* * * * *

Be to the poor like ony whunstane, [any whinstone]
And haud their noses to the grunstane; [hold, grindstone]
Ply ev'ry art o' legal thieving;
No matter--stick to sound believing.

Learn three-mile pray'rs, an' half-mile graces,
Wi' weel-spread looves, an' lang, wry faces; [palms]
Grunt up a solemn, 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.