But the greatest of Dunbar’s satires—­in fact, the greatest of all his poems—­is that entitled “The Dance of the Seven Deadly Sins.”  It is short, but within its compass most swift, vivid, and weird.  The pictures rise on the reader’s eye, and fade at once.  It is a singular compound of farce and earnest.  It is Spenser and Hogarth combined—­the wildest grotesquerie wrought on a background of penal flame.  The poet conceives himself in a dream, on the evening preceding Lent, and in his vision he heard Mahoun command that the wretched who “had ne’er been shriven” should dance before him.  Immediately a hideous rout present themselves; “holy harlots” appear in their finery, and never a smile wrinkles the faces of the onlookers; but when a string of “priests with their shaven necks” come in, the arches of the unnameable place shakes with the laughter of all the fiends.  Then “The Seven Deadly Sins” begin to leap at once:—­

  “And first of all the dance was Pride,
  With hair wyld back and bonnet on side.”

He, with all his train, came skipping through the fire.

  “Then Ire came in with sturt and strife;
  His hand was aye upon his knife;”

and with him came armed boasters and braggarts, smiting each other with swords, jagging each other with knives.  Then Envy, trembling with secret hatred, accompanied by his court of flatterers, backbiters, calumniators and all the human serpentry that lurk in the palaces of kings.  Then came Covetousness, with his hoarders and misers, and these the fiends gave to drink of newly-molten gold.

  “Syne Swearness, at the second bidding,
  Came like a sow out of a midding:” 

and with him danced a sleepy crew, and Belial lashed them with a bridle-rein, and the fiends gave them a turn in the fire to make them nimbler.  Then came Lechery, led by Idleness, with a host of evil companions, “full strange of countenance, like torches burning bright.”  Then came Gluttony, so unwieldy that he could hardly move:—­

  “Him followed mony foul drunkart
  With can and callop, cup and quart,
  In surfeit and excess.”

“Drink, aye they cried,” with their parched lips; and the fiends gave them hot lead to lap.  Minstrels, it appears, are not to be found in that dismal place:—­

  “Nae minstrels played to them but doubt,
  For gleemen there were halden out
    By day and eik by nicht: 
  Except a minstrel that slew a man,
  So to his heritage he wan,
    And entered by brieve of richt.”

And to the music of the solitary poet in hell, the strange shapes pass.  The conclusion of this singular poem is entirely farcical.  The devil is resolved to make high holiday: 

  “Then cried Mahoun for a Hielan Padyane,
  Syne ran a fiend to fetch Makfadyane,
    Far north-wast in a neuck;
  Be he the coronach had done shout,
  Ersche men so gatherit him about,
    In hell great room they took. 
  Thae tarmigants, with tag and tatter,
  Full loud in Ersche begoud to clatter,
    And roup like raven and rook. 
  The Devil sae deaved was with their yell,
  That in the deepest pot of hell
    He smorit them with smook.”