Whether on English or Scottish soil the masons say not, and their pretence is derisive, bitterly ironical.
Colonel Elliot makes much of the absence of mention of the Esk, and says “it is after they are in England that the false reports are spread.” [139a] But the ballad does not say so—read it! All passes with judicious vagueness.
“As we crossed the Batable land,
When to the English side we held.”
Satchells knows that the ladders were made at Woodhouselee; it took till nightfall to finish them. The ballad, swift and poetical, takes the ladders for granted—as a matter of fact, chronicled in the dispatches, the Grahams of Netherby harboured Buccleuch: Netherby was his base.
“I could nought have done that matter without great friendship of the Grames of Eske,” wrote Buccleuch, in a letter which Scrope intercepted. [139b]
In Satchells, Buccleuch leaves half his men at the “Stonish bank” (Staneshaw bank) “for fear they had made noise or din.” An old soldier should have known better, and the ballad (his probable half-remembered source here) does know better—
“And there the laird garr’d leave our steeds,
For fear that they should stamp and nie,”
and alarm the castle garrison. Each man of the post on the ford would hold two horses, and also keep the ford open for the retreat of the advanced party. The ballad gives the probable version; Satchells, when offering as a reason for leaving half the force, lest they should make “noise or din,” is maundering. Colonel Elliot does not seem to perceive this obvious fact, though he does perceive Buccleuch’s motive for dividing his force, “presumably with the object of protecting his line of retreat,” and also to keep the horses out of earshot, as the ballad says. [140a]
In Satchells the river is “in no great rage.” In the ballad it is “great and meikle o’ spait.” And it really was so. The MS. already cited, which Scott had not seen when he published the song, says that Buccleuch arrived at the “Stoniebank beneath Carleile brig, the water being at the tyme, through raines that had fallen, weill thick.”
In Scott’s original this river, he says, was the Esk, in Satchells it is the Eden, and Scott says he made this necessary correction in the ballad. In Satchells the storming party