Broke a sheet of leid on the castle top.
In the ballad they
Cut a hole through a sheet o’ lead.
Both stories are erroneous; the ladders were too short; the rescuers broke into a postern door. Scrope told this to his Government on the day after the deed, 14th April. [140b]
In xxxi. the ballad makes Buccleuch sound trumpets when the castle-roof was scaled; in fact it was not scaled. The ladders were too short, and the Scots broke in a postern door. The Warden’s trumpet blew “O wha dare meddle wi’ me,” and here, as has been said, I think Scott is the author. Here Colonel Elliot enters into learning about “Wha dare meddle wi’ me?” a “Liddesdale tune,” and in the poem an adaptation, by Scott, of Satchells’ “the trumpets sounded ‘Come if ye dare.’”
Satchells makes the trumpets sound when the rescuers bring Kinmont Willie to the castle-top on the ladder (which they did not), and again when the rescuers reach the ground by the ladder. They made no use at all of the ladders, which were too short, and Willie, says the ballad, lay “in the lower prison.” They came in and went out by a door; but the trumpets are not apocryphal. They, and the shortness of the ladders, are mentioned in a MS. quoted by Scott, and in Birrell’s contemporary Diary, i. p. 57. In the MS. Buccleuch causes the trumpets to be sounded from below, by a detachment “in the plain field,” securing the retreat. His motive is to encourage his party, “and to terrify both castle and town by imagination of a greater force.” Buccleuch again “sounds up his trumpet before taking the river,” in the MS. Colonel Elliot may claim stanza xxxi. for Scott, and also the tune “Wha dare meddle wi’ me?” he may even claim here a suggestion from Satchells’ “Come if ye dare.” Colonel Elliot says that no tune of this title ever existed, a thing not easy to prove. [142a]
In the conclusion, with differences, there are resemblances in the ballad and Satchells. Colonel Elliot goes into them very minutely. For example, he says that Kinmont is “made to ride off; not on horseback, but on Red Rowan’s back!”
The ballad says not a word to that effect. Kinmont’s speech about Red Rowan as “a rough beast” to ride, is made immediately after the stanza,
“Then shoulder high, with shout and cry,
We bore him down the ladder lang;
At every stride Red Rowan made,
I wot the Kinmont’s airns played clang.” [142b]
After this verse Kinmont makes his speech (xl.–xli.). But if he did ride on Red Rowan’s back to Staneshaw bank, it was the best thing that a heavily ironed man could do. In the ballad (xxvii.) no horses of the party were waiting at the castle, all horses were left behind at Staneshaw bank (Satchells brings horses, or at least a horse for Willie, to the castle). On what could Willie “ride off,” except on Red Rowan? [142c]