  Poor Robin's Litany. From being turned out of doors, From town-rats, and ale-house scores, From lowsie queans and pocky bores, Libera nos. From tailors' bills and drapers' books, From sluttish maids and nasty cooks, From froward wives and crabbed looks, Libera nos. From breaking pipes and broken glasses, From drinking healths and drunken asses, From lying lubbers and lisping lasses, ;Libera nos. From paying of lawyers' fees, From mouldy bread and musty cheese, From trotting jades and scorning shes, Libera nos. From fetters, chains, bolts, and gyves, From pointless needles and broken knives, From thievish servants and drunken wives, Libera nos. From tailors' bodkins and butchers' pricks, From tenpenny nails and headless spikes, And from attorneys' knavish tricks, Libera nos. From being taken in disguise, From believing of a poet's lies, And from the devil and the excise, 5Libera nos. From brown bread and small beer, From being taken stealing deer, From all that hath been named here, 5Quesemus te. The litany being ended the tapster comes for his reckoning, but poor Robin made answer that he should do as the rest had done, either tell a tale or sing a song. Says he, "Sing I cannot, but I will tell you how they marry in Scotland, as a Scotch priest told me that lay here, and got me to engage for him to my master for twenty shillings, and he running away, I was forced to pay his score for him." |
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