ckburn of Henderland it gave
occasion for the _Lament of the Border Widow_. But no incident in it
made deeper impression on the popular memory--none seems to have caused
more sorrow and reprobation--than the stringing up of the Laird of
Gilnockie and his followers on the trees at Carlenrig, at the head of
Teviot. A 'Johnie Armstrong's Dance' was popular when the _Complaynt of
Scotland_ was written twenty years later; and Sir David Lyndsay, in one
of his plays, makes his Pardoner hawk about, among his relics of saints,
the cords of good hemp that hanged the unlucky laird of Gilnockie Hall,
with the commendation that

'Wha'ever beis hangit in this cord
Neidis never to be drowned.'

At the bar of judgment of the balladists, the deed was counted murder:

'Scotland's heart was ne'er sae wae
To see sae mony brave men die';

and murder all the less pardonable, since the king who ordered it was
himself an inspirer and, as some say, a writer of ballads. As is pointed
out in the _Border Minstrelsy_, the ballad, in its account of the
interview between the king and his troublesome subject, follows pretty
closely the narrative of Pitscottie. 'What wants that knave that a king
should have?' was the offended remark of James, when he saw the band
approaching him in the bravery of their war-gear. And Johnie, when all
his appeals and bribes proved to be vain, could also speak a frank word:

'"To seek het water beneath cauld ice,
Surely it is a great follie;
I have asked grace at a graceless face,
But there is nane for my men and me."'

Whatever their misdeeds, Gilnockie and his men had certainly hard
measure and short shrift. The king's courtiers, it is alleged, incited
him to make a summary end of the Armstrongs; and he had not the biting
answer ready which his father is said to have given to the 'keen laird
of Buccleuch,' when that Border chieftain urged him to 'braid on with
fire and sword' against the Outlaw of Ettrick Forest:

'Now haud thy tongue, Sir Walter Scott,
Nor speak of reif or felonie;
For had every honest man his coo,
A right puir clan thy name would be.'

But when their own clan or dependants made appeal for help or vengeance,
none were more prompt with the strong word and deed than the
Scotts--witness, _Kinmont Willie_; witness also, _Jamie Telfer o' the
Fair Dodhead_. When Jamie ran hot-foot to Branksome Hall with the news
that the Captain of Bewca