Here the vassal villagers came crowding, bonnet in hand, around the Earl, and in courtesy he was compelled to touch his helmet and rein up; while the parish beadle, after tinkling the skelloche bell, issued, according to an ancient custom now obsolete in Scotland, the following burial proclamation:—
"All brethren and sisters! I let you to wit, there is a brother, Ninian Liddal of the Nettlestanebrae, hath been slain by the Laird of Lauchope's riders, in a raid yestreen, on Bothwell-muir, as was the will and pleasure of Almighty God (lifting his bonnet). The burying will be at twelve o'clock the morn, and the corpse is streekit and kistit at the change-house, up by the townhead!"
And he departed, ringing his bell in the same slow fashion with which he usually preceded funerals, to the collegiate kirk of Bothwell.
On the purple muirland many unclaimed bodies were lying stark and rigid—
"With the dew on their brow, and the rust on their mail;"
while the black corbies and ravenous gleds were wheeling in circles above them, in that blue sky on which the eyes of the dead had closed for ever.
"Gramercy!" said Hay of Tallo, a follower of the Earl, as a man, whose beard was white as snow, and whose loose grey gown was torn in many places, hurried out of their path; "is not yonder fellow some mass-monging priest?"
"Gif I thought so," growled a jackman, lifting his lance, "I would cleave his croon! He hath been searching the scrips and pouches of the dead."
"Shriving the dying, more likely, thou knave!" said the Earl; "'tis Father Tarbet, a poor monk of a Reformed monastery, and I dare thee to offer him insult under peril of pit and gyves."
A powerful horse, bearing its steel-bowed military saddle, accoutred with caliver and jedwood axe, lay rolling in the last agonies of death, with a broken lance thrust far into its broad bosom.