d.

+The Text+ is from the Percy Folio, but is given in modernised spelling.
It lacks the beginning, probably, and one line in st. 3, which can be
easily guessed; but as a whole it is an infinitely fresher and better
ballad than that inserted in the _Minstrelsy_ of Sir Walter Scott.

+The Story+ is akin to that of _Kinmont Willie_ (p. 49). John of the
Side (on the river Liddel, nearly opposite Mangerton) first appears
about 1550 in a list of freebooters against whom complaints were laid
before the Bishop of Carlisle. He was, it seems, another of the
Armstrong family.

Hobby Noble has a ballad[1] to himself (as the hero of the present
ballad deserves), in which mention is made of Peter of Whitfield. This
is doubtless the person mentioned in the first line of _John o' the
Side_ as having been killed presumably by John himself.

[Footnote 1: Child, No. 189, from Caw's _Poetical Museum_, but not
of sufficient merit to be included here.]

'Culertun,' 10.1, is Chollerton on the Tyne. Percy suggests Challerton,
and in the ballads upon which Scott founded his version the name is
'Choler-ford.' 'Howbrame wood' and 'Lord Clough' are not identified; and
Flanders files, effective as they appear to be, are not otherwise known.

'The ballad,' says Professor Child, 'is one of the best in the world,
and enough to make a horse-trooper of any young borderer, had he lacked
the impulse.'

JOHN O' THE SIDE

1.
Peter o' Whifield he hath slain,
And John o' Side, he is ta'en,
And John is bound both hand and foot,
And to the New-castle he is gone.

2.
But tidings came to the Sybil o' the Side,
By the water-side as she ran;
She took her kirtle by the hem,
And fast she run to Mangerton.

3.
... ... ...
The lord was set down at his meat;
When these tidings she did him tell,
Never a morsel might he eat.

4.
But lords they wrung their fingers white,
Ladies did pull themselves by the hair,
Crying 'Alas and welladay!
For John o' the Side we shall never see more.

5.
'But we'll go sell our droves of kine,
And after them our oxen sell,
And after them our troops of sheep,
But we will loose him out of the New Castell.'

6.
But then bespake him Hobby Noble,
And spoke these words wondrous high;
Says, 'Give me five men to myself,
And I'll fetch John o' the Side to thee.'

7.
'Yea, thou'st have five, Hobby Noble,
Of