"This night is my departing night,
For here nae langer must I stay;
There's neither friend nor foe o' mine,
But wishes me away.
What I have done thro' lack of wit,
I never, never can recall;
I hope ye're a' my friends as yet;
Good-night and joy be with you all!"
*Chapter XXXIV*
*Jock o' the Side*
"He is well kend, John of the Syde,
A greater thief did never ryde."
The subject of this ballad bears some resemblance to Kinmont Willie, and
such adventures were not uncommon in those turbulent times. The events
we are to relate originated in a raid ridden by the famous Liddesdale
spearmen (the hardiest of the Scotch moss-troopers) upon English ground.
"They had better hae staid at home," for the outcome was that one of
their best men, Michael of Winfield, was killed, and Jock o' the Side,
nephew to the Laird of Mangerton, was taken prisoner, and promptly
lodged in Newcastle Jail. When the news reached Jock's mother she
kilted her coats up to her knee, and ran down the water with the tears
falling in torrents from her eyes. She ran to Mangerton House, on the
banks of the Liddel, and told her brother, the good old lord, the bad
news. "Michael is killed, and they have taken my son John." "Never
fear, sister," quoth Mangerton, "I have eighty-three yokes of oxen, my
barns, my byres, my folds are all filled, I'll part with them all ere
Johnie shall die." Then he thought out his plan. "Three men I'll send
to set him free, all harnessed in the best steel; the English loons
shall feel the weight of their broad swords. The Laird's Jock shall be
one, the Laird's Wat two, and Hobbie Noble, thou must be the third. Thy
coat is blue, and since England banished thee thou hast been true to
me." Now this Hobbie was an Englishman, born in Bewcastledale, the
wildest district in Cumberland. Like numerous other English outlaws, he
had made his own country too hot to hold him; his misdeeds had banished
him to Liddesdale, and he was now in high favour with the Laird of
Mangerton. The Laird gave the dauntless three orders to reverse the
shoes of their horses, so that anyone crossing their trail might think
they were proceeding in a contrary direction. He also warned them not
to seem gentlemen, but to look like corn-carriers; not to show their
good armour, nor appear like men of war, but to be arrayed as country
lads, with halter and cart-collar on each mare. So Hobbie mounted his
grey, Jack his lively bay, and Wat his white horse, and they rode for
Tyne water. When they reached the Tyne they lighted down at a ford, and
by the moonlight they cut a tree, with fifteen nogs on each side, to
serve them as a scaling ladder, to climb Newcastle wall with. However,
when they came to Newcastle town and alighted at the wall, their tree
proved three ells too short, and there was nothing for it but to force
the gates. At the gate a proud porter attempted to withstand them. The
Armstrongs wrung his neck, took his life and his keys at once, and cast
his body behind the wall. Soon they reached the jail, and called to the
prisoner,
"Sleeps thou, wakes thou, Jock o' the Side,
Or art thou weary of thy thrall?"
Jock answered dolefully, "Often I wake, nay, sleep seldom comes to
me--but who's this knows my name so well?" Then out and spoke the
Laird's Jock, his cousin and namesake, "Now fear ye not, my billie!"
quoth he; "for here are the Laird's Jock, the Laird's Wat, and Hobbie
Noble the Englishman come to set you free." Jock o' the Side did not
think it possible that they could effect his release. "Now hold thy
tongue, my good cousin," said he. "This cannot be--
'For if all Liddesdale were here the night,
The morn's the day that I must die.'
They have laid full fifteen stone of Spanish iron on me, I am fast bound
with locks and keys in this dark and dreary dungeon." But the Laird's
Jock replied. "Fear not that; faint heart never won fair lady. Work
thou within, we'll work without, and I'll be sworn we'll set thee free."
They loosed the first strong door without a key, the next chained door
they split to flinders. The Laird's Jock got the prisoner on his back,
irons and all, and brought him down the stairs with no small speed and
joy. Hobbie Noble offered to bear some of his weight, but the Laird's
Jock said that he was lighter than a flea. When they had all gone out
at the gates, the prisoner was set on horseback, and they all joked
wantonly. "O Jock," they cried, "you ride like a winsome lady, with
your feet all on one side." The night was wet, but they did not mind.
They hied them on full merrily until they came to the ford at
Cholerford, above Hexham. There the water was running mountains high.
They asked an old man, "Honest man, tell us in haste, will the water
ride?" "I've lived here thirty years and three," replied he, "and I
never saw the Tyne so big, nor running so like a sea." The Laird's Wat
counselled them to halt. "We need not try it, the day is come we all
must die!" "Poor faint-hearted thief!" cried the Laird's Jock.
"There'll no man die but him that's fated; I'll guide you safely
through; lift the prisoner behind me." With that they took to the water
and managed to swim through. "Here we are all safe," said the Laird's
Jock triumphantly. "Poor faint Wat, what think ye now?" They now saw
twenty men pursuing them, sent from Newcastle, all English lads, stout
and true. But when their leader saw the water he shook his head. "It
won't ride, my lads," said he. Then he cried to the party of Scots:
"Take the prisoner, but leave me my fetters." But the Laird's Jock was
not a Scot for nothing. "I wat weel no," he shouted back, "I'll keep
them, they'll make horse-shoes for my mare--for I am sure she's bought
them right dear from thee." Then they went on their way to Liddesdale,
as fast as they could, and did not rest until they had brought the
rescued prisoner to his own fireside, and made him free of his irons.
