King Cormac'S Worst Enemy

"O Cormac Mac Art, of your enemies' garrison, Who is the worst for your witty comparison?" Said Cormac: "Not hard to tell! A man with a satirist's nameless audacity; A man with a slave-woman's shameless pugnacity; One with a dirty dog's careless up-bound, The conscience thereto of a ravening hound. Like a stately noble he answers all speakers From a memory full as a Chronicle-maker's, With the suave behaviour of Abbot or Prior, Yet the blasphemous tongue of a horse-thief liar And he wise as false in every grey hair, Violent, garrulous, devil-may-care. When he cries, 'The case is settled and over!' Though you were a saint, I swear you would swear!"