Chapter XIV: Poor Robin's Litany

From being turned out of doors,
From town-rats, and ale-house scores,
From lowsie queans and pocky bores,
_Libera nos._

From tailors' bills and drapers' books,
From sluttish maids and nasty cooks,
From froward wives and crabbed looks,
_Libera nos._

From breaking pipes and broken glasses,
From drinking healths and drunken asses,
From lying lubbers and lisping lasses,
_Libera nos._

From paying of lawyers' fees,
From mouldy bread and musty cheese,
From trotting jades and scorning shes,
_Libera nos._

From fetters, chains, bolts, and gyves,
From pointless needles and broken knives,
From thievish servants and drunken wives,
_Libera nos._

From tailors' bodkins and butchers' pricks,
From tenpenny nails and headless spikes,
And from attorneys' knavish tricks,
_Libera nos._

From being taken in disguise,
From believing of a poet's lies,
And from the devil and the excise,
_Libera nos._

From brown bread and small beer,
From being taken stealing deer,
From all that hath been named here,
_Quesemus te._

The litany being ended the tapster comes for his reckoning, but poor Robin made answer that he should do as the rest had done, either tell a tale or sing a song. Says he, "Sing I cannot, but I will tell you how they marry in Scotland, as a Scotch priest told me that lay here, and got me to engage for him to my master for twenty shillings, and he running away, I was forced to pay his score for him."