[59-74]. These four stanzas seem to refer to a circumstance reported at the time; namely, that a person had left the Duke of Argyle's army, and joined the Earl of Mar's, before the battle, intending to act as a spy; and that, being employed by Mar to inform the left wing that the right was victorious, he gave a contrary statement, and, after seeing them retire accordingly, went back again to the royal army.
[75]. The celebrated Rob Roy. This redoubted hero was prevented, by mixed motives, from joining either party. He could not fight against the Earl of Mar, consistent with his conscience, nor could he oppose the Duke of Argyle, without forfeiting the protection of a powerful friend.
[93]. This point is made at the expense of a contradiction. See [v. 27].
[95-7]. The Cock of the North is an honorary popular title of the Duke of Gordon. Carnegy of Finhaven.
LORD DERWENTWATER.
James Radcliff, Earl of Derwentwater, fell into the hands of the Whigs at the surrender of Preston, on the very day of the battle of Sheriff-Muir, and suffered death in February, 1716, for his participation in the rebellion. Smollet has described him as an amiable youth,—brave, open, generous, hospitable, and humane. "His fate drew tears from the spectators, and was a great misfortune to the country in which he lived. He gave bread to multitudes of people whom he employed on his estate;—the poor, the widow, and the orphan rejoiced in his bounty." (History of England, quoted by Cromek.) We are told that the aurora borealis was remarkably vivid on the night of the earl's execution, and that this phenomenon is consequently still known in the north by the name of "Lord Derwentwater's Lights."
Although this ballad is said to have been extremely popular in the North of England for a long time after the event which gave rise to it, no good copy has as yet been recovered. The following was obtained by Motherwell (Minstrelsy, p. 349) from the recitation of an old woman. Another copy, also from recitation but "restored to poetical propriety," is given in the Gentleman's Magazine, for June, 1825 (p. 489), and
fragments of a third in Notes and Queries, vol. xii. p. 492. Two spurious ballads on the death of Lord Derwentwater have been sometimes received as genuine: one by Allan Cunningham, first published in Cromek's Nithsdale and Galloway Song, p. 129, another (Lord Derwentwater's Goodnight) by Surtees, printed in Hogg's Jacobite Relics, ii. 31. Still another modern imitation is Young Ratcliffe, in Sheldon's Minstrelsy of the English Border, p. 401.