Mr. Robert Chambers says—"The clansmen had a superstitious dread, in consequence of the misfortunes of their party at Preston, in 1715, that they would never get beyond this town; to dispel the illusion, Lord George Murray crossed the Ribble, and quartered a number of men on the other side." A single repulse could scarcely justify such foreboding. The name of the Ribble had evidently become associated with previous disasters, as well as with the relatively recent surrender of the Scotch and English forces under Forster, Derwentwater, and Macintosh in 1715.
Considering the many exquisite poetical effusions which the misfortunes of the Stuarts added to Scottish literature, it is surprising that nothing, but some of the veriest doggrels in relation thereto, can be met with on the southern side of the border. "Brigadier Macintosh's Farewell to the Highlands" is beneath criticism, and "Long Preston Peggy to Proud Preston went" is not much better. In May, 1847, a story appeared in "New Tales of the Borders and the British Isles." It is introduced by the first stanza of the ballad. The scene is laid at Walton-le-dale and Preston, 1815. It is a sad jumble of fact and fiction. It confounds with one another events in the campaigns of 1715 and 1745, and illustrates, to some extent, the confusion of history and artistic fiction discussed in the preceding pages of this work. Peggy, who, in her old age, after a somewhat profuse indulgence in ardent spirits, had still some remains of a handsome face and fine person, frequently sung the song of which she was the heroine, five and twenty years after the occurrence of the events which gave rise to it.[41]
[APPENDIX.]
THE DISPOSAL OF ST. OSWALD'S REMAINS.
Mr. John Ingram, in his "Claimants to Royalty," referring to the defeat of Don Sebastian, King of Portugal, in 1578, by the Moors, says—"After the fight, a corse, recognised by one of the survivors as the king's, was discovered by the victorious Moors, and forwarded by the Emperor of Morocco as a present to his ally, Philip the Second of Spain. In 1583, this monarch restored it to the Portuguese, by whom it was interred with all due solemnity in the royal mausoleum in the church of Our Lady of Belem." It thus seems that Dean Howson's conjecture, referred to at page [62], is, at least, not without precedent.
THE DUN BULL, THE BADGE OF THE NEVILLES.
Mr. W. Brailsford, in "The Antiquary" (August, 1882), referring to the marriage which united the properties of the Bulmers and the Nevilles, in 1190, says—"The dun bull, which is the badge of the Norman Nevilles, was in reality derived from the Saxon Bulmers, though it has been thought by some antiquarian searchers to have had its origin from the wild cattle which, once on a time, like those still existing at Chillingham, roamed in the park here, then and at a later date."