"Nay," said Willie, "we'll slay him."
But up spoke another young Armstrong, "We'll give him a thrashing and
let him go."
Then up spoke the good Laird's Jock, the best fellow in all the company,
"Sit down a while, Dickie, and we'll give thee a bit of thine own cow's
thigh."
Dickie's heart was so sore that he could not eat a bit, but he went and
lay down in an old peat-house where he thought to sleep the night, and
all the prayers the poor fool prayed were, "I wish I had amends for my
three good cows."
Now it was the custom of Pudding-burn house and of the house of
Mangerton, whose laird was chief of the Armstrong clan, that any who
came not to the table at the first summons got no more meat till the
next meal, so some of the lads, hungry and weary, had thrown the key of
the stable above the door-head. Dickie took good notice of that to turn
it to his own account, went into the stable where stood thirty-three
horses and tied thirty of them with St Mary's knot, tight to their
stalls.
Of the remaining three, Dickie took two, which belonged to Johnie and
Willie Armstrong, and the one belonging to the Laird's Jock he left
loose in the stable. Leaping on one, he took the other along with him,
and rode off as fast as he could.
When day came, there were great shouts and cries.
"Who has done this," quoth the good Laird's Jock; "see that ye tell me
the truth."
"It is Dickie that has been in the stable last night, and has taken the
horses."
"Ye never would listen to me," said the good Laird's Jock, "though I
told ye true tales. Ye would never stay out of England but would steal
everything, till ye were crooked and blind."
"Lend me thy bay," said fair Johnie; "he is the only horse loose in the
stable, and I'll either fetch back Dick o' the Cow, or he shall die."
"Lend thee my bay!" said Jock; "he is worth gold and good money. Dick
o' the Cow has taken two horses; I would not ye make them three."
Johnie, however, took the Laird's steel jacket on his back, and a
two-handed sword by his side, and a steel cap on his head, and galloped
after Dickie, who was barely three miles from the town when Johnie
overtook him on Cannobie Lee, on the borders of Liddesdale.
"Abide, abide, thou traitor thief!" cried Armstrong; "the day is come
that thou shalt die!"
Dickie looked over his left shoulder and said, "Johnie, hast thou no
more in thy company? There is a preacher in our chapel who teaches all
the livelong day, and when day is gone and night has come, there are
only three words I remember--the first and second are Faith and
Conscience--the third is 'Ne'er let a traitor free.' What faith and
conscience was thine, Johnie, when thou tookest away my three cows? And
when thou hadst taken them away, thou wast not satisfied. Thou sentest
thy brother Willie, and took away three coverlets off my wife's bed!"
Then Johnie let his spear fall low by his side, and thought he would
have killed Dickie, but the powers above were stronger than he, and he
only succeeded in running through the fool's jerkin. Dickie out with
his sword and ran after him, and when he could not get at him with the
blade, he felled him with the butt-end over the eye, felled Johnie
Armstrong, the finest man in the south country. "Gramercy," said
Dickie, "I had but two horses, thou hast made them three!"--and he took
Johnie's steel jacket off his back and his two-handed sword, and his
steel cap. "Farewell, Johnie," said he, "I'll tell my master I met
thee."
When Johnie wakened out of his swoon, he was a sad man. "Art thou gone,
Dickie?" he said. "Then the shame and woe are left with me. Art thou
gone? Then, Dickie, the devil go in thy company, for if I live to be a
hundred, I'll never again fight with a fool."
Dickie came home to the good Lord Scroope as fast as he could. "Now,
Dickie, I'll neither eat nor drink till thou art hanged on high."
"Shame speed the liars, my lord," said Dickie, "this was not the promise
ye made me, for I would never have gone to Liddesdale to steal if I had
not got leave from thee." "But why did ye steal the Laird's Jock's
horse? Ye might have lived long in Cumberland before the Laird's Jock
had stolen from thee."
