Accordingly, when James was taking measures for bringing the refractory ministers and citizens of Edinburgh into some proper subjection, at the end of the year 1596, a report that Kinmont Willie was to be let loose upon the city caused a lively consternation; “but too well grounded,” says Scott, “considering what had happened in Stirling ten years before, when the Earl of Angus, attended by Home, Buccleuch, and other border chieftains, marched thither to remove the Earl of Arran from the king’s councils: the town was miserably pillaged by the borderers, particularly by a party of Armstrongs, under this very Kinmont Willie, who not only made prey of horses and cattle, but even of the very iron grating of the windows.” Minstrelsy, II, 45.
The ballad gives Buccleuch only forty men, and they are all of the name of Scott except Sir Gilbert Elliot of Stobs: st. 16. A partial list of the men who forced the castle was obtained by Lord Scroope. It includes, as might be expected, not a few Armstrongs, and among them the laird of Mangerton, Christy of Barngleish (son of Gilnockie), and four sons of Kinmont Willie (he had at least seven); two Elliots, but not Sir Gilbert; four Bells.[[312]] Scott of Satchells, in his History of the Name of Scott, 1688, makes Sir Gilbert Elliot one of the party, but may have taken this name from the ballad. (Scott’s Minstrelsy, 1833, II, 43.) Dick of Dryhope, 24, 25, was an Armstrong.[[313]] The ballad, again, after cutting down Buccleuch’s men to thirty (st. 33) or forty (18, 19), assigns the very liberal garrison of a thousand to the castle, 33; the ladders are long enough, Buccleuch mounts the first,[[314]] the castle is won, and Kinmont Willie, in his irons, is borne down the ladder on Red Rowan’s[[315]] shoulders: all of which is as it should be in a ballad. And so with the death of the fause Sakelde, though not a life seems to have been lost in the whole course of the affair.
“This ballad,” says Scott, “is preserved by tradition in the West Borders, but much mangled by reciters, so that some conjectural emendations have been absolutely necessary to render it intelligible. In particular, the Eden has been substituted for the Esk [in 262], the latter name being inconsistent with geography.” It is to be suspected that a great deal more emendation was done than the mangling of reciters rendered absolutely necessary. One would like, for example, to see stanzas 10–12 and 31 in their mangled condition.[[316]]
1. William Armstrong, called Will of Kinmonth, lived in Morton Tower, a little above the Marchdike-foot. He appears, says Mr R. B. Armstrong, to have been a son of Sandy, alias Ill Will’s Sandy. Haribee is the place of execution outside of Carlisle. 3. The Liddel-rack is a ford in that river, which, for a few miles before it empties into the Esk, is the boundary of England and Scotland. 8. Branxholm, or Branksome, is three miles southwest, and Stobs, 16, some four miles southeast, of Hawick. 19. Woodhouselee was a house on the Scottish border, a little west of the junction of the Esk and Liddel, “belonging to Buccleuch,” says Scott.
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O have ye na heard o the fause Sakelde?
O have ye na heard o the keen Lord Scroop?
How they hae taen bauld Kinmont Willie,
On Hairibee to hang him up?
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