country; and it is truly astonishing to find how few acts of cruelty they perpetrated, and how seldom they added murder to pillage[B] Additional levies of horse were also raised, under the name of Independent Troops, and great part of them placed under the command of James Grahame of Claverhouse a man well known to fame, by his subsequent title of viscount Dundee, but better remembered, in the western shires, under the designation of the bloody Clavers.  In truth, he appears to have combined the virtues and vices of a savage chief.  Fierce, unbending, and rigorous, no emotion of compassion prevented his commanding, and witnessing, every detail of military execution against the non-conformists.  Undauntedly brave, and steadily faithful to his prince, he sacrificed himself in the cause of James, when he was deserted by all the world.  If we add, to these attributes, a goodly person, complete skill in martial exercises, and that ready and decisive character, so essential to a commander, we may form some idea of this extraordinary character.  The whigs, whom he persecuted daunted by his ferocity and courage, conceived him to be impassive to their bullets,[C] and that he had sold himself, for temporal greatness, to the seducer of mankind.  It is still believed, that a cup of wine, presented to him by his butler, changed into clotted blood; and that, when he plunged his feet into cold water, their touch caused it to boil.  The steed, which bore him, was supposed to be the gift of Satan; and precipices are shewn, where a fox could hardly keep his feet, down which the infernal charger conveyed him safely, in pursuit of the wanderers.  It is remembered, with terror, that Claverhouse was successful in every engagement with the whigs, except that at Drumclog, or Loudon-hill, which is the subject of the following ballad.  The history of Burly, the hero of the piece, will bring us immediately to the causes and circumstances of that event.

[Footnote A:  Peden complained heavily, that, after a heavy struggle with the devil, he had got above him, spur-galled him hard, and obtained a wind to carry him from Ireland to Scotland, when, behold! another person had set sail, and reaped the advantage of his prayer-wind, before he could embark.]

[Footnote B:  Cleland thus describes this extraordinary army: 

  —­Those, who were their chief commanders,
  As sach who bore the pirnie standarts. 
  Who led the van, and drove the rear,
  Were right well mounted of their gear;
  With brogues, and trews, and pirnie plaids,
  With good blue bonnets on their heads,
  Which, oil the one side, had a flipe,
  Adorn’d with a tobacco pipe,
  With durk, and snap-work, and snuff-mill,
  A bag which they with onions fill;
  And, as their strict observers say,
  A tup-born filled with usquebay;
  A slasht out coat beneath her plaides,
  A targe of timber, nails, and hides;
  With a long two-handed sword,
  As good’s the country can afford. 
  Had they not need of bulk-and bones. 
  Who fought with all these arms at once?