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Come keen Iambicks with your Badgers Feet,
And Badger-like, bite till your Teeth do meet;
Help, ye tart Satirists, to imp my Rage
With all the Scorpions that should whip this Age.
But that there's Charm in Verse, I would not quote
The Name of Scot without an Antidote;
Unless my Head were red, that I might brew
Invention there that might be Poison too.
Were I a drouzy Judg, whose dismal Note
Disgorges Halters as a Juggler's Throat
Does Ribbons: Could I in Sir Empirick's Tone
Speak Pills in Phrase, and quack Destruction;
Or roar like Marshal, that Geneva Bull,
Hell and Damnation, a Pulpit full:
Yet to express a Scot, to play that Prize,
Not all those Mouth-Granadoes can suffice:
Before a Scot can properly be curst,
I must, like Hocus, swallow Daggers first.
Scots are like Witches; do but whet your Pen,
Scratch till the Blood comes, they'll not hurt you then.
Now as the Martyrs were compell'd to take
The Shapes of Beasts, like Hypocrites at stake:
I'll bait my Scot so, yet not cheat your Eyes;
A Scot within a Beast is no Disguise.

No more let Ireland brag, her harmless Nation
Fosters no Venom since that Scot's Plantation,
Nor can our feign'd Antiquity obtain
Since they came in, England has Wolves again.
Nature herself does Scotch-men Beasts confess,
Making their Country such a Wilderness;
A Land that brings in question and suspence
God's Omnipresence, but that Charles came thence:
But that Montrose and Crawford's Royal Band,
Aton'd their Sin, and christen'd half the Land.
Nor is it all the Nation has these Spots,
There is a Church as well as Kirk of Scots:
As in a Picture, where the squinting Paint
Shews Fiend on this side, and on that side Saint.
He that saw Hell in's melancholy Dream,
And in the Twilight of his Fancy's Theme,
Scar'd from his Sins, repented in a Fright,
Had he view'd Scotland, had turn'd Proselyte.
A Land where one may pray with curst Intent,
O may they never suffer Banishment!
Had Cain been Scot, God would have chang'd his Doom,
Not forc'd him wander, but confin'd him home.
Like Jews they spread, and as Infection fly,
As if the Devil had Ubiquity.
Hence 'tis they live at Rovers, and defy
This or that Place, Rags of Geography.
They're Citizens o'th' World, they're all in all,
Scotland's a Nation Epidemical.
And yet they ramble not to learn the Mode,
How to be drest, or how to lisp abroad;
To return knowing in the Spanish Shrug,
Or which of the Dutch States a double Jug
Resembles most in Belly, or in Beard,
(The Card by which the Mariners are steer'd)
No! the Scots-Errant fight, and fight to eat,
Their Ostrich Stomachs make their Swords their Meat.
Nature with Scots, as Tooth-drawers, has dealt,
Who use to string their Teeth upon their Belt.

Not Gold, nor Acts of Grace, 'tis Steel must tame
The stubborn Scot: a Prince that would reclaim
Rebels by yielding, does like him, or worse,
Who saddled his own Back to shame his Horse.

Was it for this you left your leaner Soil,
Thus to lard Israel with Egypt's Spoil?
Lord! what a goodly thing is want of Shirts?
How a Scotch Stomach, and no Meat converts!
They wanted Food and Raiment, so they took
Religion for their Semstress and their Cook.
Unmask them well, their Honours, and Estate,
As well as Conscience, are sophisticate.
Shrive but their Titles, and their Monies poise;
A Laird and twenty Pence pronounc'd with Noise,
When constru'd, but for a plain Yeoman go,
And a good sober Two-pence, and well so.

Hence then you proud Impostors, get you gone,
You Picts in Gentry and Devotion;
You Scandal to the Stock of Verse, a Race
Able to bring the Gibbet in Disgrace.
Hyperbolus by suffering did traduce
The Ostracism, and sham'd it out of use.
The Indian, that Heaven did forswear,
Because he heard some Spaniards were there;
Had he but known what Scots in Hell had been,
He would, Erasmus-like, have hung between.

My Muse has done. A Voyder for the Nonce,
I wrong the Devil, should I pick the Bones:
That Dish is his; for when the Scots decease,
Hell, like their Nation, feeds on Barnacles.
A Scot, when from the Gallows-Tree got loose,
Drops into Styx, and turns a Solan Goose.