"Indeed, I knew ye lied, my lord. I won the horse from fair Johnie
Armstrong hand to hand on Cannobie Lee. There is the jacket that was on
his back, and the two-handed sword that hung by his side, and the steel
cap that was on his head. I brought all these tokens to show thee."
"If that be true that thou tellest me (and I think thou durst not lie)
I'll give thee fifteen pounds for the horse, all told out in the lap of
thy cloak; I'll give thee one of my best milk cows to maintain thy wife
and three children, and they will be as good as any two of thine would
be."
"Shame speed the liars, my lord!" said Dickie. "Do ye think aye to make
a fool of me? I'll either have twenty pounds for the horse or else I'll
take him to Mortan fair."
So Scroope gave him twenty pounds for the horse, all in gold and good
money, and one of his best milk cows to maintain his wife and three
children.
Then Dickie rode as fast as he could through Carlisle town, and the
first man he met was my lord's brother, Ralph Scroope, Bailiff of
Glozenburrie.
"Well be ye met, Ralph Scroope!" said Dickie.
"Welcome, my brother's fool!" said Ralph. "Where did ye get Johnie
Armstrong's horse?"
"Where did I get him? I stole him," said Dickie.
"Wilt thou sell me the bonny horse?"
"Ay, if thou count out the money in the lap of my cloak, for never a
penny will I trust thee."
"I'll give thee ten pounds for the horse and count it into the lap of
thy cloak, and one of my best milk cows to maintain thy wife and three
children."
"Shame speed the liars, my lord! Do ye think aye to make a fool of me?
I'll either have twenty pounds for the horse, or I'll take him to Mortan
fair."
So Ralph gave him twenty pounds for the horse, all in gold and good
money, and one of his milk cows to maintain his wife and three children.
Then Dickie leaped and laughed, and cried, "May the neck of the third
horse be broken if either of the two were better than he!"
So he came home to his wife and ye may judge how the poor fool had
succeeded. For her three stolen coverlets he gave her two score English
pounds, and two cows as good as her own three. "And here," said he, "is
a white-footed nag that I reckon will carry us both. But if I stay
longer in Cumberland the Armstrongs will hang me." So Dickie took leave
of his lord and went to live at Burgh under Stanmuir.
*Chapter XXIX*
*The Lochmaben Harper*
The castle of Lochmaben is said to have been the residence of Robert
Bruce while Lord of Allandale. Hence, as a royal fortress, the keeping
of it was always granted to some powerful lord. There is extant a grant
giving to one of these, Robert Lauder, the office of Captain and Keeper
of Lochmaben Castle for seven years, and among his perquisites were
"lands stolen from the King"!
The inhabitants of four small villages near the castle have each still
to this day a right to a small piece of ground. These people are
descendants of Robert Bruce's retainers, to whom he assigned these
portions of land in reward for faithful service, and there are still to
be found some families (_e.g._ the Richardsons of Lochmaben) who hold
their lands direct from the times of Bruce without a break.
"O heard ye na o' the silly blind Harper,
How long he lived in Lochmaben town?
And how he wad gang to fair England,
To steal the Lord Warden's Wanton Brown?
But first he gaed to his gude wyfe,
Wi' a' the haste that he could thole[#]
'This wark,' quo' he, 'will ne'er gae well
Without a mare that has a foal.'
[#] Suffer.
Quoth his wife, "Thou hast a good grey mare that can jump both high and
low; so set thee on her back and leave the foal at home with me." Away
went the Harper to England as fast as he might, and when he came to
Carlisle gate, who should be there but the Warden himself?
"'Come into my hall, thou silly blind Harper,
And of thy harping let me hear!'
'O, by my sooth,' quo' the silly blind Harper,
'I wad rather hae stabling for my mare."
The Warden looked o'er his left shoulder,
And said unto his stable groom--
'Gae take the silly blind Harper's mare,
And tie her beside my Wanton Brown.'"
