Being mounted in their best array,
Upon a car, and who but they?600
And follow'd with a world of tall lads,
That merry ditties troll'd, and ballads,[1]
Did ride with many a good-morrow,
Crying, Hey for our town, thro' the borough;
So when this triumph drew so nigh, 605
They might particulars descry,
They never saw two things so pat,
To all respects, as this and that.
First he that led the cavalcate,[2]
Wore a sow-gelder's flagellate, 610
On which he blew as strong a levet,[3]
As well-feed lawyer on his brev'ate,
When over one another's heads
They charge, three ranks at once, like Sweads:[4]
Next pans and kettles of all keys, 615
From trebles down to double base;
And after them upon a nag,
That might pass for a fore-hand stag,
A cornet rode, and on his staff,
A smock display'd did proudly wave. 620
Then bagpipes of the loudest drones,
With snuffling broken-winded tones;
Whose blasts of air in pockets shut,
Sound filthier than from the gut,
And make a viler noise than swine625
In windy weather, when they whine.
- ↑ The vulgar, and the soldiers themselves, had at triumphal processions the liberty of abusing their general. Their invectives were commonly conveyed in metre, See Suetonius, Life of Julius Cæsar, p. 33 (Bohn's edition).
- ↑ The words at the end of this and the next line were altered subsequently into cavalcade and flagellet, to the marring of the rhyme.
- ↑ Levet is a blast on the trumpet, a reveillé, which used to be sounded morning and evening on shipboard.
- ↑ This and the preceding line were added in 1674. Butler has departed from the common method of spelling the word Swedes for the sake of rhyme: in the edition of 1689, after his death, it was printed Sweeds. The Swedes appear to have been the first who practised firing by two or three ranks at a time, over each others' heads: see Sir Robert Monro's Memoirs, and Bariff's Young Artillery-man. The Swedes, under Gustavus Adolphus, were the most famous soldiers of Europe.
