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Broadside entitled 'George's Clerk's Last Speech and Dying Words'

Transcription

GEORGE CLERK'S

LAST SPEECH and DYING WORDS on the Scaffold and at Penny-
cuick, with his farewell Address to his beloved friend, Dundas,
late Member for the City of Edinburgh ; together with his
EPITAPH.

Tune?" Miller of Drone."

DEAR, dear Dundas, I'm fairly gone,
What will be done, my friend ?
Great grief will eat my flesh from bone,
And turn my enlarged mind.
Full seventy years St Stephen's hall,
Has heard us with great joy ;
But now, alas, we've got a fall,
I'm counted a bad boy.

No rotten borough can be had,
That I might tell my tale,
Which makes my very heart turn sad,
Even Nature's like to fail.
A thought has struck me to a hair,
And I shall it fulfil,
I'll make my neck even very bare,
But first I'll drink my fill.

Then without either fear or dread,
My honest friend, Dundas,
I'll do a great man's deadly deed,
In view of Ossian's glass.
I'll take a razor very sharp,
Into my well loved hall, *

I'll do the deed by Ossian's harp,
And great will be the fall.

Then like unto friend Castlereagh,
I'll strike an arter vein,
But first I'll offer once to pray,
That I may feel no pain.
Then like a madman George Clerk flew
And did the ugly deed,
Which he will ever ever rue,
And all his bloody seed.      

EPITAPH.      

O ! Satan, turn Clerk on a speet,
An upright speet, pray mind,
And let the worst of a' your deils,
That you in h-ll can find,
To turn him round for ever more,
For evermore, Amen,
That he may suffer for his crimes ?
Eternity of pain.

* Ossian's Hall at Pennycuick House

? Short weights to the poor, whose cry has been
answered from He that hath said, Such as you mete
out, shall be to you mete again.

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Probable period of publication: 1825-1840   shelfmark: ABS.10.203.01(073)
Broadside entitled 'George's Clerk's Last Speech and Dying Words'
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