Then shoulder high, with shout and cry,
We bore him down the ladder lang;
At every stride Red Rowan made,

I wot the Kinmont's airns played clang!

"O mony a time," quo' Kinmont Willie, "I have ridden horse baith wild and wood; "But a rougher beast than Red Rowan, "I ween my legs have ne'er bestrode.

"And mony a time," quo' Kinmont Willie, "I've pricked a horse out oure the furs; "But since the day I backed a steed, "I never wore sic cumbrous spurs!"

We scarce had won the Staneshaw-bank,
When a' the Carlisle bells were rung,
And a thousand men, in horse and foot,
Cam wi' the keen Lord Scroope along.

Buccleuch has turned to Eden water,
Even where it flow'd frae bank to brim,

And he has plunged in wi' a' his band,
And safely swam them thro' the stream.

*Furs-Furrows.

He turned him on the other side,

And at Lord Scroope his glove flung he"If ye like na my visit in merry England, "In fair Scotland come visit me!"

All sore astonished stood Lord Scroope,
He stood as still as rock of stane;
He scarcely dared to trew his eyes,

When thro' the water they had gane.

"He is either himsell a devil frae hell,
"Or else his mother a witch maun be;
"I wad na have ridden that wan water,
"For a' the gowd in Christentie."

NOTES

ON

KINMONT WILLIE.

On Hairibee to hang him up?-P. 188. v. 1. Hairibee is the place of execution at Carlisle.

And they brought him ower the Liddel-rack.-P. 188. v. 3. The Liddel-rack is a ford on the Liddel.

And so they reached the Woodhouselee.—P. 192. v. 1. Woodhouselee; a house on the border, belonging to Buc

cleuch.

The Salkeldes, or Sakeldes, were a powerful family in Cumberland, possessing, among other manors, that of Corby, before it came into the possession of the Howards, in the beginning of the seventeenth century. A strange stratagem was practised by an outlaw, called Jock Grame of the Peartree, upon Mr Salkelde, sheriff of Cumberland; who is probably the person alluded to in the ballad, as the fact is stated to have happened late in Elizabeth's time. The brother of this free

booter was lying in Carlisle jail for execution, when Jock of the Peartree came riding past the gate of Corby castle. A child of the sheriff was playing before the door, to whom the outlaw gave an apple, saying, "Master, will you ride?" The boy willingly consenting, Grame took him up before him, carried him into Scotland, and would never part with him, till he had his brother safe from the gallows. There is no historical ground for supposing, either that Salkelde, or any one else, lost his life in the raid of Carlisle.

In the list of border clans, 1597, Will of Kinmonth, with Kyrstie Armestrange, and John Skynbanke, are mentioned as leaders of a band of Armstrongs, called Sandies Barnes, inhabiting the Debateable Land. The ballad itself has never before been published.

DICK O' THE COW.

THIS ballad, and the two which immediately follow 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 it 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 bor der custom of assuming noms de guerre particularly no