, his bell, and his book!
In holy anger, and pious grief,
He solemnly cursed that rascally thief!
He cursed him at board, he cursed him in bed;
From the sole of his foot to the crown of his head;
He cursed him in sleeping, that every night
He should dream of the devil, and wake in a fright;
He cursed him in eating, he cursed him in drinking,
He cursed him in coughing, in sneezing, in winking;
He cursed him in sitting, in standing, in lying;
He cursed him in walking, in riding, in flying;
He cursed him in living, he cursed him in dying!
Never was heard such a terrible curse!
But what gave rise to no little surprise,
Nobody seemed one penny the worse.

THE JACKDAW OF RHEIMS.

As might be expected, the existence of such an extraordinary phenomenon as
Border reiving did not escape the attention of the Church. Such a peculiar
state of affairs could not be regarded with favour, or treated with
indifference. It may be said, no doubt, that the continued existence of
such an abnormally lawless and chaotic condition of society on the Borders
indicated that the ecclesiastical authorities were either singularly
inept, or reprehensibly careless. Why was some attempt not made long
before to curb the lawless spirit of the Border reivers? With the
exception of the "monition of cursing" by Gavin Dunbar, Archbishop of
Glasgow, little or nothing seems to have been done by the Church to stem
the tide of Border lawlessness.

In dealing, however, with this phase of the question, there are several
considerations which ought to be borne in mind. First of all, it ought to
be remembered that while Border reiving was carried on with more or less
persistence for some hundreds of years it did not attain really portentous
dimensions till well on towards the close of the fifteenth century. Prior
to the time of the Jameses, the two countries may be said to have been
almost constantly at war. Invasion followed invasion, on the one side and
on the other, with a kind of periodic regularity. From the time of James
I., onwards to the union of the Crowns in 1603, such invasions, at least
on the same large and destructive scale, became less frequent; though, in
the intervals of peace, the Borderers kept themselves busy harassing and
despoiling each other. This period of comparative calm, it may be
remarked, is also synchronous with the decadence of Romanism. From the
time of Queen Margare