So the Harper harped and sang, the lordlings danced, and so sweet was
the music that the groom forgot all about the stable door. Still the
Harper harped on till all the nobles were fast asleep, when he quickly
took off his shoes, crept softly down the stair, and hied with light
tread to the stable door, which he opened and entered. He found there
three-and-thirty steeds. He took a colt's halter which he had hidden in
his hose, slipped it over Wanton Brown, tied it to the grey mare's tail,
and turned them both loose at the castle gate.
Away they went over moor and moss and dale, and the mare never let
Wanton rest a moment, but kept him galloping home to her foal. So swift
of foot was she, and knew her way so well, that she reached Lochmaben a
good three hours before daybreak.
When she came to the Harper's door, she neighed and snorted. "Rise up,"
shouted the Harper's wife, "thou lazy lass, and let in thy master and
his mare." The lass rose up, put on her clothes and looked through the
lock-hole. "By my sooth," cried she, "our mare has got a fine brown
foal!"
"Hold thy tongue, thou foolish wench, the light is dazzling thine eyes.
I'll wager all I have against a groat that it's bigger than ever our
foal will be."
Still in merry Carlisle the Harper harped to high and low, and nought
could they do but listen to him until day-dawn. But when it was
daylight they discovered that Wanton Brown was gone and also the poor
blind Harper's mare.
"Alas! alas!" cried the cunning old Harper, "alas that I came here; in
Scotland I have lost a brown colt foal and in England they have stolen
my good grey mare."
"Cease thy lamenting, thou silly blind Harper, and go on harping; we'll
pay thee well for the loss of thy colt foal and thou shalt have a far
better mare." So the harper harped and sang, and so sweet were his
harpings that he was paid for the foal he never had lost and three times
over for the gray mare.
*Chapter XXX*
*The Rookhope Ride*
This Durham border song is supposed to be spoken by a Weardale man, who
begins by denouncing the inhabitants of the Tyne valley, "and all their
companies there about" as false thieves,
"minded to do mischief
And at their stealing stands not out."
It must be confessed that the Tynedale men had an unenviable reputation.
They were such lawless desperadoes, so addicted to rapine, that during
more than two centuries the merchants of Newcastle regularly refused to
take an apprentice born in that district. The date is December 1572.
The rebel Earl of Northumberland, who had taken up arms for Mary Queen
of Scots, and for the old religion, had been betrayed by the Scots and
beheaded at York. Owing to this rebellion there was great confusion in
the northern counties, hence the time was well chosen by the "limmer
thieves" of Tynedale to make a predatory raid on their neighbours. They
gathered together the stoutest men of arms and the best in gear, a
hundred or more in number, and in the forenoon, about eleven o'clock,
they came into a "bye-fell" and stopped for a meal--the last which some
of them would eat. When they had eaten, they chose their captains,
Harry Corbyl, Simon Fell, and Martin Ridley. Then they rode on over the
moss, "with many a brank and whew," saying to one another that they were
men enough,
"For Weardale-men have a journey ta'en,
They are so far out o'er yon fell,
That some of them's with the two earls,
And others fast in Bernard castell.
There we shall get gear enough,
For there is nane but women at hame;
The sorrowful fend that they can make.
Is loudly cries as they were slain."
They came in at Rookhope Head, which is the top of a rocky valley, about
five miles long, at the end of which Rookhope Burn empties itself into
the river Wear. This valley is as wild and open to-day as it was then.
In some four hours they gathered together about six hundred sheep and
they were engaged in "shifting" the horses, when the hue and cry was
raised by one Rowley, whose horse they tried to take. He was the first
man to see them. The cry spread rapidly down Rookhope burn and through
Weardale, and word came to the bailiff's house at the East-gate. He was
out, but his wife had his horse saddled and sent it to him, together
with his sword, spear, and jacket quilted with iron plates, the sort of
harness worn by the moss-troopers and other light horsemen of the time.
The bailiff had already heard the bad news, and was sorely troubled
thereby. His own brother had been attacked three days before by
marauders, and lay sick with nineteen wounds. Yet the bailiff shrank
not at all, but hied fast after the sheep-stealers, with as many of the
neighbours as he could gather to bear him company.
