 Robert Burns dedicated a poem to the Louse , inspired by witnessing one on a lady 's bonnet in church : " Ye ugly , <unk> , <unk> <unk> , <unk> , <unk> 'd , by saint and sinner , How dare ye set your fit upon her , sae fine lady ! Gae somewhere else , and seek your dinner on some poor body . " John Milton in Paradise Lost mentioned the biblical plague of lice visited upon pharaoh : " Frogs , lice , and flies must all his palace fill with loathed intrusion , and filled all the land . " John Ray recorded a Scottish proverb , " Gie a beggar a bed and he 'll repay you with a Louse . " In Shakespeare 's Troilus and Cressida , Thersites compares Menelaus , brother of Agamemnon , to a louse : " Ask me not what I would be , if I were not Thersites ; for I care not to be the louse of a <unk> , so I were not Menelaus . " 
