They halted under the windows of Dame Craig's dwelling; some of these were partly open, and emitted into the misty street the odour of a close room and a luxurious supper—the fumes of wine and a night debauch. Through the thick gratings that defended them, flakes of light streamed into the dark and gloomy wynd, while a clear and manly voice was heard to sing one of those blasphemous ballads which were so obnoxious to Queen Mary—
"Ane cursed fox hath lain in the rocks,
Hidden this many a day,
Devouring sheep; but a hunter shall scare
This cursed fox away.
"The hunter is Christ, that spurs in haste,
His hounds are St. Peter and Paul;
The Pope is the fox, and Rome is the rocks,
That rub us to the gall.
"Poor Pope! had to sell the Tantony bell,
And pardons for ilka thing;
Remission of sins in old sheep skins,
Our souls from hell to bring.
"With bulls of lead, white wax and red,
And other whiles of green;
This cursed fox, enclosed in a box,
Such devilry never was seen."
On hearing this doggerel ballad,[*] Bothwell and his friends drew their swords in deliberate anger, intent, less on a brawl, than on punishing the singer; for this ditty was one of those which, by the efforts of the more zealous clergy, had been set to the ancient music of the Catholic church, and were usually sung by the lowest rabble, "to ferment that wild spirit of fanaticism, which in the following age involved the nation in blood, and overturned the state of three kingdoms."
[*] For which see Andre Hart's Godly Ballade Buik.—NOTE by the Magister Absalom.
Neither Bothwell nor d'Elboeuff were very rigid Catholics, yet they burned to punish this irreligious ribaldry, coming as it did from a place which, in their younger days, had been appropriated to purposes so very different. Black Ormiston and John of Coldinghame cared not a bodle about the matter; but, nevertheless, they muffled their mantles about their left arms, adjusted their masks, and assailed the house with drawn swords.
CHAPTER XIV.
THE GLEEWOMEN.
Fiorello.—Hallo! house here! Hey, good people!
Hallo! house here! Faith, you sleep ill!
Bartolo.—Who can this be? Ugly fellow!
Drunken rascal! thus to bellow!
The Barber of Seville.
Furiously they knocked, and immediately the lights were extinguished, the singing ceased, and the windows were closed. Again and again they thundered on the planking of the nail-studded door, till the solid walls of the house were shaken, but there was no attention paid.
"Ho, within there!" cried Bothwell; "Alison, devil take thee, art thou deaf or drunk?"