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ROTHES

1

What will my wife say now?
She will be mad at our doin's:
Good lass, she'll not swear, but she'll bow
Her knees to the Lord, and avow
We are bringing the glory to ruins.

2

If she would but just rap out an oath,
It would ease her as much as a prayer,
And be very much better for both;
For I don't know how, but I'm loth
To face her meek look of despair;

3

And to know that, all night on her knees,
She will pray for the land and the kirk,
And the crown and the sword and the keys,
And the sinners that sit at their ease,
Forgetting the covenant work.

4

And it's that which drives me to drink;
With less than a bottle or two,
To help me to hiccup and wink,
I'd face a cannon, I think,
Sooner than come in her view.

5

And yet she's a good little saint:
What a knack she has now at praying!
With her texts, and her phrases quaint,
And a voice so low and faint;
And no one to hear what she's saying!

6

Not a soul to hear even a word;
Alone in the dark there at night,
She will keep it up with the Lord;
And I wish just the Archbishop heard
How she prays the old Ethiop white.

7

Ecod! if she knew him as I,
She'd leave him alone in his skin.
Why, lass, he wishes to try
A screw on your thumb by and by,
And his boot on your tight little shin.

8

But, curse him, before he does that
I'd give him an inch of cold steel
Right through the ribs and the fat,
As the man in the Judges gat,
For the good of the commonweal.
28

9

Who could have told the kite
That I warned your chickens to run?
And he threeped it on me, in spite
Of my swearing black and white,—
Which a gentleman wouldn't have done.

10

O wouldn't you just, my Lord
Archbishop, rejoice to twist
Round my wife's forehead a cord,
And wring from her lips a word
With a wedge on her poor little wrist?

11

And what would you say to a clutch
Of my hand on your lying old throat?
I don't think the land would care much,
Though it found in the Leven such
A pious Archbishop afloat.

12

It's the parson's business to preach
A hell, when we give up our breath;
But you make a hell for each
Who differs from what you teach,
And you don't put it off till death.

13

Still that ugly test must be tried,
A snare and a lie though it be;
For Lauderdale's Bess must hide,
With acres of land and pride,
Her sins and her pedigree.

14

And there will be nice pickings too,
By Jove, for me and the like;
Ay, ay, Bess, the test will do
For me and the Bishop and you,
Rather more than our prayers belike.

15

She's a rare one that for gold!
I wonder how Noll got on
With the jade: she's bought and sold
Fat Lauderdale, foolish and old,
And he can't call his soul his own.

16

Ah! well; but commend me still
To a regular saint for a wife;
For, do what you like, good or ill,
They only just pray for you still,
And sweeten the bitter of life.

17

There's my Anne now; she loves me, I swear,
Though she knows me as bad as the devil;
And when she found out that affair,
She did nothing but offer a prayer
To keep the old sinner from evil.

18

And I've used her rascally bad;
There's no doubt of that, I admit;
And her dear little heart, when it's sad,
No comfort on earth ever had,
But a quiet religious fit.
29

19

And yet I've agreed to the test
Which the crafty Archbishop may put her;
And I know that she'll only protest,
And pray, and go on like the rest,
With appeals to the Lord and the future.

20

Why can't she be still, and content
With her preachings, her psalms, and her prayers,
And to live like a sweet little saint,
And leave me to judge what is meant
By the things which they tell her are snares?

21

And where is the text and the line
For thus causing domestic strife?
Is there Father, or Pope, or Divine
Who will say that her God should be mine,
And that man should give in to his wife?

22

Ah! well, but it's true, I have none,
Or nothing to speak of at least;
And I'd rather she prayed there alone
For a change in my heart of stone,
Than chose me old Sharpe for her priest.

23

And they shan't touch a hair of her head,
While I have a hand and a dirk:
Bishop! ay, he's a Bishop we made
To bless all the blood that we shed,
And to rule in the devil's own kirk.

24

Ho! bring me a bottle of sack:
Is my lady waiting upstairs?
Say—I'm off and can hardly be back,
Say—I'm searching the pedlar's pack,
Say—I'm gone, if you like, to my prayers.

25

I can't see her face to-night;
I am sure she suspects what is doing;
And then things get wind; and they slight
Me at council, and say in their spite
That I bring all their plans unto ruin.

26

Now, I will see nobody till
I shall be as drunk as a lord,—
And then I'll see nobody still;
But the parson may go, if he will,
Unless he would stretch a hemp cord.

27

He's been with her all day, and he's gruff,
Yet a gentleman too, of his kind,
With good blood in him, and stuff
To make a good fellow enough
If he had not a twist in his mind.

28

Say, I don't want his blood on my head,
And am very much needing his prayers,
As I mean to go drunk to my bed,
And am apt to be wild in the head,
If I find anybody upstairs.
30

29

It's a dreary place that den
Between the Lomonds bleak;
But better for ghostly men
The ghostly and eerie glen
Than to hear the gallows creak.

30

Let the Archbishop gloom as he will;
Let Lauderdale rant and swear;
I've but kept them from doing some ill,
And we'll all have our nice pickings still,
When we ask them to vow and declare.
previous section The Poetical Works of Walter C. Smith
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