[300]. Lesley, History of Scotland, p. 235; Gregory, History of the Western Highlands, ed. 1881, p. 184; Browne, History of the Highlands, IV, 476. For the traditional story, Finlay, II, 95, note; Laing’s Thistle of Scotland, p. 107 f.; Whitelaw, p. 248.
[301]. “In the end of this year [1593] there fell out great troubles in the west marches. Some of the surname of Johnston having in the July preceding made a great depredation upon the lands of Sanwhare and Drumlanrig, and killed eighteen persons that followed for rescue of their goods,” etc. Spottiswood, p. 400, ed. 1666.
[302]. 37 does not come in happily. Scott put this stanza after 29, omitting ‘Sin’; but there is no rational sense gained, unless the Johnstones are supposed to deny the cattle-lifting. Admitting a bold anacoluthon in the first verse (a mixture of since—so and neither—nor), 37 might stand as and where it is. The Johnstones have done no wanton injury; they have only revenged in a proper way the death of the Galliard. But even then the Johnstones would be made to blink the Galliard’s horse-stealing.
[303]. As there was no great “routh” of Christian names among the clansmen of the borders, to-names became necessary for the distinction of the numerous Jocks, Christies, Watties and Archies. The name of parent, or of parent and grandparent, was sometimes prefixed, as John’s Christie, Agnes’ Christie, Peggie’s Wattie, Gibb’s Jack’s Johnie, Pattie’s Geordie’s Johnie; sometimes the place of abode was added, as Jock o the Side; sometimes there was distinction by personal peculiarities, dress, or arms, as Fair Johnie, Red Cloak, John with the Jack, etc., etc. See lists of all varieties in Mr R. B. Armstrong’s History of Liddesdale, etc., p. 78 f.
[304]. Ties them with St Mary’s knot: hamstrings them, says Caw, and say others after him. A St John’s knot is double, a St Mary’s triple. Observe that in 31 it is simply said that there is only one horse loose in the stable.
[305]. “The Armstrongs at length got Dick o the Cow in their clutches, and, out of revenge, they tore his flesh from his bones with red-hot pincers:” note in Caw’s Museum, p. 35. “At the conclusion of the ballad, the singer used invariably to add that Dickie’s removal to Burgh under Stainmuir did not save him from the clutches of the Armstrongs. Having fallen into their power, several years after this exploit, he was plunged into a large boiling pot, and so put to death. The scene of this cruel transaction is pointed out somewhere in Cumberland.” Chambers, Scottish Ballads, p. 55, note. No well-wisher of Dick has the least occasion to be troubled by these puerile supplements of the singers.
[306]. I am indebted to Mr R. B. Armstrong for all information not hitherto published.
[307]. “It was not unusual to call two sons by a favorite name, and the brother of Gilnockie would have probably called his sons by that name:” R. B. A.
[308]. “The place which is alluded to by Scott was pointed out to me about thirty years since. There then were the remains of a tower which stood on a small plateau where the Dow Sike and the Blaik Grain join the Stanygillburn, a tributary of the Tinnisburn. Some remains of the building may still be traced at the northern angle of the sheepfold of which it forms part. The walls that remain are 4 feet 3 inches thick, and measured on the inside about 6 feet high. They extend about 18 feet 6 inches in one direction and 14 feet in another, forming portions of two sides with the angle of the tower.... There must have been a considerable building of a rude kind.... This place, as the crow flies, is quite two miles and a quarter from Kershope-foot, and by the burn two miles and a half.... The Laird’s Jock’s residence is marked on a sketch map of Liddesdale by Lord Burleigh, drawn when Simon was laird of Mangerton. (Simon, son of Thomas, was laird in 1578–9.) It is also marked at the mouth of the Tinnisburn on a ‘platt’ of the country, of 1590.” R. B. A.
[309]. The Archbishop’s account is apparently based upon a more minute “relation of the maner of surprizeing of the Castell of Cairlell by the lord of Buccleugh,” given, from a manuscript of the period, in the later edition of the Minstrelsy, II, 32. There is another account of the rescue in The Historie of King James the Sext, p. 366 ff.