What’s a’ your jargon o’ the schools,
Your Latin names for horns an’ stools?
If honest nature made you fools,
What sairs your Grammars?
Ye’d better taen up spades and shools
Or knappin-hammers.
What’s all your scholarly jargon
Your Latin names for inkhorns and stools?
If honest nature made you fools,
How can your Grammars help you?
You’d better take up spades and shovels
Or sledgehammers.
—Robert Burns, Scottish poet, Epistle to J. Lapraik, 1785
