This descendant of the Armstrongs was not unlike Johnny; and, indeed, it has been observed that throughout the whole branches of the family there was an extraordinary union of boldness and humour—two qualities which have more connection than may, at first view, be apparent. Law-breakers, among themselves, are seldom serious; a lightness of heart and a turn for wit being necessary for the sustenance of their outlawed spirits, as well as for a quaint justification—resorted to by all the tribe—of their calling, against the laws of the land. In the possession of these qualities, Will was not behind the most illustrious of his race; but he, perhaps, excelled them all in the art of “conveying”—a polite term then used for that change of ownership which the affected laws of the time denominated theft. This art was not confined to cattle or plenishing, though
“They left not spindell, spoone, nor speit,
Bed, boster, blanket, sark, nor sheet:
John of the Park ryps kist and ark—
To all sic wark he is sae meet.”[B]
It extended to abduction, and this was far seldomer exercised on damsels than on men, who would be well ransomed, especially of those classes, duke, earl, or baron, any of whom Johnny offered (for his life) to bring, “within a certain day, to his Majesty James V., either quick or dead.” This latter part of their art was the highest to which the Borderers aspired; and there never was a riever among them all that excelled in it so much as Christie’s Will. “To steal a stirk, or wear a score o’ sheep hamewards,” he used to say, “was naething; but to steal a lord was the highest flicht o’ a man’s genius, and ought never to be lippened to a hand less than an Armstrong’s;” and, certainly, if the success with which he executed one scheme of that high kind will guarantee Will’s boasted abilities, he did not transcend the truth in limiting lord-stealing to the Armstrongs.
Will married a distant relation of the true Border breed, named Margaret Elliot—a lass whose ideas of hussyskep were so peculiar, that she thought Gilnockie and its laird were going to ruin when she saw in the kail-pot a “heugh bane” of their own cattle, a symptom of waste, extravagance, and laziness, on the part of her husband, that boded less good than the offer made by “the Laird’s Jock,” (Johnny Armstrong’s henchman,) to give “Dick o’ the Cow” a piece of his own ox, which he came to ask reparation for, and, not having got it, tied with St. Mary’s knot (hamstringed) thirty good horses. To this good housewife, in fact, might be traced, if antiquaries would renounce for it less important investigations, the old saying, that stolen joys (qu. queys?) are sweetest, undoubtedly a Border aphorism, and now received into the society of legitimate moral sayings. When lazy and not inclined for “felonie,” Will would not subscribe to the truth of the dictum, and often got for grace to the dinner he had not taken from the English, and yet relished, the wish of the good dame, that, for his want of spirit, it might choke him. That effect, however, was more likely to be produced by the beef got in the regular Border way; for the laws were beginning now to be more vigorously executed, and many a riever was astonished and offended by the proceedings of the Justice-Ayr at Jedburgh, where they were actually going the length of hanging for the crime of conveying cattle from one property to another.
It was in vain that Will told his wife these proceedings of the Jedburgh court; she knew very well that many of the Armstrongs, and the famous Johnny among the rest, had been strung up, by the command of their king, for rebellion against his authority; but it was out of all question, beyond the reach of common sense, and, indeed, utterly barbarous and unjust to hang a man, as Gilderoy’s lover said, “for gear,” a thing that never yet was known to be stationary, but, even from the times of the Old Testament, given to taking to itself wings and flying away. It was, besides, against the oldest constitution of things, the old possessors being the Tories, who acted upon the comely principle already alluded to, that right was might—the new lairds, again, being the Whigs, who wished to take from the Tories (the freebooters) the good old law of nature and possession, and regulate property by the mere conceits of men’s brains. To some such purpose did Margaret argue against Will’s allusions to the doings at Jedburgh; but, secretly, Will cared no more for the threat of a rope, than he did for the empty bravado of a neighbour whom he had eased of a score of cattle. He merely brought in the doings of the Justice-Ayr at Jedburgh, to screen his fits of laziness; those states of the mind common to rievers, thieves, writers, and poets, and generally all people who live upon their wits, which at times incapacitate them for using sword or pen for their honest livelihood. But all Margaret’s arguments and Will’s courage were on one occasion overturned, by the riever’s apprehension for stealing a cow, belonging to a farmer at Stobbs, of the name of Grant. He was carried to Jedburgh jail, and indicted to stand his trial before the Lord Justice-General at the next circuit. There was a determination, on the part of the crown authorities, to make an example of the most inveterate riever of the time, and Will stood a very fair chance of being hanged.
The apprehension of Will Armstrong made a great noise throughout all Liddesdale, producing, to the class of victims, joy, and to the class of spoilers, great dismay; but none wondered more at the impertinence and presumption of the government authorities in attempting thus to dislocate the old Tory principle of “might makes right,” than Margaret Elliot; who, as she sat in her turret of Gilnockie, alternately wept and cursed for the fate of her “winsome Will,” and, no doubt, there was in the projected condemnation and execution of a man six feet five inches high, with a face like an Adonis, shoulders like a Milo, the speed of Mercury, the boldness of a lion, and more than the generosity of that noble animal, for the crime of stealing a stirk, something that was very apt to rouse, even in those who loved him not so well as did Margaret, feelings of sympathy for his fate, and indignation against his oppressors. There was no keeping, as the artists say, in the picture, no proper causality in a stolen cow, for the production of such an effect as a hanged Phaon or strangled Hercules; and though we have used some classic names to grace our idea, the very same thought, at least as good a one, though perhaps not so gaudily clothed, occupied the mind of Margaret Elliot. She sobbed and cried bitterly, till the Gilnockie ravens and owls, kindred spirits, were terrified from the riever’s tower.
“What is this o’t?” she exclaimed, in the midst of her tears. “Shall Christie’s Will, the bravest man o’ the Borders, be hanged because a cow, that kenned nae better, followed him frae Stobbs to the Hollows; and shall it be said that Margaret Elliot was the death o’ her braw riever? I had meat enough in Gilnockie larder that day I scorned him wi’ his laziness, and forced him to do the deed that has brought him to Jedburgh jail. But I’ll awa to the warden, James Stewart o’ Traquair, and see if it be the king’s high will that a man’s life should be ta’en for a cow’s.”
Making good her resolution, Margaret threw her plaid about her shoulders, and hied her away to Traquair House, the same that still stands on the margin of the Tweed, and raises its high white walls, perforated by numerous Flemish-shaped windows, among the dark woods of Traquair. When she came to the front of the house, and saw the two stone figures stationed at the old gate, she paused and wondered at the weakness and effeminacy of the Lord High Steward in endeavouring to defend his castle by fearful representations of animals.
“My faith,” muttered she to herself, as she approached to request entrance, “the warden was right in no makin’ choice o’ the figure o’ a quey to defend his castle.” And she could scarcely resist a chuckle in the midst of her tears, at her reference to the cause of her visit.
“Is my Lord Steward at hame?” said she to the servant who answered her call.