XI.

ON A HENPECKED COUNTRY SQUIRE.

[Though satisfied with the severe satire of these lines, the poet made a second attempt.]

As father Adam first was fool’d,
A case that’s still too common,
Here lies a man a woman rul’d,
The devil rul’d the woman.


XII.

ON THE SAME.

[The second attempt did not in Burns’s fancy exhaust this fruitful subject: he tried his hand again.]

O Death, hadst thou but spared his life,
Whom we this day lament,
We freely wad exchang’d the wife,
And a’ been weel content!