but toiling
At baking, roasting, frying, boiling;
And though the gentry first are stechin', [cramming]
Yet e'en the ha' folk fill their pechan [servants, belly]
Wi' sauce, ragouts, and sic like trashtrie, [rubbish]
That's little short o' downright wastrie. [waste]
Our whipper-in, wee blastit wonner! [wonder]
Poor worthless elf! it eats a dinner
Better than ony tenant man
His Honour has in a' the lan';
An' what poor cot-folk pit their painch in, [put, paunch]
I own it's past my comprehension.

LUATH

Trowth, Caesar, whyles they're fash'd eneugh; [troubled]
A cottar howkin' in a sheugh, [digging, ditch]
Wi' dirty stanes biggin' a dyke, [building, wall]
Baring a quarry, and sic like; [clearing]
Himsel', a wife, he thus sustains,
A smytrie o' wee duddy weans, [brood, ragged children]
And nought but his han'-darg to keep [hand-labor]
Them right and tight in thack and rape. [thatch, rope]
And when they meet wi' sair disasters, [sore]
Like loss o' health, or want o' masters,
Ye maist wad think, a wee touch langer [almost]
And they maun starve o' cauld and hunger; [must]
But how it comes I never kent yet. [knew]
They're maistly wonderfu' contented;
An' buirdly chiels and clever hizzies [stout lads, girls]
Are bred in sic a way as this is.

CAESAR

But then, to see how ye're negleckit,
How huff'd, and cuff'd, and disrespeckit,
Lord, man! our gentry care sae little
For delvers, ditchers and sic cattle;
They gang as saucy by poor folk
As I wad by a stinking brock. [badger]
I've noticed, on our Laird's court-day,
An' mony a time my heart's been wae.
Poor tenant bodies, scant o' cash,
How they maun thole a factor's snash; [endure, abuse]
He'll stamp and threaten, curse and swear,
He'll apprehend them; poind their gear: [seize, property]
While they maun stan', wi' aspect humble, [must]
An' hear it a', an' fear an' tr