I wish I were where Helen lies! 
  Night and day on me she cries;
  And I am weary of the skies,
   For her sake that died for me.

[Footnote A:  Burd Helen—­Maid Helen.]

HUGHIE THE GRAEME.

The Graemes, as we have had frequent occasion to notice, were a powerful and numerous clan, who chiefly inhabited the Debateable Land.  They were said to be of Scottish extraction, and their chief claimed his descent from Malice, earl of Stratherne.  In military service, they were more attached to England than to Scotland; but, in their depredations on both countries, they appear to have been very impartial; for, in the year 1600, the gentlemen of Cumberland alleged to Lord Scroope, “that the Graemes, and their clans, with their children, tenants, and servants, were the chiefest actors in the spoil and decay of the country.”  Accordingly, they were, at that time, obliged to give a bond of surety for each other’s peaceable demeanour; from which bond, their numbers appear to have exceeded four hundred men.—­See Introduction to NICOLSON’S History of Cumberland, p. cviii.

Richard Graeme, of the family of Netherbye, was one of the attendants upon Charles I., when prince of Wales, and accompanied him upon his romantic journey through France and Spain.  The following little anecdote, which then occurred, will shew, that the memory of the Graemes’ border exploits was at that time still preserved.

“They were now entered into the deep time of Lent, and could get no flesh in their inns.  Whereupon fell out a pleasant passage, if I may insert it, by the way, among more serious.  There was, near Bayonne, a herd of goats, with their young ones; upon the sight whereof, Sir Richard Graham tells the marquis (of Buckingham), that he would snap one of the kids, and make some shift to carry him snug to their lodging.  Which the prince overhearing, ‘Why, Richard,’ says he, ’do you think you may practise here your old tricks upon the borders?’ Upon which words, they, in the first place, gave the goat-herd good contentment; and then, while the marquis and Richard, being both on foot, were chasing the kid about the stack, the prince, from horseback, killed him in the head, with a Scottish pistol.—­Which circumstance, though trifling, may yet serve to shew how his Royal Highness, even in such slight and sportful damage, had a noble sense of just dealing.”—­Sir HENRY WOTTON’S Life of the Duke of Buckingham.

I find no traces of this particular Hughie Graeme, of the ballad; but, from the mention of the Bishop, I suspect he may have been one, of about four hundred borderers, against whom bills of complaint were exhibited to Robert Aldridge, lord bishop of Carlisle, about 1553, for divers incursions, burnings, murders, mutilations, and spoils, by them committed.—­NICHOLSON’S History, Introduction, lxxxi.  There appear a number of Graemes, in the specimen which we have of that list of delinquents.  There occur, in particular,