"The Lord of Liddisdale being at his pastime, hunting in Ettrick forest, is beset by William, Earl of Douglas, and such as he had ordained for the purpose, and there asailed, wounded, and slain, beside Galsewood, in the year 1353, upon a jealousy that the earl had conceived of him with his lady, as the report goeth; for so sayeth the old song,
"The countess of Douglas out of her bower she came,
And loudly there that she did call—
It is for the Lord of Liddisdale,
That I let all these tears down fall."
"The song also declareth, how she did write her love-letters to Liddisdale, to dissuade him from that hunting. It tells likewise the manner of the taking of his men, and his own killing at Galsewood; and how he was carried the first night to Linden kirk, a mile from Selkirk, and was buried in the abbey of Melrose."—Godscroft, Vol. I. p. 144, Ed. 1743.
Some fragments of this ballad are still current, and will be found in the ensuing work.
The Selkirkshire ballad of Tamlane seems also to have been well known in England. Among the popular heroes of romance, enumerated in the introduction to the history of "Tom Thumbe," (London, 1621, bl. letter), occurs "Tom a Lin, the devil's supposed bastard." There is a parody upon the same ballad in the "Pinder of Wakefield" (London, 1621).
These town pipers, an institution of great antiquity upon the borders, were certainly the last remains of the minstrel race. Robin Hastie, town-piper of Jedburgh, perhaps the last of the order, died nine or ten years ago: his family was supposed to have held the office for about three centuries. Old age had rendered Robin a wretched performer; but he knew several old songs and tunes, which have probably died along with him. The town-pipers received a livery and salary from the community to which they belonged; and, in some burghs, they had a small allotment of land, called the Piper's Croft. For further particulars regarding them, see Introduction to Complaynt of Scotland, Edinburgh, 1801, p. 142.