Page:The Ingoldsby Legends (Frowde, 1905).pdf/197

 When, as words were too faint

His merits to paint,

The Conclave determined to make him a Saint;

And on newly-made Saints and Popes, as you know,

It's the custom, at Rome, new names to bestow,

So they canonized him by the name of Jim Crow!

T. DUNSTAN stood in his ivied tower,

Alembic, crucible, all were there;

When in came Nick to play him a trick,

In guise of a damsel passing fair.

Every one knows

How the story goes:

He took up the tongs and caught hold of his nose.

But I beg that you won't for a moment suppose

That I mean to go through, in detail, to you

A story at least as trite as it's true;

Nor do I intend

An instant to spend

On the tale, how he treated his monarch and friend,

When, bolting away to a chamber remote,

Inconceivably bored by his Witen-gemote,

Edwy left them all joking,

And drinking, and smoking,

So tipsily grand, they'd stand nonsense from no King,

But sent the Archbishop

Their Sovereign to fish up,

With a hint that perchance on his crown he might feel taps,

Unless he came back straight and took off his heel-taps.

You don't want to be plagued with the same story twice,

And may have seen this one, by ,

At the Royal Academy, very well done,

And mark'd in the catalogue Four, seven, one.

You might there view the Saint, who in sable array'd is,

Coercing the Monarch away from the Ladies;

His right hand has hold of his Majesty's jerkin,