How many of Douglas's wounded, one wonders, were carried from the field of battle over to Southdean, and, succumbing there to their wounds, were buried at the church? Two or three years ago, when the ash-trees were cut down and the grassy mound carted away that had so long concealed the ruins of the old building, quantities of human bones were dug up within and about the walls, some of the skulls showing unmistakably that the owners had died no peaceful death. No doubt the main body of the Scottish army would follow the dead Douglas to his tomb in Melrose Abbey, and would therefore never come so far west as Southdean, but the severely wounded would naturally be left wherever they could be attended to. It is certain that the Southdean district was in old days much less sparsely populated than is now the case; two important yearly fairs, for instance, used formerly to be held at Lethem, (three miles nearer the Border than Southdean,)—where also, on a knoll still called the Chapel Knowe, was a chapel, subsidiary to the church of Southdean. These fairs were for the sale of "horse, nolt, sheep, fish, flesh, malt, meal," and all sorts of merchandise, and in the permit to hold the Fairs Lethem is described as being "by reason of its situation, lying near the Border, a very convenient and fit place for traffic and trade."
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The church of Southdean, therefore, as its ruins indicate, was probably of considerable importance, surrounded by a settlement of some size, where wounded men might well be left to take their chance of recovery. Whether the Scots returned from Otterburne up Rede valley and over the pass by way of Catcleuch Shin, or (as is more probable) followed the Roman Road which passes Bremeirum Camp and runs over the Cheviots some miles to the east of Carter-fell, and thence crossing Kale, Oxnam, Jed, and Teviot, goes in more or less direct line towards Newstead and Melrose, it would be easy and natural for them to detach a party with the wounded, and perhaps with the bodies of some of the more notable dead, to Southdean. And those of them who died there would of course be buried in or close to the church.
During the excavations, it is of interest to note that numbers of skulls were found all together at one spot, pointing to the probability of many bodies having been, from some common cause, buried in a common grave. The inference seems not illegitimate that this cause was the fight at Otterburne. The English appear to have carried away from the field many of their dead, as well as their wounded:
"Then on the morne they mayde them beerys
Of birch and haysell graye;
Many a wydowe, with wepynge teyrs
Ther makes they fette awaye."