The pursuers overtook the thieves in Nuketon Cleugh, and gave them all
the fighting they wanted. Not one of them ever thought to see his wife
again. They bore three banners against the Weardale men, "as if the
world had been all their own." The fray lasted only an hour, but many a
tall man lay weaponless and sore wounded before that hour was done, and
four of the Northumbrian prickers were slain, including Harry Corbyl
whom they had chosen to be their captain. Eleven of them were taken
prisoners. Only one of the Weardale men fell but--
"These Weardale-men, they have good hearts,
They are as stiff as any tree;
For, if they'd everyone been slain,
Never a foot back man would flee.
And such a storm amongst them fell,
As I think you never heard the like;
For he that bears his head on high,
He oft-tymes falls into the dyke.
And now I do entreat you all,
As many as are present here,
To pray for the singer of this song,
For he sings to make blythe your cheer."
*Chapter XXXI*
*Barthram's Dirge*
The story of how this ballad came to be preserved to us is a very
interesting one. A Mr Surtees, who was very interested in the old
ballads, used to give work to a poor old Scotswoman to weed in his
garden. Finding that she had learnt ballads in her young days, he
encouraged her to talk about them, and this was amongst those which she
recited to him. She told him that it referred to a young man named
Bertram or Barthrum, who made love to a young lady against the wish of
her brothers. The cruel brothers slew him, but the lady had him buried
at the very spot where he was wont to come to visit her in the days of
their love. Sir Walter Scott thinks that perhaps Barthram was an
Englishman and the lady was Scottish, and that the anger of the lady's
brothers against him was partly on that account.
It must be remembered that in those stormy days, when Border rivalry was
keen, and all the Border chiefs, on both sides, were men of war-like
mould, intermarriage between the two races was punishable by Border law.
Each side felt equally that such mixed marriages would sooner or later
produce a race that was neither loyal English nor loyal Scotch. A
spirit of aloofness and rivalry was deliberately encouraged, right up to
the time of the union of the two countries under one king.
*BARTHRAM'S DIRGE*
They shot him dead at the Nine-Stone Rig,
Beside the Headless Cross,
And they left him lying in his blood,
Upon the moor and moss.
* * * * *
They made a bier of the broken bough,
The sauch and the aspin gray,
And they bore him to the Lady Chapel,
And waked him there all day.
A lady came to that lonely bower,
And threw her robes aside,
She tore her long yellow hair,
And knelt at Barthram's side.
She bathed him in the Lady-Well,
His wounds so deep and sair,
And she plaited a garland for his breast,
And a garland for his hair.
They rowed him in a lily-sheet,
And bare him to his earth,
And the Gray Friars sung the dead man's mass,
As they pass'd the Chapel Garth.
They buried him at the mirk midnight,
When the dew fell cold and still,
When the aspin gray forgot to play,
And the mist clung to the hill.
They dug his grave but a bare foot deep,
By the edge of the Ninestone Burn,
And they covered him o'er with the heather-flower,
The moss and the Lady fern.
A Gray Friar staid upon the grave,
And sang till the morning tide,
And a friar shall sing for Barthram's soul,
While the Headless Cross shall bide.[#]
[#] Mr Surtees observes, on this passage, that in the return made by the
commissioners, on the dissolution of Newminster Abbey, there is an item
of a Chauntery, for one priest to sing daily _ad crucem lapideam_.
Probably many of these crosses had the like expiatory solemnities for
persons slain there. They certainly did bury, in former days, near the
Ninestone Burn, for Sir Walter Scott found there, lying among the
heather, a small monumental cross, with initials, which he reverently
placed upright.
