Speech mean and muttering,
Hair-splitting and stuttering;
Uncertain proofs devising;
Authorities despising;
Scorning custom's reading;
Confusing all your pleading;
To madness a mob to be leading;
With the shout of a strumpet
Blowing one's own trumpet."


KING CORMAC'S WORST ENEMY

"O Cormac Mac Art, of your enemies' garrison,
Who is the worst for your witty comparison?"
Said Cormac: "Not hard to tell!
A man with a satirist's nameless audacity;
A man with a slave-woman's shameless pugnacity;
One with a dirty dog's careless up-bound,
The conscience thereto of a ravening hound.
Like a stately noble he answers all speakers
From a memory full as a Chronicle-maker's,
With the suave behaviour of Abbot or Prior,
Yet the blasphemous tongue of a horse-thief liar
And he wise as false in every grey hair,
Violent, garrulous, devil-may-care.
When he cries, 'The case is settled and over!'
Though you were a saint, I swear you would swear!"