'"To seek het water beneath cauld ice, Surely it is a great follie; I have asked grace at a graceless face, But there is nane for my men and me."'
Whatever their misdeeds, Gilnockie and his men had certainly hard measure and short shrift. The king's courtiers, it is alleged, incited him to make a summary end of the Armstrongs; and he had not the biting answer ready which his father is said to have given to the 'keen laird of Buccleuch,' when that Border chieftain urged him to 'braid on with fire and sword' against the Outlaw of Ettrick Forest:
'Now haud thy tongue, Sir Walter Scott, Nor speak of reif or felonie; For had every honest man his coo, A right puir clan thy name would be.'
But when their own clan or dependants made appeal for help or vengeance, none were more prompt with the strong word and deed than the Scotts--witness, _Kinmont Willie_; witness also, _Jamie Telfer o' the Fair Dodhead_. When Jamie ran hot-foot to Branksome Hall with the news that the Captain of Bewcastle had ramshackled his house and driven his gear and stock, until
'There was naught left in the Fair Dodhead But a greeting wife and bairnies three,'
did not Buccleuch start up like an old roused lion?
'"Gar warn the water, braid and wide, Gar warn it soon and hastilie! They that winna ride for Telfer's kye, Let them never look on the face o' me!"'
And the chase goes on, from the Dodhead on the Ettrick until, at the fords of the Liddel, the enemy are brought to bay; and we have the fine picture of Auld Wat of Harden, the husband of the 'Flower of Yarrow,' and a forebear of the author of _Waverley_, as he 'grat for very rage' when Willie Scott, the son of his chief, lay slain by an English stroke:
'But he 's ta'en aff his good steel cap, And thrice he 's waved it in the air. The Dinley's snaw was ne'er mair white Than the lyart locks of Harden's hair.'
Vain was the offer by the Bewcastle raiders to men in such mood to take back the cattle that had been lifted:
'When they cam' to the Fair Dodhead, They were a welcome sight to see! For instead of his ain ten milk-kye, Jamie Telfer has gotten thirty-and-three.'
_Auld Maitland_ treats of an inroad on the opposite side of the country, of more ancient date and more formidable character. Its hero appears to have been a progenitor of that line of Lethington in East Lothian, and of Thirlstane, in Lauderdale, who, planted firmly on both sides of Lammermuir, produced in after-times warriors, statesmen, and even poets of note. Gavin Douglas places Maitland, with the 'auld beird grey,' among the legendary inmates of his 'Palace of Honour'; and Scott identifies him as a Sir Richard de Mautlant who, in the latter half of the thirteenth century, and probably during the Wars of Independence, held the ancestral lands by Leaderside, on the track of invading armies crossing the Tweed between Coldstream and Melrose, and holding in to Lothian by Soultra Hill. Accordingly, the ballad tells us that the English army, under King Edward, assembled on the Tyne: