"Grant me my life, my King, and I will give thee a brave gift. All between here and Newcastle town shall pay thee yearly rent."
"Away with thee, thou traitor, out of my sight! Never have I granted a traitor's life, nor will I now begin with thee!"
"Ye lie, calling me traitor; ye lie now, King, although ye be King and Prince. Well dare I say it, that all my life I have loved naught but honesty, a fleet horse, a fair woman, and two bonny dogs to kill a deer; yet had I lived for another hundred years, England should have still found me meal and malt and plenty of beef and mutton. Never would a Scot's wife have been able to say that I robbed her of aught. But surely it is great folly to seek for hot water beneath cold ice. I have asked grace of a graceless King, but there is none for me and my men. But had I known before I came how unkind thou wouldst prove to me, I would have kept the Borderside in spite of thee and thy nobles. How glad would be England's King if he but knew that I was taken, for once I slew his sister's son and broke a tree over his breastbone."
Now Johnie had a girdle round his waist embroidered and spangled with burning gold, very beautiful to look upon, and from his hat hung down nine tassels, each worth three hundred pounds. "What wants that knave that a King should have, but the sword of honour and the crown?" cried the King.
"Where did ye get those tassels, Johnie, that shine so bravely above your brow?"
"I got them fighting in the field where thou darest not be," replied Johnie. "And had I now my horse and good harness, and were I riding as I am used to do, this meeting between us should have been told these hundred years. God be with thee, my brother Christy, long shalt thou live Laird of Mangertown on the Border-side ere thou see thy brother ride by again. God be with thee, my son Christy, where thou sitst on thy nurse's knee; thou'lt ne'er be a better man than thy father, though thou live a hundred years. Farewell, bonnie Hall of Gilnockie, standing strong on Eskside; if I had lived but seven more years, I would have gilded thee round about."
Then Johnie Armstrong was slain by the King's orders at Carlinrigg with all his gallant company, and Scotland's heart was sad to see the death of so many brave men, who had saved their country from the Englishmen. None were so brave as they, and while Johnie lived on the Border-side no Englishman durst come near his stronghold.
Chapter XXIV
The Lament of the Border Widow
How King James V. of Scotland, in 1529, set forth to strike terror into the Border freebooters, has been already told in the account of Johnie Armstrong. A less celebrated moss-trooper, Cockburne of Henderland, was hanged by the pitiless King over the gate of his own tower. The wife of Cockburne loved him most dearly, and when she found the King would show no mercy, fled away to the rocks behind the castle whilst the cruel sentence was carried out. She sat by a roaring torrent of the Henderland burn, the noise of which in her ears drowned the savage shouts of the King's soldiers. The beautiful song which describes the grief of this loving woman is one of the gems of ancient poetry, and is here printed entire.