Apparitions > Aloway Kirk, or, Tam o' Shanter, a tale

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Warlocks and witches in a dance,
Kae cotillion, brent-new fiae France,
But hornpipes, jigs, strathspeys and reels.
Put life and mettle in their heels.—
At winnock bunker, in the east,
There sat auld Nick, in shape o’ beast;
A touzie tyke, black, grim and large,
To gie them music was his charge.
He screw’d his pipes, and gart them skirl,
Till roof and rafters a* did dirl.—
Coffins stood round like open preses,
That shew’d the dead in their last dresses,
And (by some devilish cantrip slight)
Each in its cauld hand held a lights—
By which heroic Tam was able
To note upon the haly table,
A murderer's banes in gibbet-airns ;
Twa span-long, wee unchristened bairns;
A thief, new cutted frae a rape,
Wi’ his last gasp his gab did gape;
Five tomahawks, wi’ blud red-rusted ;
Five scimitars, wi’ murder crusted ;
A garter, which a babe had strangled ;
A knife a father’s throat had mangled,
Whom his ain son of life bereft,
The grey hairs yet stack to the heft;
With mair o’ horrible and awfu’
Which e’en to pane wad be unlawfu’
Three lawyers’ tongues, turn’d inside out.
Wi' lies seem'd like a beggar’s cloot;
Three Prfests’'hearts, rotten, black as muck,
Lay stinking, vile, in every neuk—