Detached Church Towers (Vol. vii. passim; Vol. viii., p. 63.).—At Morpeth, in Northumberland, the old parish church stands on an eminence at the distance of a mile from the town. In the market-place is a square clock tower, the bells in which are used for ordinary parochial purposes.
At Kirkoswald, in Cumberland, where the church stands low, the belfry has been erected on an adjoining hill.
E. H. A.
Bishop Ferrar (Vol. viii., p. 103.).—Bishop Ferrar, martyred in Queen Mary's reign, was not of the same family with the Ferrers, Earl of Derby and Nottingham. Was your correspondent led to think so from the fact of the martyr having been originally a bishop of the Isle of Man?
A Lineal Descendant of the Martyr.
Cambridge.
"They shot him by the nine stone rig" (Vol. viii., p. 78.).—This fragmentary ballad is to be found in the Border Minstrelsy. It was contributed by R. Surtees of Mainsforth, co. Durham, and described by him as having been taken down from the recitation of Anne Douglas, an old woman who weeded in his garden. It is however most likely that it is altogether factitious, and Mr. Surtees' own production, Anne Douglas being a pure invention.
The ballad called "The Fray of Haltwhistle," a portion of which, "How the Thirlwalls and the Ridleys a'," &c., is interwoven with the text in the first canto of Marmion, is generally understood to have been composed by Mr. Surtees. He, however, succeeded in palming it upon Scott as a genuine old ballad; and states that he had it from the recitation of an ancient dame, mother of one of the miners of Alston Moor. Scott's taste for old legends and ballads was certainly not too discriminating, or he would never have swallowed "The Fray of Haltwhistle." Perhaps he suspected its authenticity, for he says of it:
"Scantily Lord Marmion's ear could brook
The harper's barbarous lay."