stle had ramshackled his house and driven his
gear and stock, until

'There was naught left in the Fair Dodhead
But a greeting wife and bairnies three,'

did not Buccleuch start up like an old roused lion?

'"Gar warn the water, braid and wide,
Gar warn it soon and hastilie!
They that winna ride for Telfer's kye,
Let them never look on the face o' me!"'

And the chase goes on, from the Dodhead on the Ettrick until, at the
fords of the Liddel, the enemy are brought to bay; and we have the fine
picture of Auld Wat of Harden, the husband of the 'Flower of Yarrow,'
and a forebear of the author of _Waverley_, as he 'grat for very rage'
when Willie Scott, the son of his chief, lay slain by an English stroke:

'But he 's ta'en aff his good steel cap,
And thrice he 's waved it in the air.
The Dinley's snaw was ne'er mair white
Than the lyart locks of Harden's hair.'

Vain was the offer by the Bewcastle raiders to men in such mood to take
back the cattle that had been lifted:

'When they cam' to the Fair Dodhead,
They were a welcome sight to see!
For instead of his ain ten milk-kye,
Jamie Telfer has gotten thirty-and-three.'

_Auld Maitland_ treats of an inroad on the opposite side of the country,
of more ancient date and more formidable character. Its hero appears to
have been a progenitor of that line of Lethington in East Lothian, and
of Thirlstane, in Lauderdale, who, planted firmly on both sides of
Lammermuir, produced in after-times warriors, statesmen, and even poets
of note. Gavin Douglas places Maitland, with the 'auld beird grey,'
among the legendary inmates of his 'Palace of Honour'; and Scott
identifies him as a Sir Richard de Mautlant who, in the latter half of
the thirteenth century, and probably during the Wars of Independence,
held the ancestral lands by Leaderside, on the track of invading armies
crossing the Tweed between Coldstream and Melrose, and holding in to
Lothian by Soultra Hill. Accordingly, the ballad tells us that the
English army, under King Edward, assembled on the Tyne:

'They lighted on the banks of Tweed,
And blew their fires so het,
And fired the Merse and Teviotdale
All in an evening late.

As they flared up o'er Lammermuir
They burned baith up and down,
Until they came to a darksome house,
Some call it Lauder town.'

Many a foray from the same direction followed the