THE ACCUSATION

I am a farmer and live

Two miles from Decapolis.

Where is the magistrate? Tell me

Where the magistrate is!

Here I had made provision

For children and wife,

And now I have lost my all;

I am ruined for life.

I, a believer, too,

In the synagogues.—

What is the faith to me?

I have lost my hogs.

Two thousand hogs as fine

As ever you saw,

Drowned and choked in the sea —

I want the law!

They were feeding upon a hill

When a strolling teacher

Came by and scared my hogs —

They say he's a preacher,

And cures the possessed who haunt

The tombs and bogs.

All right; but why send devils

Into my hogs?

They squealed and grunted and ran

And plunged in the sea.

And the lunatic laughed who was healed,

Of the devils free.

Devils or fright, no matter

A fig or straw.

Where is the magistrate, tell me —

I want the law!