"I know not the meaning of the word!" cried Lillyard. "My heart is yonder. Where my heart is, there would my arm be!"
"Then come, child, come. Thou art of the right stuff; and I will never hold thee back. Go, and may the God of battles be with thee, and give thee part in the glory of victory!"
A short time later there emerged from that cottage a goodly youth in the Gordon kilt, and with all the weapons that a Highland lad carries with him into the battle. The bonnet was set upon a mass of tawny floating curls, and the great grey eyes were full of fire and light.
She set herself in their ranks, and went charging down the hill.
Page [237].
Lillyard's great beauty was well known throughout the district. "Fair Maid Lillyard" had been the sobriquet ever since she had been a child. There was something almost dazzling in her aspect to-day, as she stood for a moment in the glory of the golden sunshine, and gazed across towards where the sounds of clashing swords and the booming of guns told her that the battle was raging; and then, with her light broadsword in her hand, she made a forward dash, and was soon in full sight of the fiercely fought fight.
The apparition of this fair girl, who was instantly recognised for her beauty and peculiarly lofty bearing, dressed as a soldier, and with a sword in her hand, evoked a yell of enthusiasm and joy from the whole of the Scotch ranks. It seemed to the men almost as though some angelic being had come down to their aid.
"Maid Lillyard! Maid Lillyard!" was the shout that went up; and when she set herself in their ranks, and went charging down the hill to meet the advance of the enemy, the fury of that charge was something so tremendous, that the ranks of the English were split into a score of scattered bodies, each flying back to the main body for safety, whilst the victorious Scotch pursued them with shouts almost to their own camp.
Who can remember or describe the fierce joy, the fearful peril, the wild exaltation of hand-to-hand fighting? Lillyard was in the thick of the most furious onslaughts, on whatever part of the field they took place. Attached to no company, under no authority, she seemed like a spirit of the battle, free, and with a charmed life, as she hurried hither and thither. All men saw her. A hundred voices testified to the prodigies of valour she performed; but it was only after she had seen the dead body of Alan Gordon lifted from beneath a pile of English corpses—men that he had slain—that that Berserker fury fell upon Lillyard, which has given her name to posterity, and caused the very name of the battle of Ancram Moor to be more generally known as the battle of Lillyard's Edge.