FAIR fa your honest, sonsie face,
Great chieftain o the pudding-race!
Aboon them a ye tak your place,
Painch, tripe, or thairm:
Weel are ye wordy oa grace
As langs my arm.
The groaning trencher there ye fill,
Your hurdies like a distant hill,
Your pin was help to mend a mill
In time oneed,
While thro your pores the dews distil
Like amber bead.
His knife see rustic Labour dight,
An cut you up wi ready sleight,
Trenching your gushing entrails bright,
Like ony ditch;
And then, O what a glorious sight,
Warm-reekin, rich!
Then, horn for horn, they stretch an strive:
Deil tak the hindmost! on they drive,
Till a their weel-swalld kytes belyve
Are bent like drums;
Then auld Guidman, maist like to rive,
Bethankit! hums.
Is there that owre his French ragout
Or olio that wad staw a sow,
Or fricassee wad make her spew
Wi perfect sconner,
Looks down wi sneering, scornfu view
On sic a dinner?
Poor devil! see him owre his trash,
As feckles as witherd rash,
His spindle shank, a guid whip-lash;
His nieve a nit;
Thro blody flood or field to dash,
O how unfit!
But mark the Rustic, haggis-fed,
The trembling earth resounds his tread.
Clap in his walie nieve a blade,
Hell mak it whissle;
An legs an arms, an hands will sned,
Like taps o trissle.
Ye Powrs, wha mak mankind your care,
And dish them out their bill o fare,
Auld Scotland wants nae skinking ware
That jaups in luggies;
But, if ye wish her gratefu prayer
Gie her a haggis!
