satisfied
with their lands, took also their lives! For smaller depredations, the
old laws of the Border--and it would not be fair to exclude those of the
present day, not confined to that locality--awarded a halter; for thefts
of a larger kind, they gave a title. Old Wat of Buccleuch deserved the
honour of "the neck garter" just as much as poor Johnny Armstrong; yet
all he got was a reproof and a dukedom.

"Then up and spake the noble king--
And an angry man, I trow, was he--
'It ill becomes ye, bauld Bucclew,
To talk o' reif or felonie;
For, if every man had his ain cow,
A right puir clan yer name would be.'"

There is a change now. The bones of the bold Armstrongs lie in
Carlenrig, and the descendants of their brother-rievers who got their
lands sit in high places, and speak words of legislative command. But
these things will be as they have ever been. We cannot change the world,
far less remake it; but we can resuscitate a part of its moral wonders;
and, while the property of Christie's Will, the last of the bold
Armstrongs, is now possessed by another family, under a written title,
we will do well to commit to record a part of his fame.

It is well known that the chief of the family of Armstrongs had his
residence[A] at Mangerton in Liddesdale. There is scarcely now any
trace of his tower, though time has not exerted so cruel a hand against
his brother Johnny Armstrong's residence, which lies in the Hollows near
Langholme. We know no tumult of the emotions of what may be called
antiquarian sentiment, so engrossing and curious as that produced by
the headless skeleton of "auld Gilnockie's Tower," as it is seen in the
grey gloaming, with a breeze brattling through its dry ribs, and a stray
owl sitting on the top, and sending his eldritch screigh through the
deserted hollows. The mind becomes busy on the instant with the former
scenes of festivity, when "their stolen gear," "baith nolt and sheep,"
and "flesh, and bread, and ale," as Maitland says, were eaten and drunk
with the _kitchen_ of a Cheviot hunger, and the sweetness of stolen
things; and when the wild spirit of the daring outlaws, with Johnny
at their head, made the old tower of the Armstrongs ring with their
wassail shouts. This Border turret came--after the execution of Johnny
Armstrong, and when the clan had become what was called a broken
clan--into the possession of William Armstrong, who figured in the times
of Char