And after all, O, shame and grief! 
    To use some worse than murd’ring thief,
    Their very gentleman and chief,
                        Unhumanly! 
    Like Popish tortures, I believe,
                        Such cruelty.

    Ev’n what was act on open stage
    At Carlisle, in the hottest rage,
    When mercy was clapt in a cage,
                        And pity dead,
    Such cruelty approv’d by every age,
                        I shook my head.

    So many to curse, so few to pray,
    And some aloud huzza did cry;
    They cursed the rebel Scots that day,
                        As they’d been nowt
    Brought up for slaughter, as that way
                        Too many rowt.

    Therefore, alas! dear countrymen,
    O never do the like again,
    To thirst for vengeance, never ben’
                        Your gun nor pa’,
    But with the English e’en borrow and len’,
                        Let anger fa’.

    Their boasts and bullying, not worth a louse,
    As our King’s the best about the house. 
    ’T is ay good to be sober and douce,
                        To live in peace;
    For many, I see, for being o’er crouse,
                        Gets broken face.

WAVERLEY

OR ’TIS SIXTY YEARS SINCE

CHAPTER I

INTRODUCTORY

The title of this work has not been chosen without the grave and solid deliberation which matters of importance demand from the prudent.  Even its first, or general denomination, was the result of no common research or selection, although, according to the example of my predecessors, I had only to seize upon the most sounding and euphonic surname that English history or topography affords, and elect it at once as the title of my work and the name of my hero.  But, alas! what could my readers have expected from the chivalrous epithets of Howard, Mordaunt, Mortimer, or Stanley, or from the softer and more sentimental sounds of Belmour, Belville, Belfield, and Belgrave, but pages of inanity, similar to those which have been so christened for half a century past?  I must modestly admit I am too diffident of my own merit to place it in unnecessary opposition to preconceived associations; I have, therefore, like a maiden knight with his white shield, assumed for my hero, Waverley, an uncontaminated name, bearing with its sound little of good or evil, excepting what the reader shall hereafter be pleased to affix to it.  But my second or supplemental title was a matter of much more difficult election, since that, short as it is, may be held as pledging the author to some special mode of laying his scene, drawing his characters, and managing his adventures.  Had I, for example, announced in my frontispiece,