"Hold thy tongue, thou foolish wench, the light is dazzling thine eyes. I'll wager all I have against a groat that it's bigger than ever our foal will be."
Still in merry Carlisle the Harper harped to high and low, and nought could they do but listen to him until day-dawn. But when it was daylight they discovered that Wanton Brown was gone and also the poor blind Harper's mare.
"Alas! alas!" cried the cunning old Harper, "alas that I came here; in Scotland I have lost a brown colt foal and in England they have stolen my good grey mare."
"Cease thy lamenting, thou silly blind Harper, and go on harping; we'll pay thee well for the loss of thy colt foal and thou shalt have a far better mare." So the harper harped and sang, and so sweet were his harpings that he was paid for the foal he never had lost and three times over for the gray mare.
Chapter XXX
The Rookhope Ride
This Durham border song is supposed to be spoken by a Weardale man, who begins by denouncing the inhabitants of the Tyne valley, "and all their companies there about" as false thieves,
"minded to do mischief
And at their stealing stands not out."
It must be confessed that the Tynedale men had an unenviable reputation. They were such lawless desperadoes, so addicted to rapine, that during more than two centuries the merchants of Newcastle regularly refused to take an apprentice born in that district. The date is December 1572. The rebel Earl of Northumberland, who had taken up arms for Mary Queen of Scots, and for the old religion, had been betrayed by the Scots and beheaded at York. Owing to this rebellion there was great confusion in the northern counties, hence the time was well chosen by the "limmer thieves" of Tynedale to make a predatory raid on their neighbours. They gathered together the stoutest men of arms and the best in gear, a hundred or more in number, and in the forenoon, about eleven o'clock, they came into a "bye-fell" and stopped for a meal—the last which some of them would eat. When they had eaten, they chose their captains, Harry Corbyl, Simon Fell, and Martin Ridley. Then they rode on over the moss, "with many a brank and whew," saying to one another that they were men enough,
"For Weardale-men have a journey ta'en,
They are so far out o'er yon fell,
That some of them's with the two earls,
And others fast in Bernard castell.
There we shall get gear enough,
For there is nane but women at hame;
The sorrowful fend that they can make.
Is loudly cries as they were slain."