*Chapter XXXII*
*Queen Mary and the Borders*
The brief reign of Mary, Queen of Scots, was so crowded with incident
that she was left with little time to visit the disturbed borderland of
her kingdom. None-the-less her few visits to this district were fraught
with important consequences. In 1565, when she married her cousin Lord
Darnley, the head of the Douglas faction and a Roman Catholic, the
Protestant nobles took up arms. In her very honeymoon she headed her
soldiers, pursued the rebels to Dumfries, entered the town with a pistol
in each hand, and laughed heartily at the fun of making her enemies
"skip like rabbits" over the Border. She was only twenty-two years
old--a fearless, dashing, attractive woman, with a clever head, a strong
will, and a wild and lawless disposition.
In the next year she again visited the Border, but on a very different
errand. Mary had developed an extreme fancy for that bold Border Lord,
the Earl of Bothwell, whose Castle of Hermitage commanded the
picturesque and important valley of the Liddel. The Queen had given him
authority to control the fierce Borderers; and when the earl was riding
out he met the most lawless of them, Jock Elliot, of whom the couplet--
"My name is little Jock Elliot
And who dare meddle wi' me?"
Bothwell fired straight at Elliot with his pistol, wounding him in the
leg. Elliot aimed a mighty blow at Bothwell with his two-handed sword,
giving the earl so sore a wound that he was glad enough to gallop home
while there was yet time to save his life.
Mary was holding solemn court at Jedburgh when she heard of her
favourite's danger. She straightway took horse and rode to Hermitage, a
hard cross-country ride of twenty miles, through a district infested
with reckless men. When she galloped back to Jedburgh, she was in high
fever and nearly died. Later on, in the misery of her long
imprisonment, she often said, "Would I had died at Jedburgh!" Years
later, a broken piece of a silver spur was found at Queensmire, on this
difficult and dangerous road, just where Queen Mary's horse was said to
have come to grief.
Yet another time Queen Mary came to the Border, this time to cross
it--after her imprisonment at Lochleven, her escape, and the disastrous
rout of her followers at Langside. Daring and resourceful as ever, she
fled across the Solway in an open boat; Scotland had failed her, she
sought the protection of England. She landed at Cockermouth, and was
led to Carlisle by Sir R. Lowther, and kept there, in reality a
prisoner, while Elizabeth was musing of the dangers of the position. The
Earls of Northumberland and Westmoreland took up Mary's cause and
attempted to rescue her, but the Warden of Carlisle, Lord Scroope,
defended the town successfully against the two earls, and they were soon
in flight, eastward for their very lives. After this attempt at rescue
Mary was, for greater safety, sent down to Bolton Castle in Yorkshire.
[Illustration: Queen Mary crossing the Solway]
Leonard Dacre, a member of the powerful Cumberland family of the Dacres,
seems to have played a treacherous part, first promising the earls his
help, and then betraying them to Elizabeth. He seized Nawarth Castle,
which properly belonged to his young niece, and collected together three
thousand men to the old Border war-cry, "A Red Bull, a Red Bull!"
(probably the nickname of some fierce red-haired Celtic champion). The
defeated earls came to Nawarth for shelter, and Dacre refused to harbour
them. But by this time Elizabeth was convinced of Dacre's treason, and
ordered Lord Hudson, the Governor of Berwick, to arrest him.
Hudson appears to have marched by rather a round-about way, for Dacre
met him at Geltbridge, on the west of Nawarth. A bridge is always a
good point of vantage for meeting an enemy, especially when the river
runs, as the Gelt does, through a deep and wooded gorge. The enemy has
only a narrow way by which to approach, and no doubt Dacre posted his
archers behind the trees and among the great rocks. The fight was a
desperate one, but Hudson's men prevailed and pursued their foes far up
the hill of Gelt, scuffling fiercely among the forest trees and dyeing a
deeper hue the red sandstone cliffs and quarries.
All the rebels who could escape fled across the Border to Scotland,
where the Borderers, who were till then their enemies, received them
with that open and fair hospitality which was one of their many great
qualities. Elizabeth demanded that the leading noblemen should be given
up to her; but although the Scottish Regent, Murray, made a pretence of
trying to secure the Earl of Westmoreland, the Scots had too much sense
of honour to allow him to proceed.
