“The countess of Douglas out of her bower she came,
  And loudly there that she did call—­
  It is for the Lord of Liddisdale,
  That I let all these tears down fall.”

“The song also declareth, how she did write her love-letters to Liddisdale, to dissuade him from that hunting.  It tells likewise the manner of the taking of his men, and his own killing at Galsewood; and how he was carried the first night to Linden kirk, a mile from Selkirk, and was buried in the abbey of Melrose.”—­Godscroft, Vol.  I. p. 144, Ed. 1743.

Some fragments of this ballad are still current, and will be found in the ensuing work.]

[Footnote 62:  The Selkirkshire ballad of Tamlane seems also to have been well known in England.  Among the popular heroes of romance, enumerated in the introduction to the history of “Tom Thumbe,” (London, 1621, bl. letter), occurs “Tom a Lin, the devil’s supposed bastard.”  There is a parody upon the same ballad in the “Pinder of Wakefield” (London, 1621).]

Something may be still found in the border cottages resembling the scene described by Pennycuik.

  On a winter’s night, my grannam spinning,
  To mak a web of good Scots linnen;
  Her stool being placed next to the chimley,
  (For she was auld, and saw right dimly,)
  My lucky dad, an honest whig,
  Was telling tales of Bothwell-brigg;
  He could not miss to mind the attempt,
  For he was sitting pu’ing hemp;
  My aunt, whom’ nane dare say has no grace,
  Was reading on the Pilgrim’s Progress;
  The meikle tasker, Davie Dallas,
  Was telling blads of William Wallace;
  My mither bade her second son say,
  What he’d by heart of Davie Lindsay;
  Our herd, whom all folks hate that knows him,
  Was busy hunting in his bosom;

* * * * *

The bairns, and oyes, were all within doors;}
The youngest of us chewing cinders,}
And all the auld anes telling wonders.}

Pennycuik’s Poems, p. 7.

The causes of the preservation of these songs have either entirely ceased, or are gradually decaying Whether they were originally the composition of minstrels, professing the joint arts of poetry and music; or whether they were the occasional effusions of some self-taught bard; is a question into which I do not here mean to enquire.  But it is certain, that, till a very late period, the pipers, of whom there was one attached to each border town of note, and whose office was often hereditary, were the great depositaries of oral, and particularly of poetical, tradition.  About spring time, and after harvest, it was the custom of these musicians to make a progress through a particular district of the country.  The music and the tale repaid their lodging, and they were usually gratified with a donation of seed corn[63].  This order of minstrels is alluded to in the comic song of Maggy Lauder, who thus addresses a piper—­