Rhymes and Recollections of a Hand-Loom Weaver :: :: University of Virginia Library

[Whoever he is whose destiny leads him from “the spot where he was born,” let him prepare for many queer things, even in our own enlightened land. Is he a journeyman weaver? shoemaker? tailor? Then just let him try to set up doing for himself in a small country town. If he does not “catch it” then from the brotherhood (brotherhood?), he is one in whom Providence assuredly takes a special interest. In every small community there is a vehement working of the Keep-out system, which is only changed for the Keep-down. A stranger is never welcome beyond the rule of “buy and come again.” The “Income” is a denounced animal. To wrong him in name and property is all for the common weal.

The following is reluctantly inserted to show how far human Ingratitude may be carried—reluctantly, because these verses seem

to bear on some vagrant misfortune of the writer, and to reflect on the Sympathy, Justice, and Liberality of our enlightened, Free-trade-loving, Universal-brotherhood-advocating, fellow Burgher, Bailie Thinclaith.]

'Twas a cauld cauld nicht, and a bauld bauld nicht,
When the mad wind scoured the plain;
An' monie bonnie bush lay streiket and bare,
Drown'd deid in the pelting rain.
The lilac fell a' broken and bent,
Wi' the leafless woodbine torn and rent;
And aye as the storm would swither and swell,
Anither bush brak'—anither bush fell.
A Nettle stood strong in his native mud,
Rank King o'er his native bog;
He withered aye in the clear daylight,
But he fattened aye in the fog.
He stung every flow'ret,—cursed every sweet:
He spared nae the Docken that happit his feet;
For this was the song that the auld Nettle sung,
“Darkness and dung, Beetles, darkness and dung!”

[And the black Beetles chorus it, “Darkness and dung!”]
In that cauld lang nicht, in that dark lang nicht,
When the wild winds scoured the plain,
An unkent Branch of an unkent tree
Was tossed near the Nettle's domain.
An' the weary—weed-like—withering thing,
Lay low at the lair of that Nettle king;
Where nane might dare a byding place,
But that King and his kindred Hemlock race.

The bonniest half o' that Branch sank deid,
An' its wee, wee bud unseen;
The ither took root an' reared its heid,
Wi' its twa three Twigs alane.
Heaven, pitying, held the wild wind fast,
An' the Stricken Branch out-lived the blast;
The kindly Sunbeam settled there,
The branches braid'ning mair and mair;
And monie bonnie bird wi' willing wing,
Had welcome there to nestle and sing.
But, oh! how the Nettle grew grim and dark,
An' fumed in the shadow beneath:
How he bullied his legion of Beetles black!
An' his Hemlock dews of death!
The Beetles sought sair for a fallen leaf,—
But the hundred eyes of the Hemlock Chief
Could reach no farther than just to see
The deep, deep green of the Stranger Tree.