and _The Sang o' the Outlaw Murray_ the heroes take credit
for their 'honesty' and for their services to their country. The former
boasts that 'never a Scots wife could have said that e'er I skaithed her
ae puir flee'; and the other that he had won Ettrick Forest from the
Southron without help from king or noble. Yet the quarrel of both is
with the Scottish sovereign, who has come South intent on the exemplary
and kingly work of 'making the rash bush keep the cow'; and, stranger
still, it is for the bold-spoken outlaws, and not for the legitimate
guardian of Border peace, that the minstrel engages our sympathies.

If we may credit the surmises of Mr. P. Macgregor Chalmers, the Outlaw
Murray is none other than the 'John Morvo,' the builder who has set an
admirable mark of his own upon Melrose Abbey and other ecclesiastical
fanes, and, as Sheriff of the Forest, built Newark Castle after he had,
in jest or earnest, defied the authority of his patron, King James IV.;
perhaps he was even the writer of the ballad. This is a pretty strong
order on our faith; although it must be confessed that there is a
singular mixture, in this fine old lay, of information on architecture,
venerie, and local ownership of land; and the Outlaw is made to have all
the best of the combat of wits and words, and of the bargain with which
it ends. 'Name your lands,' cries the King, 'where'er they lie, and here
I render them to thee'; and the Outlaw promptly responds:

'"Fair Philiphaugh is mine by right,
And Lewinshope still mine shall be,
Newark, Foulshiels, and Tinnis baith,
My bow and arrow purchased me.

And I have native steads to me,
And some by name I do not knaw;
The Hangingshaw and Newark Lee,
And mony mair in the Forest shaw."'

Very different was the guerdon which Johnie Armstrong of Gilnockie got
from King James the Fifth, when, in an evil hour, he came with a gallant
company from his stronghold in Eskdale to meet that monarch, who had
ridden with a strong force into the heart of the moss-troopers' country,
intent on taming the marchmen. Well might the ladies 'look from their
loft windows,' and sigh, 'God bring our men weel hame again!' as Johnie,
and the six-and-thirty Armstrongs and Elliots in his train, ran their
horses through Langholm howm in their haste to welcome their 'lawful
king.' This expedition of 1529 has left its mark on ballad poetry as
well as history; through the hanging of Co