He halved his men in equal parts, His purpose to fulfill; 70 The one part kept the water side, The other gaed round the hill.
The nether party fired brisk, Then turn'd and seem'd to rin; And then they a' came frae the trench, 75 And cry'd, "The day's our ain!"
The rest then ran into the trench, And loosed their cannons a': And thus, between his armies twa, He made them fast to fa'. 80
Now let us a' for Lesly pray, And his brave company, For they hae vanquish'd great Montrose, Our cruel enemy.
13. A small stream that joins the Ettrick near Selkirk, on the south side of the river. S.
16. Various reading: "That we should take a dram." S.
17. A brook which falls into the Ettrick, from the north, a little above the Shaw burn. S.
37. Montrose's forces amounted to twelve or fifteen hundred foot, and about a thousand cavalry. Lesly had five or six thousand men, mostly horse.
55. It is a strange anachronism, to make this aged father state himself to have been at the battle of Solway Flow, which was fought a hundred years before Philiphaugh; and a still stranger, to mention that of Dunbar, which did not take place till five years after Montrose's defeat. S.
From _Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border_, ii. 187
In this lament for the melancholy fate of Montrose and his heroic companions, it was clearly the humble minstrel's aim to sketch the chief incidents in the great Marquis's career as the champion and the martyr of Royalty. The derangements and omissions which may be found in the verses as they now stand are but the natural effects of time. The ballad was first published in Scott's _Minstrelsy_, as obtained from tradition, with enlargements and corrections from an old printed copy (entitled _The Gallant Grahams of Scotland_) furnished by Ritson.
The summer following the rout at Philiphaugh, King Charles committed himself to the treacherous protection of the Presbyterians. They required of him that his faithful lieutenant should at once disband his forces and leave the country. During three years of exile, Montrose resided at various foreign courts, either quite inactive, or cultivating the friendship of the continental sovereigns, by whom he was overwhelmed with attentions and honors. The execution of the King drew from him a solemn oath "before God, angels, and men," that he would devote the rest of his life to the avenging the death of his master and reëstablishing his son on the throne. He received from Charles II. a renewal of his commission as Captain-General in Scotland, and while Charles was treating with the Commissioners of the Estates concerning his restoration (negotiations which Montrose regarded with no favor), set out for the Orkneys with a few hundred men, mostly Germans. His coming, even with this feeble band, struck a great terror into the Estates, and Lesly was ordered to march against him with four thousand men. Destitute of horse to bring him intelligence, Montrose was surprised at Corbiesdale, on the confines of Ross-shire, by a body of Covenanting cavalry under Colonel Strachan, which had been sent forward to check his progress. The whole of his little army was destroyed or made prisoners. Montrose escaped from the field after a desperate resistance, and finally gave himself up to Macleod of Assaint, who sold him to his enemies for four hundred bolls of meal!