Sentence The Threehundredandthirtyninth
“There was young lass made a rebus,
And sent it, verbatim, to Jesus,
Though sheer apostasy,
It tickled his fancy,
And he declined, ad infinitum, to leave us!”

and Brother Bede slapped his knee and rocked with laughter, having read out the winning entry, by Brother Duff, in the Melrose Abbey Hogmanay Limerick Competition, and Tavish admitted that he, too, was a great fan of the verse form and that Brother Duff was, indeed, a worthy winner; then asked if, perchance, Brother Bede knew of the Laird of Ercildoune, who he believed was Thomas Learmonth: “oh a verra, verra fine gentleman indeed,” vouchsafed the elderly Almoner, pouring out two more goblets of his Special Mead which, he said, he reserved “only for those, and such as those, which mean yourself and mine this morn, but sad to say, Master Thomas has gone missing and none know what has become of him – save of course, Our Lord!” and when he pointed upwards, Tavish could not help but follow Brother Bede's example and look upwards himself, and what he saw filled him with an icy dread and he felt a tingle in his back-bone!