The ballad next gives (xvi.–xxv.) the spirited stanzas on the ride to the Border—
There were five and five before them a’,
Wi’ hunting horns and bugles bright;
And five and five came wi’ Buccleuch,
Like Warden’s men arrayed for fight.And five and five like a mason gang,
That carried the ladders lang and hie;
And five and five like broken men,
And so they reached the Woodhouselee.
—a house in Scotland, within “a lang mile” of Netherby, in England, the seat of the Grahams, who were partial, for private reasons, to the Scottish cause. They were at deadly feud with Thomas Musgrave, Captain of Bewcastle, and Willie had married a Graham.
Now in my opinion, up to stanza xxvi., all the evasive answers given to Salkeld by each gang, till Dicky o’ Dryhope (a real person) replies with a spear-thrust—
“For never a word o’ lear had he,”
are not an invention of Scott’s (who knew that Salkeld was not met and slain), but a fantasy of the original ballad. Here I have only familiarity with the romantic perversion of facts that marks all ballads on historical themes to guide me.
Salkeld is met—
“As we crossed the Batable land,
When to the English side we held.”
The ballad does not specify the crossing of Esk, nor say that Salkeld was on the English side; nor is there any blunder in the reply of the “mason gang”—
“We gang to harry a corbie’s nest,
That wons not far frae Woodhouselee.”