From Gretna Green to Land's End: A Literary Journey in England.. Katharine Lee Bates

and she who had a foal at home would not once let the brown horse bait,

      "But kept him a-galloping home to her foal."

      When the loss of the two horses was discovered in the morning, the harper made such ado that the warden paid him three times over for the grey mare.

      "And verra gude business," commented our Scotch landlady.

      The most famous of the Carlisle Castle ballads relates the rescue of Kinmont Willie, a high-handed cattle-thief of the Border. For between the recognised English and Scottish boundaries lay a strip of so-called Debatable Land, whose settlers, known as the Batables, owed allegiance to neither country, but

      "Sought the beeves, that made their broth,

      In Scotland and in England both."

      This Border was a natural shelter for outlaws, refugees, and "broken men" in general, – reckless fellows who loved the wildness and peril of the life, men of the type depicted in "The Lay of the Last Minstrel."

      "A stark moss-trooping Scot was he,

      As e'er couched Border lance by knee:

      Through Solway sands, through Tarras moss,

      Blindfold, he knew the paths to cross;

      By wily turns, by desperate bounds,

      Had baffled Percy's best bloodhounds;

      In Eske, or Liddel, fords were none,

      But he would ride them, one by one;

      Alike to him was time, or tide,

      December's snow or July's pride:

      Alike to him was tide, or time,

      Moonless midnight, or matin prime:

      Steady of heart, and stout of hand,

      As ever drove prey from Cumberland;

      Five times outlawed had he been,

      By England's king and Scotland's queen."

      Although these picturesque plunderers cost the neighbourhood dear, they never failed of sympathy in the hour of doom. The Graemes, for instance, were a large clan who lived by rapine. In 1600, when Elizabeth's government compelled them to give a bond of surety for one another's good behaviour, they numbered more than four hundred fighting men. There was Muckle Willie, and Mickle Willie, and Nimble Willie, and many a Willie more. But the execution of Hughie the Graeme was none the less grievous.

      "Gude Lord Scroope's to the hunting gane,

      He has ridden o'er moss and muir;

      And he has grippit Hughie the Graeme,

      For stealing o' the Bishop's mare.

      "Then they have grippit Hughie the Graeme,

      And brought him up through Carlisle toun;

      The lasses and lads stood on the walls,

      Crying, 'Hughie the Graeme, thou 'se ne'er gae doun.'"

      They tried him by a jury of men, and although his guilt was open, "gude Lord Hume" offered the judge "twenty white owsen" to let him off, and "gude lady Hume" "a peck of white pennies," but it was of no avail, and Hughie went gallantly to his death.

      "The best that were in Carlisle toun,"

      For these Batables had their own code of right and wrong, and were, in their peculiar way, men of honour. There was Hobbie Noble, an English outlaw, who was betrayed by a comrade for English gold, and who, hanged at Carlisle, expressed on the gallows his execration of such conduct.

      "I wad hae betray'd nae lad alive,

      For a' the gowd o' Christentie."

      The seizure of Kinmont Willie was hotly resented, even though his clan, the Armstrongs, who had built themselves strong towers on the Debatable Land, "robbed, spoiled, burned and murdered," as the Warden of the West Marches complained, all along upper Cumberland. The Armstrongs could, at one time, muster out over three thousand horsemen, and Dacres and Howards strove in vain to bring them under control. Yet there was "Border law," too, one of its provisions being that on the appointed days of truce, when the "Lord Wardens of England and Scotland, and Scotland and England" met, each attended by a numerous retinue, at a midway cairn, to hear complaints from either side and administer a rude sort of justice in accordance with "the laws of the Marches," no man present, not even the most notorious freebooter, could be arrested. But William Armstrong of Kinmont was too great a temptation; he had harried Cumberland too long; and a troop of some two hundred English stole after him, as he rode off carelessly along the Liddel bank, when the assemblage broke up, overpowered him, and brought him in bonds to Carlisle.

      "O have ye na heard o' the fause Sakelde?

      O have ye na heard o' the keen Lord Scroope?

      How they hae ta'en bauld Kinmont Willie,

      On Haribee to hang him up?

      "They led him through the Liddel rack

      And also through the Carlisle sands;

      They brought him to Carlisle castle,

      To be at my Lord Scroope's commands."

      But this was more than the Scottish warden, Sir Walter Scott of Buccleuch, could bear.

      "And have they ta'en him, Kinmont Willie,

      Against the truce of the Border tide,

      And forgotten that the bauld Buccleuch

      Is Keeper on the Scottish side?

      "And have they ta'en him, Kinmont Willie,

      Withouten either dread or fear,

      And forgotten that the bauld Buccleuch

      Can back a steed or shake a spear?

      "O! were there war between the lands,

      As well I wot that there is nane,

      I would slight Carlisle castle high

      Though it were builded of marble stane.

      "I would set that castle in a low1

      And sloken it with English blood;

      There's never a man in Cumberland

      Should ken where Carlisle Castle stood.

      "But since nae war's between the lands,

      And there is peace, and peace should be,

      I'll neither harm English lad or lass,

      And yet the Kinmont freed shall be."

      So Buccleuch rode out, one dark night, with a small party of Borderers, and succeeded, aided by one of the gusty storms of the region, in making his way to Carlisle undetected.

      "And when we left the Staneshaw-bank,

      The wind began full loud to blaw;

      But 'twas wind and weet, and fire and sleet,

      When we came beneath the castle wa'."

      The sudden uproar raised by the little band bewildered the garrison, and to Kinmont Willie, heavily ironed in the inner dungeon and expecting death in the morning, came the voices of friends.

      "Wi' coulters, and wi' forehammers,

      We garr'd2 the bars bang merrilie,

      Until we cam' to the inner prison,

      Where Willie o' Kinmont he did lie.

      "And when we cam' to the lower prison,

      Where Willie o' Kinmont he did lie:

      'O sleep ye, wake ye, Kinmont Willie,

      Upon the morn that thou's to die?'

      "'O

1

Blaze.

2

Made.