rue loving daughter, with God to fear,
A dutiful wife, and a mother dear;
With a heart to feel and a bosom to sigh,
She had tears to weep, she had tears to dry.

III.

All was joyful--all delectation,
In creatures who prayed to their Maker each morn,
That there was to be a grand incremation
Of a poor fellow-creature, old, weary, and worn.
All pity is drowned in a wild devotion,
A grim savage joy within every breast;
The streets are all in a buzzing commotion,
Expectant of this worse than cannibal feast.
From the provost down to the gaberlunzie,
From fat Mess John to half-fed Bill,
From hoary grand-dad to larking loonie,
From silken-clad dame to scullion Nell;
The oldest, the youngest, the richest, the poorest,
The milky-breasted, the barren, the yeld,
The hardest, the softest, the blithest, the dourest,
Are all by the same wild passion impelled.
If her skin it is wrinkled--ah, God forefend her!
The wild lapping flame will soon make it shrink;
If her eyes are dim and rheumy and tender,
The adder-tongued flames will soon make her wink.
If brown now her breasts--once globes of beauty!
The roasting will char them into a black heap;
If trembling her limbs, the prickers' loved duty
Will be to compel her to dance and to leap.
The harlequin Man has doffed his jacket,
No pity to feel--he has none to give;
The Bible has said it, and so thou must take it,
"Thou shalt not allow a witch to live."

IV.

On the long red sands of old Dundee,
Out at the hem of the ebbing sea,
They have fixed a long pole deep in the sand,
And around it have piled with deftly hand
The rosined staves of the Noraway wood,
Four feet high and four feet broad,
To burn, amidst flames of burning pitch,
So rare a chimera yclept a witch--
Born of a fancy wild and camstary,
Like ghost or ghoul, brownie or fairy.
The prickers are there, each with long-pronged fork,
Yearning and yape for their hellish work,
And the priests and friars, black, white, or grey,
All ready to preach the black devil away.
Yea, devils are there, more than they opine.
Even one under every gabardine;
And there is a crowd of every degree:
The urchins, all laughing with mirth and glee;
And pipers and jangleurs might there be seen,
And cummers and mummers in red and green,
All cheery and merry and void of care,
As if they were going to Rumbollow Fair.

V.

Ho! yonder comes from the emptying town
A crowd of five thousand all rushing down;
They hurry, t