[13]. At this place a recited copy, quoted by Finlay (Scottish Ballads, I. p. xviii.), has the following stanzas:—
Then out an spak a little wee boy,
And he was near o' Percy's kin,
"Methinks I see the English host,
A-coming branking us upon;
Wi' nine waggons scaling wide,
And seven banners bearing high;
It wad do any living gude
To see their bonny colours fly.
[43], 44. Supplied by Motherwell from a recited copy.
THE BATTLE OF HARLAW.
From Ramsay's Evergreen, i. 78.
This battle took place at Harlaw, near Aberdeen, on the 24th of July, 1411. The conflict was occasioned by a dispute concerning the succession to the earldom of Ross, between Donald, Lord of the Isles, and the son of the Regent, Robert, Duke of Albany, whose claim was supported by Alexander Stewart, Earl of Mar. The consequences of this battle were of the highest importance, inasmuch as the wild Celts of the Highlands and Islands received such a check that they never again combined for the conquest of the civilized parts of Scotland.
The Battle of Harlaw is one of the old ballads whose titles occur in the Complaynt of Scotland (1548). A bag-pipe tune of that name is mentioned in Drummond of Hawthornden's mock-heroic poem, the Polemo Middinia:
"Interea ante alios dux Piper Laius heros,
Præcedens, magnamque gerens cum burdine pypam
Incipit Harlai cunctis sonare Batellum."