sair clatter at the door about daybreak, and loud crying for the smith; but her father not being on the alert, Buccleuch himself thrust his lance through the window, which effectually bestirred him. On looking out, the woman continued, she saw in the grey of the morning, more gentlemen than she had ever before seen in one place, all on horseback, in armour, and dripping wet— and that Kinmont Willie, who sat woman-fashion behind one of them, was the biggest carle she ever saw-and there was much merriment in the company.'-SIR WALTER SCOTT'S MS. Letters. 1826.-J. G. L.]

DICK O' THE COW

THIS ballad, and the two which immediately follow 1 it in the collection, were published, 1784, in the Hawick Museum, a provincial miscellany, to which they were communicated by John Elliot, Esq. of Reidheugh, a gentleman well skilled in the antiquities of the Western Border, and to whose friendly assistance the Editor is indebted for many valuable

communications.

These ballads are connected with each other, and appear to have been composed by the same author. The actors seem to have flourished, while Thomas, Lord Scroope, of Bolton, was Warden of the West Marches of England, and governor of Carlisle Castle; which offices he acquired upon the death of his father, about 1590, and retained till the union of the crowns.

Dick of the Cow, from the privileged insolence which he assumes, seems to have been Lord Scroope's jester. In the preliminary dissertation, the reader will find the Border custom of assuming noms de guerre particularly noticed. It is exemplified in the following ballad, where one Armstrong is called the Laird's Jock (i.e. the laird's son Jock), another Fair Johnie, a third Billie Willie (brother Willie), etc. The Laird's Jock, son to the Laird of Mangerton,

1 [By the two which immediately follow is meant 'Jock o' the Side' and 'Hobbie Noble,' 'The Death of Featherstonhaugh' having been interpolated in the 1810 and subsequent editions.]

appears, as one of the men of name in Liddesdale, in the list of Border clans, 1597.1

Dick of the Cow is erroneously supposed to have been the same with one Ricardus Coldall, de Plumpton, a knight and celebrated warrior, who died in 1462, as appears from his epitaph in the church of Penrith.-NICHOLSON's History of Westmoreland and Cumberland, vol. ii. p. 408.2

This ballad is very popular in Liddesdale; and the reciter always adds, at the conclusion, that poor Dickie's cautious removal to Burgh under Stanemore did not save him from the clutches of the Armstrongs; for that, having fallen into their power several years after this exploit, he was put to an inhuman death. The ballad was well known in England so early as 1596.3 An allusion to it likewise occurs in PARROT's Laquei Ridiculosi, or Springes for Woodcocks; London, 1613.

'Owenus wondreth since he came to Wales

What the description of this Ile should be,
That ner' had seene but Mountaines, Hils, and Dales,
Yet would he boast, and stand on's Pedigree,
From Rice ap Richard, sprung from Dick a Cow,
Be Cod, was right gud Gentleman, looke ye now!'
Epigr. 76.

[The ballad—with the omission of a few stanzas from lack of space on the page-was published by Alexander Campbell in his Albyn's Anthology (1818, vol. ii. p. 31), with the following footnote: 'Is here

1 [See note to stanza xlvii.] 2 [Nicholson's words are: 'Dr. Todd says this Richard Coldall was a famous warrior in those times, being the same that the country-people still frighten children with by the name of Dicky Cow.' The jester acquired the sobriquet from his exploit, but it may have been a mere revival of the old one.] 3 [See General Introduction, vol. i. p. 163.]

given as taken down by the present Editor from the singing and recitation of a Liddesdale-man, namely, Robert Shortreed, Esq., Sheriff-Substitute of Roxburghshire, in the autumn of 1816. In consequence of which the public are now in full possession of what partly appeared in the Hawick Museum, 1784, and afterwards a more perfect edition in the Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border, 1802. This popular Ballad is thus completed by its melody being united to it.' This confused assertion-muddled alike in its facts and grammar-induced the late Professor Child to suppose that the original version in the Minstrelsy (which even down to punctuation is that of the Anthology, and also, with a few verbal amendments that- -as Professor Child recognisedof Caw's Museum), was Campbell's version with the 'deficient stanzas' supplied from the Museum-this notwithstanding Campbell's assertion that he got his Anthology version from Robert Shortrede as late as 1816. Curiously enough, also, Professor Child seems to have been ignorant that Scott was himself acquainted with Shortrede, who was his guide during his explorations of Liddesdale in 1792 (see Shortrede's own graphic account in Lockhart's Life of Scott). Not only so, but it was Shortrede who introduced Scott to Elliot of Reidheugh, who had sent Dick of the Cow' to Caw's Museum; and it was in company with Shortrede that Scott visited 'Auld Thomas o' Twizzlehope,' celebrated for his skill on the Border pipe, and in particular for being in possession of the real lilt of 'Dick of the Cow.' Thus, if Shortrede possessed any special version either of the tune or words of Dick of the Cow,' he must have obtained them from the same sources as Scott, and, there is no reason why Scott, if

indebted to Shortrede for improved readings, should not have acknowledged his obligations to himespecially if he actually received the version as printed in the Minstrelsy from Shortrede. But as matter of fact, Scott's alterations on the Museum version of Dick of the Cow' are, as will be seen from the footnotes, mere literary' corrections. The only possible explanation of Campbell's curious note seems, therefore, to be that he was, as Scott states, 'a crazy creature' (Scott to D. Terry, 18th April 1816, in Lockhart's Life of Scott), and that having given some slight help to Scott-whose music-teacher he had been in Scott's boyhood-in obtaining material for the Minstrelsy, he had succeeded in acquiring the notion that he was part author of the work. Indeed, in his preface to the Anthology, he has the amazing vanity and lack of grammar to affirm that in regard to the merits of the Minstrelsy, the present Editor may observe becoming silence for a reason sufficiently obvious to stand in need (sic) of explanation.'

Two stanzas of 'Dick of the Cow' are in Pennant's Tour in Scotland, 1772. A version sent to Percy in 1775 (Child's Ballads, vol. iii. pp. 463-7) is substantially the same ballad as that in the Minstrelsy, although there are many verbal differences.]