The Earl of Northumberland, was however betrayed to the Scottish Regent
by Hector Armstrong of Harelaw; but this the gallant Borderers held to
be shameful, and Armstrong was a ruined man from that day forth.
Two years later, this Earl was actually sold to Elizabeth and beheaded
at York. Thus ended this small rebellion, called in history the Rising
of the North, but which is known locally in Cumberland as Dacre's Raid.
There is a little stream which rushes down a deep and beautiful glade to
join the river Gelt above Geltbridge; this stream is known as
"Hellbeck," and villagers tell us that the reason for this name is that
it was stained with blood for two whole days after some battle that took
place there. This battle is probably the one spoken of here.
A wicket gate by Geltbridge leads us to the path through Gelt woods.
The noble gorge is deeply cleft through the grand red sandstone rocks.
Below roars and dashes the impetuous river; the path winds, sometimes
high, sometimes low, through wonderful weeds, carpeted with beautiful
mosses, gemmed with delightful flowers. On one of the rocks is an
inscription carved by a Roman soldier, over fifteen hundred years ago.
Follow the river, up, up, till the little Hellbeck is seen trickling
down from the east; cross the little bridge and follow the streamlet on
its opposite bank, along a path so little trod as to be scarcely
visible; wander among ferns along one of the loneliest glens in the
whole of Britain, passing the great railway bridge (_under_ if the
stream be low or _over_ if it be high) till you join the main road
again. There is no spot more beautiful or more peaceful. Yet this is
the Hellbeck where men fought and hacked, and slashed and slew, among
these woods, up and down these steep hillsides. These old trees, when
young, have felt warm blood at their roots; and all because of a young,
wild wilful queen, who fascinated men's hearts then, and the memory of
whom fascinates them still.
*Chapter XXXIII*
*The Raid of the Reidswire*
"To deal with proud men is but pain,
For either must ye fight or flee,
Or else no answer make again,
But play the beast, and let them be."
Reidswire, the name of a place about ten miles from Jedburgh, means the
Red Swire. Swire is an old northern term for the descent of a hill, and
the epithet red may refer to the colour of the heath.
The affair about which we are to tell took place on the 7th of July
1575, at a meeting held, on a day of truce, by the Wardens of the
Marches, for redressing wrongs and adjusting difficulties which could
not be prevented from arising upon the Border. The Scottish Warden was
Sir John Carmichael, and among his following were the Armstrongs and
Elliots, Douglas of Cavers (a descendant of the Douglas who fell at
Otterbourne), Cranstoun, whose ferocious motto was "Ye shall want ere I
want," Gladstain, "good at need," and the ancient head of the
Rutherfoords, called in tradition the Cock of Hunthill, "with his nine
sons him about." The English Warden was the haughty Sir John Forster,
and he had full fifteen hundred men with him, chiefly Northumbrians,
Tynedale, and Reedsdale men, who looked with scorn upon the much smaller
array of their hereditary foes.
The meeting, however, began meekly enough, with merriment and jests.
Such Border meetings of truce, though they might wind up in blood, as
was to happen now, always began as occasions of marketing and revelry.
Both parties came fully armed to such a tryst, yet intermixed in mutual
sports and familiar intercourse,
"Some gaed to drink, and some stood still,
And some to cards and dice them sped."
The Scots planted their pavilions or tents and feared no ill, even when
they saw five hundred Fenwicks (a powerful Northumbrian clan) "marching
in a flock." The clerk began to call the rolls, and to deal with one
complaint after another for the loss of cows or ewes or other property.
In the course of the proceedings an accusation was raised against an
English freebooter named Farnstein, at the instance of a Scotch
complainant. A "true bill" was found against the man, which means that
he ought to be handed over to justice. But the English Warden alleged
that he had fled, and could not be found. Carmichael, considering this
as a pretext to avoid making compensation for the felony, bade the
Northumbrians speak out plainly, and "cloke no cause for ill nor good."
