The Boswells of Auchinleck, blessing befall them,
Did give him entombment within their own vault:
By night and in secret, with much to appal them,
Of outrage and insult, and mocking assault.
For forty days later, a rabble unruly,
Of poor hired fellows, the soldiers of Sorn,
Broke open the coffin, a sacrilege truly,
And from the dead body the shroud sheet was torn!
They buried him then at the foot of the gallows,
The grave of the felon, high up on the steep,
Mid thistles and nettles, and docken and mallows,
They laid down great Peden the Prophet to sleep.
But mark you, his people, his own loving people,
The people of Cumnock, they followed him still:
They left the kirkyard in the shade of the steeple,
And the graveyard is now on the dark Gallows Hill!
The hill once dishonoured is now their "God's Acre,"
The people have followed their minister there,
And roses and white thorn breathe praise to their Maker
Where once stood the gallows, all grimly and bare.
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