*Chapter XXXV*
*Hobbie Noble*
"Keep ye weel frae the traitor Mains!
For gold and gear he'll sell ye a'."
In the ballad of "Jock o' the Side," we have seen Hobbie Noble act a
distinguished part in the deliverance from captivity of Jock, cousin of
the Laird of Mangerton, chief of the Armstrong clan. Now in the
following ballad we shall learn how ungrateful the Armstrongs were for
his faithful services. The Armstrongs were one of those outlawed or
broken clans, whose hand was against every man, and living as they did
in what was called the Debateable Land, on the frontier between
Liddesdale and England, these stark cattle-lifters and arrant thieves
levied tribute from English and Scotch alike. Halbert or Hobbie Noble
was an Englishman, a Cumbrian born and bred, but his misdeeds were so
great, they banished him never to return, and he established himself
among the Armstrongs. From their territory he continued his
depredations upon the English, in resentment of which they at length
offered a bribe to the Armstrongs to decoy him into England under
pretence of inviting him to join them in a foray.
"At Kershope foot the tryst was set,
Kershope of the lily lee,"
and the name of the chief traitor and leader of the gang was Sim o' the
Mains. Hobbie harnessed himself "both with the iron and with the
steel," buckled spur on his heel and belted brand to his side, leaped
upon his "fringed grey," and rode down the banks of the Liddel. As soon
as he saw the others, "Well be ye met, my comrades five," he cried.
"Now, what is your will with me?" They all answered, with one consent,
"Thou'rt welcome here, brave Noble; wilt thou ride with us into England,
and we will be thy safe warrant? If we get a horse worth a hundred
pounds thou shalt soon be upon its back." But Hobbie said that he dared
not ride into England by day, as he had a feud with the Land-Sergeant
(an officer under the Warden, to whom was entrusted the arrest of
delinquents).
"But will ye stay till the day gae down,
Until the night come o'er the ground,
And I'll be a guide worth any two
That may in Liddesdale be found?
Though the night be black as pitch and tar,
I'll guide ye o'er yon hill so high;
And bring ye all in safety back,
If ye'll be true and follow me."
They let him guide them over moss and moor, over hill and hope, and over
many a down, until they came to the Foulbogshiel. But meanwhile word
was gone to the Land-Sergeant, in Askerton, about seventeen miles from
Carlisle. "The deer that you have hunted so long, is in Bewcastle Waste
this day." The Sergeant understood at once. Quoth he, "Hobbie Noble is
that deer! He carries the style full high. He has often driven our
bloodhounds back. Now go, warn the bows of Hartlie Burn, see they
sharpen their arrows on the wall! Warn Willeva and Speir Edom, take
word to them that they meet me on the Rodric-haugh at break of day. We
will on to Conscouthart-green, for there, I think, we'll get our
quarry." In the meantime Hobbie had alighted and was sleeping in the
Foulbogshiel. He dreamed that his horse was shot beneath him, and he
himself was hard put to it to get away. The cocks crowed, the day
dawned, and if Hobbie had not wakened he would have been taken or slain
in his sleep.
"Awake, awake, my comrades five!
I trow here makes a full ill day;
Yet the worst cloak o' this company
I hope shall cross the Waste this day,"
Thus cried he to his companions, thinking the gates were clear. But
alas! it was not so. They were beset by the Land-Sergeant's men, cruel
and keen, and while the Englishmen came before, the traitor Sim o' the
Mains came behind. Had Noble been as masterful a champion as Wallace
himself, he could not have won under such untoward circumstances. He
had but a laddie's sword, but he did more than a laddie's deeds, for
that sword would have cleared Conscouthart-green had it not broken over
one of the English heads. So his treacherous companions delivered
Hobbie up to the officers of justice; they bound him with his own
bowstring, but what made his heart feel sorest of all, was that it was
his own five who bound him. They took him on to Carlisle. They asked
him mockingly if he knew the way. He thought much, but said little,
though he knew it as well as they did. As they took him up the Carlisle
streets, the old wives cast their windows wide, every woman whispering
to another, "That's the man loosed Jock o' the Side." The poor fellow
cried out, "Fie on ye, women! why call ye me man? It's no like a man
that I'm used, but like a beaten hound that's been fighting in the
gutter." They had him up through Carlisle town, and set him by a
chimney fire, where they gave him a wheaten loaf to eat, and a can of
beer. "Confess my lord's horse, Hobbie," they said, "and to-morrow in
Carlisle thou shalt not die." "How can I confess them," says the poor
man, "when I never saw them." And he swore a great oath, by the day
that he was born, that he had never had anything of my lord's. He had
but short shrift and they hung him the next morning.