ere slain
That to the fight did stand,
And many prisoners took that day,
The best in all Scotland.

11.
That day made many [a] fatherless child,
And many a widow poor,
And many a Scottish gay lady
Sat weeping in her bower.

12.
Jack with a feather was lapt all in leather,
His boastings were all in vain;
He had such a chance, with a new morrice dance,
He never went home again.

[Annotations:
7.2: 'Mome,' dolt.]

DICK O' THE COW

+The Text+ is a combination of three, but mainly from a text which seems
to have been sent to Percy in 1775. The other two are from Scottish
tradition of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. I have
made a few changes in spelling only. The ballad was certainly known
before the end of the sixteenth century, as Thomas Nashe refers to it in
1596:--'_Dick of the Cow_, that mad Demilance Northren Borderer, who
plaid his prizes with the Lord _Iockey_ so brauely' (Nashe 's _Works_,
ed. R. B. McKerrow, iii. p. 5). _Dick at the Caw_ occurs in a list of
'penny merriments' printed for, and sold by, Philip Brooksby, about
1685.

+The Story+ is yet another of the Border ballads of the Armstrongs and
Liddesdale, and tells itself in an admirable way.

The 'Cow,' of course, cannot refer to cattle, as the word would be
'Kye': possibly it means 'broom,' or the hut in which he lived. See
Murray's _Dictionary_, and cp. 9.3

'Billie' means 'brother'; hence the quaint 'billie Willie.' It is the
same word as 'bully,' used of Bottom the Weaver, which also occurs in
the ballad of _Bewick and Grahame_, 5.2 (see p. 102 of this volume).

DICK O' THE COW

1.
Now Liddisdale has long lain in,
_Fa la_
There is no rideing there at a';
_Fa la_
Their horse is growing so lidder and fatt
That are lazie in the sta'.
_Fa la la didle_

2.
Then Johne Armstrang to Willie can say,
'Billie, a rideing then will we;
England and us has been long at a feed;
Perhaps we may hitt of some bootie.

3.
Then they're com'd on to Hutton Hall,
They rade that proper place about;
But the laird he was the wiser man,
For he had left nae gear without.

4.
Then he had left nae gear to steal,
Except six sheep upon a lee;
Says Johnie, 'I'de rather in England die,
Before their six sheep goed to Liddisdale with me.

5.
'But how cal'd they the man we last with mett,
B