Songs of the Cavaliers and Roundheads :: :: University of Virginia Library

With calf's head on a stately dish
The landlord hurried in,
A bitter smile crept round the board,
But never shout nor din;
Then wine from the cobwebb'd cellar,
Came in the wattled flask,
And the man who sat at the table end
Looked grim in a velvet mask.

With cautious step the chairman rose,
Slipp'd softly over the floor;
With a silver nail that hung from his neck
He clamp'd the oaken door.
But first they brought a roasted pike,
With a gudgeon in his jaw—
Type of the way that nations lie,
Torn in a tyrant's maw.

100

Then a second door they surely locked,
Threw the key in the red-hot fire.
But they spoke in murmurs soft and low,
Scarce than a whisper higher.
'Twas the thirtieth of the month, at night,
In a tavern near Whitehall,
That a man in a mask, on a pale calf's head,
A red wine-stream let fall.

The man of the mask, with a solemn air,
As an augur would have done,
Hewed in parts, with a strong broad knife,
The head, and gave each one.
They had scarcely drank three cups of wine
When open burst the door:
There was fighting at the table end,
And stabbing on the floor.

Loud cries of “Zion! sword of God!
Now hew this Baal down!”
With “Sink me! use your pistols!
And fire the cuckold town!”
The man in the mask flung down a bench
Set back unto the wall,
Flung a heavy flask at the foremost men,
And blew a silver call.

101

There were blood-pools mingled with the wine,
Red broken glass and swords,
Gay feathers wet, in brave men's gore,
Flapping upon the boards
And that day week, at Tyburn tree,
Ten “calves' heads” drain'd a flask;
But they never touch'd, with villain rope,
The neck of the man in the mask.

For him they built a scaffold
On the old blood-mantled hill:
He stepped up bold, as a marriage guest
To a marriage banquet will;—
Bowed three times to the hissing crowd,
Bid the headsman do his task;
And, flinging some gold to the rolling mob,
So died the man in the mask.