14. MAKING AN EXCUSE; OR, JOHNNY PEEP
[A guest pleading to be excused from a speech or a song might say that he wanted to be accounted as "Johnny Peep" in the following story which Allan Cunningham tells of Robert Burns.]
Strolling one day in Cumberland the poet lost his friends, and thinking to find them at a certain tavern he popped his head in at the door. Seeing no one there but three strangers, he apologized, and was about to retire, when one of the strangers called out, "Come in, Johnny Peep." This invitation the convivial poet readily accepted, and spent a very pleasant time with his newly-found companions. As the conversation began to flag, it was proposed that each should write a verse, and place it, together with two-and-six pence, under the candlestick, the best poet to take the half-crowns, while the unsuccessful rhymers were to settle the bill among them. According to Cunningham, Burns obtained the stakes by writing:
"Here am I, Johnny Peep;
I saw three sheep,
And these three sheep saw me.
Half-a-crown apiece
Will pay for their fleece,
And so Johnny Peep goes free."