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

Rubadub, rubadub, row-dow-dow!
The sun is glinting on hill and knowe,
An' saft the pillow to the fat man's pow—
Sae fleecy an' warm the guid “hame-made,”

An' cozie the happin o' the farmer's bed.
The feast o' yestreen how it oozes through,
In bell an' blab on his burly brow,
Nought recks he o' drum an' bell
The girnal's fou an' sure the “sale;”
The laird an' he can crap an keep
Weel, weel may he laugh in his gowden sleep.
His dream abounds in stots, or full
Of cow an' corn, calf and bull;
Of cattle shows, of dinner speaks—
Toom, torn, and patch'd like weavers' breeks;
An' sic like meaning hae, I trow,
As rubadub, rubadub, row-dow-dow.

Rubadub, rubadub, row dow-dow!
Hark, how he waukens the Weavers now!
Wha lie belair'd in a dreamy steep—
A mental swither 'tween death an' sleep—
Wi' hungry wame and hopeless breast,
Their food no feeding, their sleep no rest.
Arouse ye, ye sunken, unravel your rags,
No coin in your coffers, no meal in your bags;
Yet cart, barge, and waggon, with load after load,
Creak mockfully, passing your breadless abode.
The stately stalk of Ceres bears,
But not for you, the bursting ears;
In vain to you the lark's lov'd note,
For you no summer breezes float,

Grim winter through your hovel pours—
Dull, din, and healthless vapour yours.
The nobler Spider weaves alone,
And feels the little web his own,
His hame, his fortress, foul or fair,
Nor factory whipper swaggers there.
Should ruffian wasp, or flaunting fly
Touch his lov'd lair, 'tis touch and die!
Supreme in rags, ye weave, in tears,
The shining robe your murderer wears;
Till worn, at last, to very “waste,”
A hole to die in, at the best;
And, dead, the session saints begrudge ye
The twa-three deals in death to lodge ye;
They grudge the grave wherein to drap ye,
An' grudge the very muck to hap ye.

Had Heaven intended corn to be the property of one class only, corn would grow in one land only, and only on one stem. But corn is the child of every soil; its grains and its stems are numberless as the tears of the hungry. The widespread bounty of God was never willed to be a widespread sorrow to man.

It was at Inverury, after losing seven battles against the English, that Robert Bruce, lying ill in his bed, marked a spider, which was endeavouring to mount to the ceiling, fall down seven times, but on the eighth attempt succeed. The Scotch and English army were just preparing for battle, when Bruce, inspired by this omen, rose, and heading his dispirited troops, after a desperate struggle succeeded in routing the enemy, and laid the foundation of a series of successes against the usurping invader, which secured the glory and independence of the kingdom of Scotland. The welcome he received at Inverury, in his dark hour of distress, induced him to bestow on it the privileges of a royal burgh.

Nor is this the only time that the spider has influenced the destiny of kingdoms. In our own times the careful investigation of their habits in different weather, by a prisoner in his dungeon, afforded the indices upon which Dumourier invaded and overran Holland in 1797.

Rubadub, rubadub, row-dow-dow!
The drunkard clasps his aching brow;

And there be they, in their squalor laid,
The supperless brood on loathsome bed;
Where the pallid mother croons to rest,
The withering babe at her milkless breast.
She, wakeful, views the risen day
Break gladless o'er her home's decay,
And God's blest light a ghastly glare
Of grey and deathy dimness there.
In all things near, or sight or sounds,
Sepulchral rottenness abounds;
Yet he, the sovereign filth, will prate,
In stilted terms, of Church and State,
As things that he would mould anew—
Could all but his brute self subdue.
Ye vilest of the crawling things,
Lo! how well the fetter clings
To recreant collar! Oh, may all
The self-twined lash unbroken fall,
Nor hold until our land is free'd
Of craven, crouching slugs, that breed
In fetid holes, and, day by day,
Yawn their unliving life away!
But die they will not, cannot—why?
They live not—therefore, cannot die.
In soul's dark deadness dead are they,
Entomb'd in thick corkswollen clay.
What tho' they yield their fulsome breath,
The change but mocks the name of death,
Existence, skulking from the sun,
In misery many, in meanness one.
When brave hearts would the fight renew,
Hope, weeping, withering points to you!

Arouse ye, but neither with bludgeon nor blow,
Let mind be your armour, darkness your foe;
'Tis not in the ramping of demagogue rage,
Nor yet in the mountebank patriot's page,
In sounding palaver, nor pageant, I ween,
In blasting of trumpet, nor vile tambourine;
For these are but mockful and treacherous things—
The thorns that “crackle” to sharpen their stings.
When fair Science gleams over city and plain,
When Truth walks abroad all unfetter'd again,
When the breast glows to Love and the brow beams in Light—
Oh! hasten it Heaven! Man longs for his right.

In most of the small boroughs of the north of Scotland there is a town drummer, who parades at five in the summer and six o'clock in the winter. In Nairn a man blows a cow-horn.