light on the present publication: but
the editor has been obliged to draw his materials chiefly from oral
tradition.

[Footnote 61: "The Lord of Liddisdale being at his pastime, hunting in
Ettrick forest, is beset by William, Earl of Douglas, and such as he
had ordained for the purpose, and there asailed, wounded, and slain,
beside Galsewood, in the year 1353, upon a jealousy that the earl had
conceived of him with his lady, as the report goeth; for so sayeth the
old song,

"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