Adam Armour, a hot-headed little scrapper, is in hiding. He’s just been in a scuffle that left a woman injured, and now constables and soldiers are hunting him and his pal. The poem is his direct, rough-edged prayer to God—but instead of begging meekly, he bargains and launches into a string of fantastic, spiteful curses against his enemies. He wants old Geordie dangled over hell’s mouth, drunk Nanse drenched in brimstone, and Jock and Jean whipped with boiling oil. The mood is darkly comic and charged with defiant energy. You can feel the speaker’s fear of the gallows mixing with a gleeful, almost childlike pleasure in imagining his tormentors getting supernatural payback. The whole thing crackles with lively Scots dialect and a mischievous, unrepentant spirit.
79. Adam Armour’s Prayer — Summary
GUDE pity me, because I’m little! For though I am an elf o’ mettle, An’ can, like ony wabster’s shuttle, Jink there or here, Yet, scarce as lang’s a gude kail-whittle, I’m unco queer.
An’ now Thou kens our waefu’ case; For Geordie’s jurr we’re in disgrace, Because we stang’d her through the place, An’ hurt her spleuchan; For whilk we daurna show our face Within the clachan.
An’ now we’re dern’d in dens and hollows, And hunted, as was William Wallace, Wi’ constables-thae blackguard fallows, An’ sodgers baith; But Gude preserve us frae the gallows, That shamefu’ death!
Auld grim black-bearded Geordie’s sel’— O shake him owre the mouth o’ hell! There let him hing, an’ roar, an’ yell Wi’ hideous din, And if he offers to rebel, Then heave him in.
When Death comes in wi’ glimmerin blink, An’ tips auld drucken Nanse the wink, May Sautan gie her doup a clink Within his yett, An’ fill her up wi’ brimstone drink, Red-reekin het.
Though Jock an’ hav’rel Jean are merry— Some devil seize them in a hurry, An’ waft them in th’ infernal wherry Straught through the lake, An’ gie their hides a noble curry Wi’ oil of aik!
As for the jurr-puir worthless body! She’s got mischief enough already; Wi’ stanged hips, and buttocks bluidy She’s suffer’d sair; But, may she wintle in a woody, If she wh-e mair!