'He is weil kend, Johne of the Syde,
A greater theif did never ryde.'
Sir Richard Maitland.
+The Text+ is from the Percy Folio, but is given in modernised spelling.
It lacks the beginning, probably, and one line in st. 3, which can be
easily guessed; but as a whole it is an infinitely fresher and better
ballad than that inserted in the _Minstrelsy_ of Sir Walter Scott.
+The Story+ is akin to that of _Kinmont Willie_ (p. 49). John of the
Side (on the river Liddel, nearly opposite Mangerton) first appears
about 1550 in a list of freebooters against whom complaints were laid
before the Bishop of Carlisle. He was, it seems, another of the
Armstrong family.
Hobby Noble has a ballad[1] to himself (as the hero of the present
ballad deserves), in which mention is made of Peter of Whitfield. This
is doubtless the person mentioned in the first line of _John o' the
Side_ as having been killed presumably by John himself.
[Footnote 1: Child, No. 189, from Caw's _Poetical Museum_, but not
of sufficient merit to be included here.]
'Culertun,' 10.1, is Chollerton on the Tyne. Percy suggests Challerton,
and in the ballads upon which Scott founded his version the name is
'Choler-ford.' 'Howbrame wood' and 'Lord Clough' are not identified; and
Flanders files, effective as they appear to be, are not otherwise known.
'The ballad,' says Professor Child, 'is one of the best in the world,
and enough to make a horse-trooper of any young borderer, had he lacked
the impulse.'