13
How finely you swagger, to mimic Lochaber,
When dress’d in your ribbons of orange and blue.
The Pope’s superstition, and Spain’s Inquisition,
Are deeds that will ever make thousands bewail,
Your Waterloo bonnet, with top-knot upon it,
Proclaims to the nation this sorrowful tale.
We’ve Waterloo feeding, and Waterloo cleading,
That’s greatly in fashion wi’ belles and with beaux,
We’ve poets with sonnets & blockheads with bonnets,
To wear in remembrance of Waterloo brose.
We’ve Waterloo taxes, so firm on their axis,
In their annual circuit are just as the sun.
And some folk I ken, that’s forced into the fashion,
Are gaun about wetshod wi’ Waterloo shoon.
Once our commerce and trade from the nation has fled,
And left pauperism the country to feed,
Our descendants unborn, at our conduct will scorn,
Posterity never can sanction the deed.
Britannia no longer can yield to be trode on,
These Waterloo fashions she never can bide,
But give her the food that her forefathers fed on,
A clumsy beefsteak was their glory and pride.
Indeed I am sorry our national glory
Such laurels should bind round the brow of the brave,
B
