Salt Horse, Salt Horse, both near and far, You're food for every hard work'd tar; In strongest brine you have been sunk, Until as hard and coarse as "Junk"; To eat such tough and wretched fare, Would whiten e'ev a Negro's hair, Salt Horse, Salt Horse, What brought you here Salt horse, salt horse, we'd have you know That to the "Galley" you must go; The cook without a sign of grief Will boild you down, and call you beef; And, we poor sailors standing near, Must eat you, though you look so queer; Salt horse, salt horse, that brought you here.
Old horse, old horse, what brought you here? You have been dead for many a year. You carted stones from Ballyhack Till you fell down and broke your back. You put up with sore abuse; Now you're salted down for sailors' use Who pick your bones and suck the juice. And if you don't believe it's true, Look in the harness cask and you'll find a horse and shoe!
Between the main-mast and the pumps There stands a cask of Irish junks; And if you won't believe it true, Look, and you'll see the hoof and shoe. Salt horse, salt horse, what brought you here, After carrying turf for so many a year, From Bantry Bay to Ballyack, Where you fell down and broke your back? With kicks, and thumps, and sore abuse, You're salted down for sailor's use. They eat your flesh and pick your bones, Then throw you over to Davy Jones.

Source: W. C. Russell, Sailors' Language (1883)

“Salt horse” is a term for salt meat, typically beef, but especially of bad quality. In the words of Gale Huntington, “how often it was salt horse is a good question.” Before being cooked, it was soaked for days in the “harness cask” on deck. After it was divided, Doerflinger writes, one of the crowd would hold his portion on the point of his sheath knife and recite some form of this traditional rhyme. Huntington gives a scrap from the 1842 voyage log of the ship Carthage.

Junk, in Tover & Davis’s version, is old, condemned rope.

The galley is the cook-house on board a ship.

As for loathsome sea fare, W. C. Russell gives the names of several contemptible dishes: “lobscouse”, “dandy-funk”, “dogsbody”, “seapie”, “choke-dog”, “twice-laid”, and “hishee-hashee”.