The Bride's Breast-Knot Poem by Alexander Ross

O tight and bony was the bride,
When she got on her breast-knot;
Her father that sat her beside,
That it was Peggy wist not;
Her head with lawn was cover'd o'er,
With edgings fine all set before,
And kissing strings three yards and more,
But naething like the breast-knot.
O the bony, O the bony, O the bony breast-knot!
The lad thought he was far behind
That her that had it kist not;
With specks of gold it was o'er laid,
And was baith massy, long and bred,
And many a loop and twining had,
Ere it became a breast-knot.
When in the morning she was drest
In her new gown, she mist not
To bid her maid put on the rest,
Especially the breast-knot;
She was a seamstress to her trade,
And wondrous dressy fike she made;
At last her ignorance betraid,
For right the knot she keest not.
The bride stood up afore the glass,
And what to do she wist not,
Because her maid mistook the place
Of her new bridal breast-knot.
She plac'd it up, she plac'd it down,
Threw off and then put on her gown;
At last she fell into a swoon,
'Twas lucky that she burst not.
When she o'ercame, with tears she cry'd,
“Alas my bony breast-knot!
I better ne'er had been a bride,
Than thus to slip the first knot.”
The taylor, that was there all night,
Came in and said he'd set it right.
You'd laugh to see the monky pight,
How he set up the breast-knot.
Now of her pain the bride is eas'd,
But at the bodie keest not
A sixpence, that her mind had pleas'd
In placing of her breast-knot.
He looked sair, that she should do't,
And downward to his pocket bow'd;
But yet she never understood
The clinking of his waistcoat.