[154]. ‘Famous,’ the MS. reading in 141, may probably be an error for James, which occurs so often in 28–33. William Douglas, the Knight of Liddesdale, had a brother James, but this James had been killed in 1335. He had also a brother John, Scotichronicon and Chronicon de Lanercoste, and the latter, as has been mentioned, puts John in Murray’s division. Knyghton, col. 2590, gives as among the prisoners dominus Willielmus Duglas et frater ejusdem Willielmi.
[155]. When William Douglas, in the Chronicle of Lanercost, tells the king that the English are at hand, and David replies, there is nothing in England but monks, priests, swineherds, etc., Douglas says, ‘aliter invenietis; sunt varii validi viri.’
[156]. Froissart says that the English force was in four battalions: the first commanded by the Bishop of Durham and Lord Percy; the second by the Archbishop of York and Lord Neville; the third by the Bishop of Lincoln and Lord Mowbray; the fourth by Edward Balliol and the Archbishop of Canterbury.
[157]. Crécy, 26 August, 1346; Durham, 17 October, 1346; Poitiers, 19 September, 1356.
[158]. “Froissart describes a Scottish host of the same period as consisting of ‘.iiii. M. of armes, knightis and squiers, mounted on good horses, and other .x. M. men of warre, armed after their gyse, right hardy and firse, mounted on lytle hackeneys, the whiche were never tyed nor kept at hard meate, but lette go to pasture in the feldis and busshes.’” Happily cited by Scott, in illustration of C 16: Lord Berners’ translation, cap. xvii, Pynson, 1523, fol. viii.
[159]. A consolation as old as wise. So Paris, for himself: νίκη δ’ ἐπαμείβεται ἄνδρας, Iliad, vi, 339.
[160]. Buchanan has these numbers, with the exception of 1840, for 1860, killed: ed. 1582, fol. 101. “That there was a memorable slaughter in this affair, a slaughter far beyond the usual proportion to the numbers engaged, cannot be doubted; nor was there ever bloodshed more useless for the practical ends of war. It all came of the capture of the Percy’s pennon. The Scots might have got clear off with all their booty; the English forgot all the precautions of war when they made a midnight rush on a fortified camp without knowledge of the ground or the arrangements of their enemy. It was for these specialties that Froissart admired it so. He saw in it a fight for fighting’s sake, a great passage at arms in which no bow was drawn, but each man fought hand to hand; in fact, about the greatest and bloodiest tournament he had to record. Hence his narrative is ever interrupted with bursts of admiration as his fancy contemplates the delightful scene raised before it.” Burton, History of Scotland, II, 364, ed. 1873 (who, perhaps by an error of the press, makes the losses of the English in killed eight hundred and forty, in place of Buchanan’s eighteen hundred and forty).
[161]. Bower and Barry say St Oswald’s day, Wednesday, the 5th, Scotichronicon, II, 405, 407; Knyghton also; the continuator of Higden’s Polychronicon, August 12, Wednesday. The ballad, A 184, gives the day as Wednesday. There was a full moon August 20, which makes the 19th of itself far more probable, and Froissart says the moon was shining. See White, Battle of Otterburn, p. 133.
[162]. Walsingham writes in the vein of Froissart: “Erat ibidem cernere pulchrum spectaculum, duos tam præclaros juvenes manus conserere et pro gloria decertare.” Walsingham says that the English were few. Malverne puts the Scots at 30,000, and here, as in the ballad A 35, the cronykle does not layne (indeed, the ballad is all but accurate), if the main body of the Scots be included, which was at first supposed to be supporting Douglas.
[163]. ‘The perssee and the mongumrye met, that day, that day, that gentil day,’ which I suppose to be either a different reading from any that has come down, or a blending of a line from Otterburn with one from The Hunting of the Cheviot, A 241; indicating in either case the present ballad only, for The Hunttis of Cheuet had been cited before. Furnivall holds that the second line means another ballad: Captain Cox, p. clix.