shame and grief!
To use some worse than murd'ring thief,
Their very gentleman and chief,
Unhumanly!
Like Popish tortures, I believe,
Such cruelty.
 
Ev'n what was act on open stage
At Carlisle, in the hottest rage,
When mercy was clapt in a cage,
And pity dead,
Such cruelty approv'd by every age,
I shook my head.
 
So many to curse, so few to pray,
And some aloud huzza did cry;
They cursed the rebel Scots that day,
As they'd been nowt
Brought up for slaughter, as that way
Too many rowt.
 
Therefore, alas! dear countrymen,
O never do the like again,
To thirst for vengeance, never ben'
Your gun nor pa',
But with the English e'en borrow and len'
Let anger fa'.
 
There boasts and bullying, not worth a louse,
As our King's the best about the house
'Tis aye good to be sober and douce,
To live in peace;
For many, I see, for being o'er crouse,
Gets broken face.
 
2 Letters on the Author of Waverley; Rodwell & Martin, London, 1822.
 
3 Alas! that attire, respectable and gentlemanlike in 1805, or thereabouts, is
now as antiquated as the Author of Waverley has himself become since that
period! The reader of fashion will please to fill up the costume with an
embroidered waistcoat of purple velvet or silk, and a coat of whatever colour he
pleases.
 
4 The precise date (1745) was withheld from the original edition, lest it should
anticipate the nature of the tale by announcing so remarkable an era.
 
5 Where the Chevalier Saint George, or, as he was termed, the Old Pretender,
held his exiled court, as his situation compelled him to shift his place of
residence.
 
6 Long the oracle of the country gentlemen of the high Tory party. The ancient
News-Letter was written in manuscript and copied by clerks, who addressed the
copies to the subscribers. The politician by whom they were compiled picked up
his intelligence at coffee-houses, and often pleaded for an additional gratuity,
in consideration of the extra expense attached to frequenting such places of
fashionable resort.
 
7 There is a family legend to this purpose, belonging to the knightly family of
Bradshaigh, the proprietors of Haighhall, in Lancashire, where, I have been
told, the event is recorded on a painted glass window. The German ballad of the
»Noble Moringer« turns upon a similar topic. But undoubtedly many such incidents
may have taken place,