The Hawk And The Weazle - by Samuel Thomson

Here's a poem entitled The Hawk And The Weazle, by Samuel Thomson (1766-1816) The Bard of Carngranny. Carngranny is near Templepatrick in County Antrim. Thomson was poor but, unlike many of the other Ulster-Scots folk poets, he was a schoolmaster, albeit of a 'hedge' school. Thomson associated with the intellectual leaders of the Belfast United Irishmen and, between 1792 and 1797, he was one of the most regular contributors (often using a variety of pseudonyms) to the poetry column of the Belfast radical newspaper The Northern Star. After the 1798 Rising failed, Thomson seems to have become more circumspect as he then contributed to the less radical Belfast News-letter. He published three volumes of his poetry (1793, 1799 and 1806).

The Hawk And The Weazle

To town ae morn, as Lizie hie’d
To seel a pickle yarn,
A wanton Whiteret she espy’d,
A sportin at a cairn.
Alang the heath beskirted green,
It play’d wi’ monie a wheel:
She stood and dighted baith her een,
An’ thought it was the Diel
She saw at freaks!

But soon her doubts were a’ dismis’t
A gled cam whist’ling by,
And seiz’d the weazle:- ere it wist,
‘Twas halfway at the sky.
But soon the goss grew feeble like,
And syne began to fa’,
Till down he daded on a dyke,
His thrapple ate in twa;
Let him snuff that.

The weazle aff in triumph walks,
An’ left the bloodless glutton,
A warning sad to future hawks
That grien for weazle’s mutton.
So reprobates, that spitefu’ cross,
Decree their nibour’s ruin,
Are aften forc’d, like foolish goss,
To drink o’ their ain brewin’,
Wha says its wrang.