was fuperfine,
The failors fwore five hundred tun; We drank it all at fea,
Ere we came unto the key, And the merchant fwore he was quite undone.

My friend, not having quench'd his thirft. Said, let us to the vineyards hafte :
Straight then we fail'd to the Canaries, Which afforded juft a tafte ;
From thence unto the Rhine, Where we drank up all the wine,
'Till Bacchus cried, Hold, ye fots, or ye die ; And fwore he never found,
In his univerfal round, Such thirfty fouls as my friend and I.

Out, fie ! cries one, what a beaft he makes him! He can neither ftand nor go.
Out, you bead you, you're much miftaken, Whene'er knew you a beaft drink fo
'Tis when we drink the leaft, That we drink moft like a beaft ;
But when we caroufe it fix in hand, 'Tis then, and only then,
That we drink the moft like men, When we drink till we can neither go nor ftand.
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The answer lies in the fact that that's not an F at all. It's actually a letter called the medial S, also known as the long S, which was a second form of the lowercase letter S. This old-fashioned letter has a long history. It's derived from the Roman cursive S and it survived as the Old English S, then onward through the history of English orthography until the 1800s.