Upon this Sir John Forster, a proud and insolent man, "began to reckon
kin and blood," by which picturesque phrase the ballad probably means
that he swiftly added up his forces. Then he drew himself up, backed by
his Dalesmen, all fingering their bows, and with insulting expressions
against Carmichael's kin he bade him "match with his equals." The men
of Tynedale, who only wanted a pretext for a quarrel, drew their bows
and let off a flight of arrows among the Scots. The more moderate men on
both sides at first tried to quell the tumult, but in vain. The fight
was bound to come.
"Then there was naught but bow and spear,
And every man pulled out a brand."
The English showed their usual dexterity with the bow. The Scots, for
some reason, never took to this weapon; they had fire-arms, pistolets,
and the like. The terrible cloth-yard arrows "from tackles flew," and
the old proverb bade fair to justify itself, that every English archer
carried twenty-four Scots under his belt--an allusion to his bundle of
shafts. Success seemed certain for the English side; some of the
foremost men among the Scots fell, and even Carmichael was thrown to the
ground and was within an ace of being made a prisoner. The air
resounded with the rallying cries of the English, the names of their
captains, "A Shaftoe! A Shaftoe!" "A Fenwick! A Fenwick!" The Scots
had little harness among them, only a few had the jack which served them
as a defence for the body. Nevertheless, they laid about them sturdily,
with "dints full dour," and there was many a cracked crown. Then
suddenly a shout was heard. "Jedburgh's here!" A body of Jedburgh
burgesses appear to have arrived just in the nick of time to add to the
outnumbered force of Scots. They probably wore armour and what were
called "white hats," that is steel caps. Meanwhile, the English, too
confident of easy victory, instead of slaying more Scots and turning the
repulse into a rout, thought only to plunder the unhappy merchants, who,
trusting to the truce which had been proclaimed, had attached themselves
to the meeting. Had it not been for the English greed, the Scots would
have been defeated. As it was, the Tynedale men, throwing themselves on
the merchants' packs, fell into disorder, their adversaries recovered
from their surprise, and the timely arrival of the Jedburgh men turned
the tables. A short, sharp bout ended in the triumph of the Scots and
the Northumbrians fled, "Down ower the brae, like clogged bees." The
Scots took many prisoners, amongst whom were the English Warden, and his
son-in-law, Sir Francis Russell; but the most gallant soldier taken that
day was that courteous knight, Sir Cuthbert Collingwood, to whose family
Admiral Collingwood belonged. Several of those "Fenwicks fierce," who
had turned up five hundred strong at the commencement of the fray, had
the mortification of being carried off in triumph by their enemies. All
these prisoners were sent to the Earl of Morton, Regent of Scotland, who
detained them at Dalkeith for some days, until the bitter feeling
natural after such an affair had died down, at any rate in part, and by
this prudent precaution the Regent is thought to have probably averted a
war between the two kingdoms. He ultimately permitted them to return to
their own country, parting from them with great expressions of regard.
The interest taken in the matter by Queen Elizabeth, and the
representations of her Ambassador at Edinburgh, no doubt had something
to do with this happy issue.
It will probably occur to the careful reader of this book as somewhat
strange to find the ruling powers of England and Scotland both so set
upon peace; but it must be remembered that at this period in the reign
of Queen Elizabeth the heir-apparent to the English throne was the young
James VI., King of Scotland, who would naturally not wish for any
quarrel with the country which he hoped later on to rule. Elizabeth, on
the other hand, had Mary Queen of Scots as her prisoner, and did not
wish in any further way to strain the already delicate relations between
the two countries.
The Carmichael mentioned in this ballad, known in full as Sir John
Carmichael of Edrom, Scottish Warden of the Middle Marches, was
afterwards murdered by one of the wild Armstrongs, who is said to have
composed, the night before his execution, the following manly and
pathetic "Good-night." The third and fourth lines show clearly the
disrepute into which this once honoured clan was falling; the seventh
and eighth lines could only have been written by one who, despite his
faults, had the true gallant instincts deep in his blood.