Nicol and ‘Alick and a’.
Some gat a hurt, and some gat nane;
Some had harness, and some gat sta'en (stolen or plundered).”
In later days Sir Walter Scott wove the annals of the Border into more tuneful rhyme, and sang of the exploits of his bold countrymen with an enthusiasm worthy of his moss-trooping ancestors. These old ballads, and the recollections of ancient dames in whose youthful days the exploits celebrated in these ballads were not yet quite obsolete, furnished him with much of his romantic materials. The Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border, a collection of many such traditions, is a storehouse of information upon these subjects. We find descriptions of the caves and morasses [pg 227] which were the usual refuge of the marauders; the banks of the Teviot, the Ale, the Jed, the Esk, were full of these caverns, but even these hiding-places were not always safe. Patten's Account of Somerset's Expedition into Scotland tells how “George Ferres, a gentleman of my Lord Protector, happened on a cave” the entrance to which showed signs of the interior being tenanted. “He wente doune to trie, and was readilie receyved with a hakebut or two,” and when he found the foe determined to hold out, “he wente to my lorde's grace, and, upon utterance of the thinge, gat license to deale with them as he coulde”—which significantly simple statement meant that he was perfectly at liberty to do as he eventually did, i.e., smother them by stopping up the three ventes of the cave with burning faggots of damp wood.
The next case is one of national jealousy and instant reprisals. The English Earl of Northumberland gives a graphic account of the double raid in a letter to King Henry VIII. He says that some Scottish barons had threatened to come and give him “light to put on his clothes at midnight,” and moreover that Marke Carr (one of the same clan whose prowess was exercised against Buccleugh) said that, “seying they had a governor on the Marches of Scotland as well as they had in England, he shulde kepe your highness' instructions, gyffyn unto your garyson, for making of any day-forey; for he and his friends wolde burne enough on the nyght....” Then follows a detailed account of the inroad of thirty horsemen on the hamlet of Whitell, which they did not burn, because “there was no fyre to get there, and they forgat to brynge any withe theyme!” But they killed a woman, under circumstances of peculiar atrocity, and departed. The reprisals, however, were far worse. The Earl of Murray, who had winked at all this, was chosen by the English as a scape-goat, and a hundred of the best horsemen of Glendaill “dyd mar the Earl of Murreis provisions at Coldingham, for they did not only burn the said town of Coldingham, with all the corne thereunto belonging, but also burned twa townes nye adjoining thereunto, called Branerdergest and the Black Hill and took xxiii. persons, lx. horse, with cc. head of cataill, which nowe, as I am informed, hathe not only been a staye of the said Erle of Murreis not coming to the Bordure as yet, but alsoo that none inlande will adventure theyrself uppon the Marches.... And also I have devysed that within this iii. nyghts, Godde willing, Kelsey, in like case, shall be brent with all the corn in the said town, and then they shall have noo place to lye any garyson nygh unto the Borders.”
The physical strength and rude cunning required for this daring life of perpetual warfare are well described in the stanza of The Lay of the Last Minstrel referring to one of the Border heroes of the clan of Buccleugh:
“A stark, moss-trooping Scott was he
As e'er couch'd Border lance by knee;
Through Solway sands, through Tarras moss,
Blindfold he knew the paths to cross;