The barrels are brought from Noraway, Well seasoned with plenty of Noraway pitch; All dried and split for that jubilee day, The day of the holocaust of a witch. The prickers are chosen--hang-daddy and brother-- And fixed were the fees of their work of love; To prick an old woman who was a mother, And felt still the yearnings of motherly love For she had a son, a noble young fellow, Who sailed in a ship of his own the sea, And who was away on the distant billow For a cargo of wine to this bonnie Dundee. Some said she was bonnie when she was a lassie, Ah! fair the young blossom upon the young tree; But winter will come, and summer will pass aye, And youth is not always to you or to me. A true 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.