How
the Doughty Duke of Albany like a Coward Knight ran away shamefully
with an Hundred Thousand Tratling Scots and Fainthearted Frenchmen,
beside the Water of Tweed
(An extract from)
by John Skelton
| O ye wretched
Scots, |
| Ye puant pisspots, |
| It shall be your lots |
| To be knit up with knots |
| Of halters and ropes |
| About your traitors’ throats. |
| O Scots perjured, |
| Unhaply ured, |
| Ye may be assured |
| Your falsehood discured |
| It is and shall be, from the Scottish sea |
| Unto Gabione, |
| For ye be false each one, |
| False and false again |
| Never true nor plain, |
| But fleery, flatter and feign, |
| And ever to remain |
| In wretched beggary |
| And maungy misery, |
| In lousy loathsomeness |
| And scabbed scorfiness, |
| And in abomination |
| Of all manner of nation, |
| Nation moost in hate, |
| Proud and poor of state: |
| Twit, Scot, go
keep thy den, |
| Mell not with English men. |
| Thou did nothing but bark |
| At the castell of Warke: |
| Twit, Scot, yet
again once. |
| We shall break thy bones |
| And hang you upon poles |
| And burn you all to coals, |
| With twit, Scot, twit, Scot, twit. |
| Walk, Scot, go beg a bit |
| Of bread, at ilke man’s heck. |
| The fiend, Scot, break thy neck. |
| Twit, Scot, again I say, |
| Twit, Scot of Galloway, |
| Twit, Scot, shake thee, dog, hey! |
Twit, Scot, thou ran away.
|
| We set not a fly |
| By your Duke of Albany. |
| We set not a prane |
| By such a drunken drane, |
| We set not a mite |
| By such a coward knight, |
| Such a proud palliard, |
| Such a skirgalliard, |
| Such a stark coward, |
| Such a proud poltroon, |
| Such a foul coistrown, |
| Such a doughty dagswain. |
| Send him to France again |
| To bring with him more brain |
| From King Francis of France. |
| God end them both mischance. |
| Ye Scots all the
rabble, |
| Ye shall never be able |
| With us for to compare, |
| What though ye stamp and stare. |
| God send you sorrow and care. |
| With us whenever
ye mell |
| Yet we bear away the bell, |
| When ye cankered knaves |
| Must creep in to your caves |
| Your heads for to hide, |
| For you dare not abide, |
| Sir Duke of
Albany, |
| Right inconveniently |
| Ye rage and ye rave |
| And your worship deprave. |
| Not like Duke Hamilcar, |
| With the Romayns that made war, |
| Nor like his son Hannibal, |
| Nor like Duke Hasdrubal |
| Of Carthage in Alfike. |
| Yet somewhat ye be like |
| In some of their conditions |
| And their false seditions |
| And their dealing double |
| And their wayward trouble: |
| But yet they were bold |
| And manly manifold |
| Their enemies to assail |
| In plain field and battail. |
| But ye and your
hoost |
| Full of brag and boost |
| And full of waste wind, |
| How ye will bears bind, |
| And the devil down ding, |
| Yet ye dare do nothing |
| But leap away like frogs |
| And hide you under logs |
| Like pigs and like hogs. |
| What an army were ye? |
| Or what activity |
| Is in you beggars, brawls, |
| Full of scabs and scalls: |
| Of vermin and of lice |
And of all manner vice?
|
| John Skelton
| Classic Poems |
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[ How the Doughty Duke of Albany... ] [ Philip Sparrow ] [ The Requiem Mass ] |
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