Page:Beauties of Burn's poems.pdf/27

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And though the gentry first are stechin,
Yet een the ha' fock fill their pechan
Wi' sauce, ragouts, and sicklike trashtrie,
That's little short o' downright waistrie,
Our whipper-inn, wee blastit wonner,
Boor worthless elf, it eats a dinner
Better than ony tenant man
His Honour has in a' the lan'!
And what poor cot-fock put their painch in.
I own it's past my comprehension.

LUATH.
Trowth. Cæsar. whyles they're fash't enough:
A cotter howkin in a sheugh,
Wi' dirty stanes biggin a dyke,
Baring a quary, and sicklike,
Himsel, a wife, he thus sustains,
A smytrie o' wee duddie weans,
And nought but his han'-daurg, to keep
Them right and tight in thack and rape.
And when they meet wi' sair disasters,
Like loss o' health, or want o' masters,
Ye maist wad think a wee touch langer,
And they maun starve o' cauld and hunger:
But how it comes, I never kend yet,
They're maistly wonderfu' contented;
And buirdly chiels, and clever hizzies,
Are bred in sic a way as this is.

CÆSAR.
But then, to see how ye're neglectit,
How huff'd, and cuff'd, and disrespectit!
L—d, man, our gentry care as little
For delvers, ditchers, as for cattle;
They gang as saucy by poor fock,
As I wad by a stinking brock.

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