The Yahoo's Overthrow, Or, The Kevan Bayl's New Ballad

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Title:     The Yahoo's Overthrow, Or, The Kevan Bayl's New Ballad
Author: Jonathan Swift [More Titles by Swift]

UPON SERGEANT KITE'S INSULTING THE DEAN [1]

To the Tune of "Derry Down."

Jolly boys of St. Kevan's,[2] St. Patrick's, Donore
And Smithfield, I'll tell you, if not told before,
How Bettesworth, that booby, and scoundrel in grain,
Has insulted us all by insulting the Dean.
Knock him down, down, down, knock him down.

The Dean and his merits we every one know,
But this skip of a lawyer, where the de'il did he grow?
How greater his merit at Four Courts or House,
Than the barking of Towzer, or leap of a louse!
Knock him down, etc.

That he came from the Temple, his morals do show;
But where his deep law is, few mortals yet know:
His rhetoric, bombast, silly jests, are by far
More like to lampooning, than pleading at bar.
Knock him down, etc.

This pedler, at speaking and making of laws,
Has met with returns of all sorts but applause;
Has, with noise and odd gestures, been prating some years,
What honester folk never durst for their ears.
Knock him down, etc.

Of all sizes and sorts, the fanatical crew
Are his brother Protestants, good men and true;
Red hat, and blue bonnet, and turban's the same,
What the de'il is't to him whence the devil they came.
Knock him down, etc.

Hobbes, Tindal, and Woolston, and Collins, and Nayler,
And Muggleton, Toland, and Bradley the tailor,
Are Christians alike; and it may be averr'd,
He's a Christian as good as the rest of the herd.
Knock him down, etc.

He only the rights of the clergy debates;
Their rights! their importance! We'll set on new rates
On their tithes at half-nothing, their priesthood at less;
What's next to be voted with ease you may guess.
Knock him down, etc.

At length his old master, (I need not him name,)
To this damnable speaker had long owed a shame;
When his speech came abroad, he paid him off clean,
By leaving him under the pen of the Dean.
Knock him down, etc.

He kindled, as if the whole satire had been
The oppression of virtue, not wages of sin:
He began, as he bragg'd, with a rant and a roar;
He bragg'd how he bounced, and he swore how he swore.[3]
Knock him down, etc.

Though he cringed to his deanship in very low strains,
To others he boasted of knocking out brains,
And slitting of noses, and cropping of ears,
While his own ass's zags were more fit for the shears.
Knock him down, etc.

On this worrier of deans whene'er we can hit,
We'll show him the way how to crop and to slit;
We'll teach him some better address to afford
To the dean of all deans, though he wears not a sword.
Knock him down, etc.

We'll colt him through Kevan, St. Patrick's, Donore,
And Smithfield, as rap was ne'er colted before;
We'll oil him with kennel, and powder him with grains,
A modus right fit for insulters of deans.
Knock him down, etc.

And, when this is over, we'll make him amends,
To the Dean he shall go; they shall kiss and be friends:
But how? Why, the Dean shall to him disclose
A face for to kiss, without eyes, ears, or nose.
Knock him down, etc.

If you say this is hard on a man that is reckon'd
That sergeant-at-law whom we call Kite the Second,
You mistake; for a slave, who will coax his superiors,
May be proud to be licking a great man's posteriors.
Knock him down, etc.

What care we how high runs his passion or pride?
Though his soul he despises, he values his hide;
Then fear not his tongue, or his sword, or his knife;
He'll take his revenge on his innocent wife.
Knock him down, down, down, keep him down.

[Footnote 1: Grub Street Journal, No. 189, August 9,1734.--"in December last, Mr. Bettesworth, of the city of Dublin, serjeant-at-law, and member of parliament, openly swore, before many hundreds of people, that, upon the first opportunity, by the help of ruffians, he would murder or maim the Dean of St. Patrick's, (Dr. Swift.) Upon which thirty-one of the principal inhabitants of that liberty signed a paper to this effect: 'That, out of their great love and respect to the Dean, to whom the whole kingdom hath so many obligations, they would endeavour to defend the life and limbs of the said Dean against a certain man and all his ruffians and murderers.' With which paper they, in the name of themselves and all the inhabitants of the city, attended the Dean on January 8, who being extremely ill in bed of a giddiness and deafness, and not able to receive them, immediately dictated a very grateful answer. The occasion of a certain man's declaration of his villanous design against the Dean, was a frivolous unproved suspicion that he had written some lines in verse reflecting upon him."--_Scott_.]

[Footnote 2: Kevan Bayl was a cant term for the rabble of this district of Dublin.]

[Footnote 3: Swift, in a letter to the Duke of Dorset, January, 1733-4, gives a full account of Bettesworth's visit to him, about which he says that the serjeant had spread some five hundred falsehoods.--_W. E. B._]

[The end]
Jonathan Swift's poem: Yahoo's Overthrow, Or, The Kevan Bayl's New Ballad

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