To The Glasgow Magistrates

    (On their Proposal to Banish Barmaids)

    May it please your Worships,
    For years past, Glasgow has stood in the forefront
    As a city given over to the small-pox
    And magisterial reform.
    It is, I believe,
    An exceedingly well-managed city:
    In fact, it appears to be managed
    Out of all reasonable existence;
    Hence, no doubt, it comes to pass
    That it was lately visited
    By a smart sample of the plague.
    I have not the smallest doubt that your Worships
    Are sincere and clean-thinking men.
    I believe that you do what you do do, so to speak,
    Out of sheer public spirit
    And with a view to bettering the condition
    Of the city over which you preside.
    In other words, I impute no motives:
    That is to say, no base motives.
    But, my dear Worships,
    Why, in the name of Heaven, would you abolish
    The harmless, necessary barmaid?
    Have you never been young?
    Have you never known the tender delight
    Of whiling away a morning
    With your elbow on the zinc
    And threepennyworth of Bass before you?
    What, may I ask your Worships,
    Is Bass without a barmaid?
    I grant that, taking them all in all,
    The barmaids of Scotland
    Are not what you might term
    An altogether bewitching lot.
    Years ago, when I was young and callow,
    Fate threw me into the propinquity
    Of a lady of this ilk;
    She hailed from Glasgow,
    And she was not beautiful;
    On the other hand, I was young.
    And, out of an income which was even slenderer then
    Than it is now,
    I purchased for that dear lady of the North
    Many bottles of perfume,
    Many pairs of kid gloves,
    And a Prayer Book or so;
    And, when I had consumed innumerable Basses
    At her altar,
    And the time had, as I thought, become ripe,
    I offered her matrimony,
    To which she replied, in limpid Doric:
    "Gang awa hame to yer mither."
    That, my dear Worships,
    Is Glasgow!
    If you can weed out of Glasgow
    All young females
    Possessed of this particular kind of temperament,
    I am not so sure
    But that you would have my blessing.
    On the other hand, I am free to admit
    That I hae my doots as to your capacity for so doing.
    The perfume-bottle,
    The kid gloves,
    The Prayer Book
    And "Na, na, na, I winna,"
    Will always remain the prerogatives
    Of the Glasgae lassies,
    If I know anything of them.
    Also, my dear Worships,
    One thing is absolutely certain,
    That, if the magistrates of all the cities
    In the United Kingdom
    Would take the step you have taken,
    We should have gone a very considerable way
    Towards solving the drink problem,
    And putting Sir Michael Hicks-Beach
    Into a fearful hole for money.

    P.S. - I hate Scotch men,
    But I sometimes think that Scotch women
    Are rather bonnie.