nd arrows of the
garrison. In the course of the famous defence, made by Black Agnes,
Countess of March, of her husband's castle of Dunbar, Montague, Earl
of Salisbury, who commanded the besiegers, caused one of these engines
to be wheeled up to the wall. The countess, who, with her damsels,
kept her station on the battlements, and affected to wipe off with her
handkerchief the dust raised by the stones, hurled from the English
machines, awaited the approach of this new engine of assault. "Beware,
Montague," she exclaimed, while the fragment of a rock was discharged
from the wall--"Beware, Montague! for farrow shall thy sow!"[94] Their
cover being dashed to pieces, the assailants, with great loss and
difficulty, scrambled back to their trenches. "By the regard of suche
a ladye," would Froissart have said, "and by her comforting, a man
ought to be worth two men, at need." The sow was called by the French
_Truie_.--See _Hailes' Annals_, Vol. II. p. 89. _Wintown's Cronykil_,
Book VIII. _William of Malmesbury_, Lib. IV.

The memory of the _sow_ is preserved in Scotland by two trifling
circumstances. The name given to an oblong hay-stack, is a _hay-sow_;
and this may give us a good idea of the form of the machine. Children
also play at a game with cherry stones, placing a small heap on the
ground, which they term a _sowie_, endeavouring to hit it, by throwing
single cherry-stones, as the sow was formerly battered from the
walls of the besieged fortress. My companions, at the High School of
Edinburgh, will remember what was meant by _berrying a sowie_. It is
strange to find traces of military antiquities in the occupation of
the husbandman, and the sports of children.

[Footnote 94: This sort of bravade seems to have been fashionable in
those times: "Et avec drapeaux, et leurs chaperons, ils torchoient
les murs a l'endroit, ou les pierres venoient frapper."--_Notice des
Manuscrits de la Bibliotheque Nationale_.]

The pitch and tar-barrels of Maitland were intended to consume the
formidable machines of the English. Thus, at a fabulous siege of York,
by Sir William Wallace, the same mode of defence is adopted:

The Englishmen, that cruel were and kene,
Keeped their town, and fended there full fast;
Faggots of fire among the host they cast,
Up _pitch and tar_ on feil _sowis_ they lent;
Many were hurt ere they from the walls went;
_Stones on Springalds they did cast out so fast,
And goads of iron made many grom