CHAPTER XIV.

_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, _Libera nos._

From brown bread and small beer, From being taken stealing deer, From all that hath been named here, _Quesemus 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."