Liberty’s a glorious feast!

Courts for cowards were erected,

Churches built to please the priest!

See the smoking bowl before us,

Mark our jovial, ragged ring!

Round and round take up the chorus,

And in raptures let us sing –

What is title, what is treasure,

What is reputation’s care?

If we lead a life of pleasure,

’Tis no matter how or where!

With the ready trick and fable,

Round we wander all the day;

And at night, in barn or stable,

Hug our doxies on the hay.

Does the train-attended carriage

Thro the country lighter rove?

Does the sober bed of marriage

Witness brighter scenes of love?

Life is all a variorum,

We regard not how it goes;

Let them cant about decorum,

Who have character to lose.

Here’s to budgets, bags and wallets!

Here’s to all the wandering train!

Here’s our ragged brats and callets!

One and all, cry out, Amen!

THE LASS O BALLOCHMYLE
Tune: Ettrick Banks

Twas ev’n, the dewy fields were green,

On ev’ry blade the pearls hang,

The zephyr wanton’d round the bean,

And bore its fragrant sweets alang,

In evr’y glen the mavis sang,

All Nature list’ning seem’d the while,

Except where greenwood echoes rang,

Amang the braes o Ballochmyle.

With careless step I onward stray’d,

My heart rejoic’d in Nature’s joy,

When, musing in a lonely glade,

A maiden fair I chanc’d to spy.

Her look was like the morning’s eye,

Her air like Nature’s vernal smile,

The lillies’ hue and roses’ die

Bespoke the lass o Ballochmyle.

Fair is the morn in flowery May,

And sweet is night in autumn mild,

When roving thro the garden gay,

Or wand’ring in the lonely wild;

But Woman, Nature’s darling child,

There all her charms she does compile,

And all her other works are foil’d

By the bonie lass o Ballochmyle.

O, if she were a country maid,

And I the happy country swain,

Tho shelter’d in the lowest shed

That ever rose on Scotia’s plain:

Thro weary winter’s wind and rain,

With joy, with rapture, I would toil,

And nightly to my bosom strain

The bonie lass o Ballochmyle.

Then Pride might climb the slipp’ry steep,

Where fame and honours lofty shine;

And thirst of gold might tempt the deep,

Or downward seek the Indian mine!

Give me the cot below the pine,

To tend the flocks or till the soil,

And ev’ry day have joys divine

With th’ bonie lass o Ballochmyle.

LIBEL SUMMONS

In Truth and Honour’s name – Amen

Know all men by these Presents plain: –

This fourth o June, at Mauchline given,

The year ’tween eighty five and seven,

We, Fornicators by profession,

As per extractum from each Session,

In way and manner here narrated,

Pro bono Amor congregated;

And by our brethren constituted,

A Court of Equity deputed. –

With special authoris’d direction

To take beneath our strict protection,

The stays-out-bursting, quondam maiden,

With Growing Life and anguish laden;

Who by the rascal is deny’d,

That led her thoughtless steps aside.