Specimens with Memoirs of the Less-known British Poets, Volume 1
General
Specimens with Memoirs of the Less-known British Poets, Volume 1
English poetry
Syne[38] Sweirness[39] at the second bidding
Came like a sow out of a midding,[40]
Full sleepy was his grunyie.[41]
Many sweir bumbard[42] belly-huddroun,[43]
Many slute daw[44] and sleepy duddroun,[45]
Him served aye with sounyie.[46]
He drew them forth into a chenyie,[47]
And Belial with a bridle-rennyie,[48]
Ever lash'd them on the lunyie.[49]
In dance they were so slow of feet
They gave them in the fire a heat,
And made them quicker of counyie.[50]
VIII.
Then Lechery, that loathly corse,
Came bearing like a bagged horse,[51]
And Idleness did him lead;
There was with him an ugly sort[52]
And many stinking foul tramort,[53]
That had in sin been dead.
When they were enter'd in the dance,
They were full strange of countenance,
Like torches burning reid.
* * * * *
IX.
Then the foul monster Gluttony,
Of wame[54] insatiable and greedy,
To dance he did him dress;
Him followed many a foul drunkart
With can and collep, cop and quart,[55]
In surfeit and excess.
Full many a waistless wally-drag[56]
With wames unwieldable did forth drag,
In creish[57] that did incress;
Drink, aye they cried, with many a gape,
The fiends gave them hot lead to laip,[58]
Their leveray[59] was no less.
X.
* * * * *
No minstrels play'd to them but[60] doubt,
For gleemen there were holden out,
By day and eke by night,
Except a minstrel that slew a man;
So till his heritage he wan,[61]
And enter'd by brief of right.
* * * * *
XI.
Then cried Mahoun for a Highland padyane,[62]
Syne ran a fiend to fetch Mac Fadyane,[63]
Far northward in a nook,
By he the Correnoch had done shout,[64]
Ersch-men[65] so gather'd him about
In hell great room they took:
These termagants, with tag and tatter,
Full loud in Ersch began to clatter,
And roup[66] like raven and rook.
The devil so deaved[67] was with their yell,
That in the deepest pot of hell
He smored[68] them with smoke.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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