Dunbar's treatment of his subject is very similar to that of the nameless author of the 'Moralite des Blasphemateurs' which we have previously noticed. He supposes the devil to have assumed human shape, an assumption which in those times would have been thought nothing out of the way, and in that guise to be conversing with the traders in a Lowland market. As is usual in these episodes, he invites them to join him in the use of the most delectable oaths that he can lay before them. The honest market-folk are so taken by his allurements that we have the maltman, the goldsmith, the "sowter," and the "fleshor" vieing with one another in their choice of ribaldry. In this friendly contest, needless to say, it is the parish priest who carries off the prize. One hopes that his excuse was as valid as that of the monk in Rabelais. "How now," exclaims Ponocrates, "you swear, Friar John!" "It is only," replies the friar, "to grace and adorn my speech; it is the colour of a Ciceronian rhetoric." The place in literature left vacant by Dunbar was soon occupied by Lindsay, the "Sir David Lindsay of the Mount Lord Lion, king at arms," whose name and titles are so familiar to the readers of Scott. He likewise appears to have led up to the impending legislation, if not indeed to have been the immediate cause of it. His 'Satyre of the Three Estaitis,' performed at Coupar in 1535, besides containing other objectionable matter, is a wild medley of oaths. Apart from what was passing in and near the capital, the local authorities from Glasgow to Aberdeen were up in arms against swearers before any movement of the kind had taken place in the other division of the island. To judge from the borough records of the former city,[37] the prevalency of the habit was a source of great scandal to the presbytery of that town. The number of Janet Andersons and William Crawfords who were arraigned before the high bailiff for offences of this character is something considerable. At Aberdeen[38] in 1592 the attention of the council was specially engaged in repressing the swearing of "horrible and execrable oaths." They proceeded to put on foot a system of fines, and with a degree of confidence that is hardly commendable, they authorised the heads of families to keep a box in which to place the mulcts they were empowered to inflict in their households. Servants' wages were liable to be taxed at the will of their masters, and wives' pin-money at the instance of their lords. A few years later the presbytery went further than even the magistracy had already done. They directed the master of the house to keep a "palmer," or instrument for inflicting pain upon the palm of the open hand. This we suppose to have been the last argument used against offenders whose wages or whose pin-money had been sworn away. Altogether the attempt to make people moral by Act of Parliament seems to have been productive of much strife in Scotland, without securing, so far as can be perceived,