Allan Ramsay: The author’s address to The Town Council of Edinburgh

The author’s address to
The Town Council of Edinburgh

Your poet humbly means and shaws.
That, contrair to just rights and laws,

I’ve suffer’d muckle wrang.
By Lucky Raid * and ballad-singers,
Wha thumb’d with their coarse dirty fingers

Sweet Adie’s funeral sang.
They spoil’d my sense, and staw my cash.

My muse’s pride murgully’d ;
And printing it like their vile trash.

The honest lieges whilly’d.

Allan Ramsay
(1684-1758)
The author’s address to The Town Council of Edinburgh

* A printer’s relict, who, with the hawkers, reprinted my pastoral on Mr. Addison, without my knowledge, on ugly paper, full of errors.

• fleursdumal.nl magazine

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