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)
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