, lengthen'd groan,
And damn a' parties but your own;
I'll warrant them ye're nae deceiver,
A steady, sturdy, staunch believer.

The period within which these satires were written was short--1785 and
1786; but some three years later, on the prosecution of a liberal
minister, Doctor McGill of Ayr, for the publication of _A Practical
Essay on the Death of Jesus Christ_, which was charged with teaching
Unitarianism, Burns took up the theme again. _The Kirk's Alarm_ is a
rattling "ballad," full of energy and scurrilous wit, but, like many
of its kind, it has lost much of its interest through the great amount
of personal detail. A few stanzas will show that, even after his
absence from local politics during his Edinburgh sojourn, he had lost
none of his gusto in belaboring the Ayrshire Calvinists.

Orthodox, Orthodox, wha believe in John Knox,
Let me sound an alarm to your conscience:
There's a heretic blast has been blawn i' the wast,
That what is not sense must be nonsense.

Dr. Mac, Dr. Mac, you should stretch on a rack,
To strike evil-doers wi' terror;
To join faith and sense upon any pretence,
Is heretic, damnable error.

* * * * *

D'rymple mild, D'rymple mild, tho' your heart's like a child,
And your life like the new driven snaw,
Yet that winna save ye, auld Satan must have ye,
For preaching that three's ane and twa.

Calvin's sons, Calvin's sons, seize your sp'ritual guns,
Ammunition you never can need;
Your hearts are the stuff will be powther enough,
And your skulls are storehouses o' lead.

It was inevitable from the nature and purpose of these satirical
poems that, however keen an interest they might raise in their time
and place, a large part of that interest should evaporate in the
course of time. Yet it would be a mistake to regard their importance
as limited to raising a laugh against a few obscure bigots. The evils
that Burns attacked, however his verses may be tinged with personal
animus and occasional injustice, were real evils that existed far
beyond the county of Ayr; and in the movement for enlightenment and
liberation from these evils and their like that was then sweeping over
Scotland, the wit and invective of the poet played no small part. The
development that followed did, indeed, take a direction that he was
far from foreseeing. The moderate party, which he sup