That must be Smeaton. Smeaton? Yes, now I remember, and the lovely fertile plain yonder, that now looks so green and smiling, hides in its bosom the dust of an army. History tells us that ten thousand Scotchmen were there slain. I can fancy the terrible tulzie, I can people that plain even now in imagination with men in battle array; I see the banners wave, and hear the border slogan cry:
“And now at weapon-point they close,
Scarce can they hear or see their foes;
They close in clouds of smoke and dust,
With sword’s-sway and lance’s thrust;
And such a yell was there,
Of sudden and portentous birth,
As if man fought upon the earth,
And fiends in upper air.
Oh! life and death were in the shout,
And triumph and despair.”
(The Battle of the Standard, fought in 1138, in which the Scottish army was routed, and the flower of the land left dead on the field.)
But here we are in Smeaton itself—grass or a garden at every cottage. This village would make a capital health resort. We stop to water the horses, and though it is hardly ten o’clock I feel hungry already.
Clear of the village, and on and on. A nice old lady in spectacles tending cows and knitting, singing low to herself as she does so. An awful-looking old man, in awful-looking goggles, breaking stones by the roadside. I address the awful-looking old man.
“Awful-looking old man,” I say, “did ever you hear of the Battle of the Standard?”
“Naa.”
“Did you never hear or read that a battle was fought near this spot?”
The awful-looking old man scratched his head.
“Coome ta think on’t noo, there was summut o’ th’ kind, but it’s soome years agone. There war more ’n a hoondred cocks. A regular main as ye might call it.”