Tweed Side
On travelling down Tweed side,
I heard an uncouth chit chat;
An old wife thus her neighbour did chide,
May curses confound your cat!
His plunder I’ll tell you pit pat,
Our hut he inhabits at ease;
He broke into our buffet,
And munch’d up our ewe-milk cheese.
He lifts up our larder latch,
And he skims all the cream off the milk;
The callans he’ll bite and he’ll scratch,
And the brats of their boiley will bilk.
No farley to find him so fat,
Beef, bacon, and butter, he eats;
And ne’er hunts for a mouse nor a rat,
But sups upon savory meats.
He has lunch’d up two large lamb legs,
Of our bannocks he’s not left a bit;
And has scar’d the old hen off her eggs,
And she’s drown’d in the kirn-milk kit.
He mucks in our mickle meal-chest,
He spews in the cistern of salt;
In our kale-pot and cogies he’s piss’d,
And he mutes too among the malt.
He has drove a scate fish off the bink,
Which drop’d in the brimstone kan,
And rais’d such a stove and stink
As chok’d our old good man.
Was it no more damage than that,
The brute must be greatly to blame;
If you take not care of your tom-cat,
He may rely on a lame!