Page:Traditional Tales of the English and Scottish Peasantry - 1887.djvu/86

82 right or left, but with singular meekness, and a look of sorrow and resignation, endured the tumultuous scorn of the crowd. Long before he reached the limit of the village he seemed more a pillar of dust than a human being. "Is the Kirk a dog, that thou comest against her with staves?" said one; "Or is she a besieged city, that thou bringest against her thy horsemen and thy chariots?" cried a second; "Or comest thou to slay, whom thou canst not convince?" shouted a third; "Or dost thou come to wash thy garments in the blood of saints?" bawled a fourth; "Or to teach thy flock the exercise of the sword rather than the exercise of devotion?" yelled a fifth; "Or come ye," exclaimed a sixth, at the very limit of the human voice, "to mix the voice of the psalm with that of the trumpet, and to hear how divinity and slaughter will sound together?" Others expressed their anger in hissings and hootings; while an old mendicant ballad-singer paraded, step by step with the minister, through the crowd, and sung to a licentious tune the following rustic lampoon:

Come hasten and see, for the Kirk, like a bride,

Is arrayed for her spouse in sedateness and pride.

Comes he in meek mood, with his hands clasped and sighing

For the godless and doomed, with his hopes set on Zion?

Comes he with the grave, the austere, and the sage—

A warfare with those who scoff Scripture to wage?

He comes—hark! the reins of his war-steeds are ringing;

His trumpet—but 'tis not God's trumpet—is singing.

Clap your hands, all ye graceless; sing loud and rejoice,

Ye young men of Rimmon; and lift up your voice

All ye who love wantonness, wassail, and sinning

With the dame decked in scarlet and fine twined linen.

Scoff louder thou scoffer; scorn on, thou proud scorner;

Satan comes to build kirks, and has laid the first corner.

The Babylon dame, from Perdition's deep pool,

Sings and cradles her babes in the Kirk's cuttie-stool.

He comes! of all parsons the swatch and the pattern,

Shaped out to save souls by the shears of his patron.

He comes steeped in Learning's dark puddle, and chatters

Greek words, and tears all Calvin's creed into tatters,

And vows the hot pit shall shut up its grim portals,

Nor devour to a tithe the sum-total of mortals;

Talks of works, and Morality's Will-o'-wisp glimmer,

And showers Reason's frost on our spiritual simmer.