PART FIRST.

HISTORICAL BALLADS.

Sir Patrick Spens,

Auld Maitland,

Battle of Otterbourne,

The Sang of the Outlaw Murray,

Johnie Armstrang,

The Lochmaben Harper,

Jamie Telfer of the Fair Dodhead,

The Raid of the Reidswire,

Kinmont Willie,

Dick o’the Cow,

Jock o’the Side,

Hobbie Noble,

Archie of Ca’field,

Armstrong’s Goodnight,

The Fray of Suport,

Lord Maxwell’s Goodnight,

The Lads of Wamphray,

INTRODUCTION.

From the remote period; when the Roman province was contracted by the ramparts of Severus, until the union of the kingdoms, the borders of Scotland formed the stage, upon which were presented the most memorable conflicts of two gallant nations.  The inhabitants, at the commencement of this aera, formed the first wave of the torrent which assaulted, and finally overwhelmed, the barriers of the Roman power in Britain.  The subsequent events, in which they were engaged, tended little to diminish their military hardihood, or to reconcile them to a more civilized state of society.  We have no occasion to trace the state of the borders during the long and obscure period of Scottish history, which preceded the accession of the Stuart family.  To illustrate a few ballads, the earliest of which is hardly coeval with James V. such an enquiry would be equally difficult and vain.  If we may trust the Welch bards, in their account of the wars betwixt the Saxons and Danes of Deira and the Cumraig, imagination can hardly form [Sidenote:  570] any idea of conflicts more desperate, than were maintained, on the borders, between the ancient British and their Teutonic invaders.  Thus, the Gododin describes the waste and devastation of mutual havoc, in colours so glowing, as strongly to recall the words of Tacitus; “Et ubi solitudinem faciunt, pacem appellant[1].”

[Footnote 1:  In the spirited translation of this poem, by Jones, the following verses are highly descriptive of the exhausted state of the victor army.

  At Madoc’s tent the clarion sounds,
  With rapid clangour hurried far: 
  Each echoing dell the note resounds—­
  But when return the sons of war! 
  Thou, born of stern necessity,
  Dull peace! the desert yields to thee,
  And owns thy melancholy sway.

At a later period, the Saxon families, who fled from the exterminating sword of the Conqueror, with many of the Normans themselves, whom discontent and intestine feuds had driven into exile, began to rise into eminence upon the Scottish borders.  They brought with them arts, both of peace and of war, unknown in Scotland; and, among their descendants, we soon number the most powerful border chiefs.  Such, during the reign