An’ oft your moss-traversing spunkies
Decoy some wight that late and drunk is;
The bleezin, curst, mischievous monkies
Delude his eyes,
Till in some miry slough he sunk is,
Ne’er more to rise.
Burns’ Address to the Deil.
SPUNKIES.
The Spunkie is another of those now-retired ministers, formerly employed by the Enemy of mankind to accomplish their destruction. And, in all truth, he could not have taken into his pay a servant more faithful to his trust than the spunkie. Whenever the traveller had the misfortune to lose his way, or whenever there was a prospect of deluding him from it, this vigilant link-boy was ever at hand, to light him into far worse quarters than even the purlieus of Covent Garden.
Suddenly the traveller’s attention was arrested by the most resplendent light, apparently reflected from a window not far distant; which, however, as the traveller approached, receded from him like the rainbow. Still pursuing his course towards it, the wily spunkie manœuvred so dexterously, that the unhappy wanderer was speedily decoyed into the nearest moss or precipice. Plunging headlong into some fatal abyss, the deluded victim never returned to his mourning wife and family, to relate to them the spunkie’s perfidy.