“O I fear ye are poison’d, Lord Randal, my son! 
  “O I fear ye are poison’d, my handsome young man!”
  “O yes!  I am poison’d; mother, make my bed soon,
  “For I’m sick at the heart, and I fain wald lie down.”

SIR HUGH LE BLOND.

This ballad is a northern composition, and seems to have been the original of the legend called Sir Aldingar, which is printed in the Reliques of Antient Poetry.  The incidents are nearly the same in both ballads, excepting that, in Aldingar, an angel combats for the queen, instead of a mortal champion.  The names of Aldingar and Rodingham approach near to each other in sound, though not in orthography, and the one might, by reciters, be easily substituted for the other.

The tradition, upon which the ballad is founded, is universally current in the Mearns; and the editor is informed, that, till very lately, the sword, with which Sir Hugh le Blond was believed to have defended the life and honour of the queen, was carefully preserved by his descendants, the viscounts of Arbuthnot.  That Sir Hugh of Arbuthnot lived in the thirteenth century, is proved by his having, in 1282, bestowed the patronage of the church of Garvoch upon the monks of Aberbrothwick, for the safety of his soul.—­Register of Aberbrothwick, quoted by Crawford in Peerage. But I find no instance in history, in which the honour of a queen of Scotland was committed to the chance of a duel.  It is true, that Mary, wife of Alexander II., was, about 1242, somewhat implicated in a dark story, concerning the murder of Patrick, earl of Athole, burned in his lodging at Haddington, where he had gone to attend a great tournament.  The relations of the deceased baron accused of the murder Sir William Bisat, a powerful nobleman, who appears to have been in such high favour with the young queen, that she offered her oath, as a compurgator, to prove his innocence.  Bisat himself stood upon his defence, and proffered the combat to his accusers; but he was obliged to give way to the tide, and was banished from Scotland.  This affair interested all the northern barons; and it is not impossible, that some share, taken in it by this Sir Hugh de Arbuthnot, may have given a slight foundation for the tradition of the country.—­WINTON, B. vii. ch. 9.  Or, if we suppose Sir Hugh le Blond to be a predecessor of the Sir Hugh who flourished in the thirteenth century, he may have been the victor in a duel, shortly noticed as having occurred in 1154, when one Arthur, accused of treason, was unsuccessful in his appeal to the judgment of God. Arthurus regem Malcolm proditurus duello periit. Chron.  Sanctae Crucis ap.  Anglia Sacra, Vol.  I. p. 161.

But, true or false, the incident, narrated in the ballad, is in the genuine style of chivalry.  Romances abound with similar instances, nor are they wanting in real history.  The most solemn part of a knight’s oath was to defend “all widows, orphelines, and maidens of gude fame."[A]—­LINDSAY’S Heraldry, MS. The love of arms was a real passion of itself, which blazed yet more fiercely when united with the enthusiastic admiration of the fair sex.  The knight of Chaucer exclaims, with chivalrous energy,