Yet out they marched like common men.
Besides the songs of attack, there are also comic poems, simply amusing without malice—such is the excellent Harleian piece on the Man in the Moon, which is the meditation of a solitary reveller, apparently thinking out the problem of the Man and his thorn-bush and offering sympathy: ‘Did you cut a bundle of thorns, and did the heyward come and make you pay? Ask him to drink, and we will get your pledge redeemed’.
If thy wed is y-take, bring home the truss;
Set forth thine other foot, stride over sty!
We shall pray the heyward home to our house,
And maken him at ease, for the maistry!
Drink to him dearly of full good bouse,
And our dame Douce shall sitten him by;
When that he is drunk as a dreynt mouse
Then we shall borrow the wed at the bailie!