sober mind of Fife, Lanark, and the West Country had given itself
up to the solution of the new theological and ecclesiastical problems
which time and change had brought to the nation. The Reformers
complained that the fighting clans of the Western Marches could only
with difficulty be induced to turn their thoughts from the hereditary
business of the quarrel of the Kingdoms to take up instead the quarrel
of the Kirk. Even so late as the Covenanting period, Richard Cameron
found it hard work 'to set the fire of hell to the tails' of the
Annandale men. They came to the field meetings 'out of mere curiosity,
to see a minister preach in a tent, and people sit on the ground'--in a
spirit not unlike that in which the people used to gather at _Peblis to
the Play_ or _Christ's Kirk on the Green_, to mingle a pinch of piety
and priestly Moralities with a bellyful of carnal delights. It was not
until the preacher had denounced them as 'offspring of thieves and
robbers,' that some of them began to 'get a merciful cast.'

This, too, changed in the course of time, and having once caught fire,
the religious enthusiasm of the marchmen kindled into a brilliant glow,
or smouldered with a fervent heat. They flung themselves into the front
of Kirk controversy, as they did also into more peaceable pursuits, such
as sheep-farming and tweed manufacture, with the same hearty energy
which aforetime was expended upon raids into Cumberland and
Northumberland.

But through all the changes and distractions of the three centuries
since the Warden's men met with merriment and parted with blows at the
Reidswire, the old ballad music--the voice of the blood; the very speech
and message of the hills and streams--has sounded like a softly-played
accompaniment to the strenuous labour of the race with hand and head--a
reminder of the men and the thoughts of 'the days of other years.' At
times, in the strife of Church or State, or in the chase of gain, the
magic notes of this 'Harp of the North' may have sunk low, may have
become nigh inaudible. But in the pauses when the nation could listen to
the rhythmic beat of its own heart, the sound has made itself heard and
felt like the noise of many waters or the sough of the wind in the
tree-tops; it is music that can never die out of the land. Its echo has
never been wholly missed by Dee and Earn and Girvan; certainly never by
Yarrow and Teviot and Tweed. The 'Spiritual Songs'--the 'Gude and Godlie
Ballates'-