Funny Scottish Epitaphs: post mortal football

Inscription on the gravestone of James White, 1685, in Fenwick, Ayrshire

This martyr was by Peter Ingles shot,

By birth a Tiger rather than a Scot,

Who that his monstrous extract might be seen,

Cut off my head and kicked it o’er the Green.

Thus was the head which was to wear a crown

A football made by a profane dragoon.

Raymond Lamont-Brown: Scottish Epitaphs. Chambers, Edinburgh, 1990

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