ne of the "Song of the Outlaw Murray"--a distinctively
Border production (74 verses in all) composed during the reign of James
V. Murray divides with Johnie Armstrong the honour of being the Border
Robin Hood, but to Murray a very different treatment was meted out.
The Outlaw's lands at Hangingshaw and elsewhere were his own, though he
held them minus a title. James fumed at this, and determined to bring
the Forest chief to submission:

"The King of Scotland sent me here,
And, gude Outlaw, I am sent to thee;
I wad wot of how ye hald your lands,
O man, wha may thy master be?"

"Thir lands are MINE! the Outlaw said:
I ken nae King in Christendie;
Frae England I this Forest won
When the King and his knights were not to see."

Upon which the King's Commissioner assures the Outlaw that it will be
worse for him if he fails to give heed to the royal desire:

"Gif ye refuse to do this
He'll compass baith thy lands and thee;
He hath vow'd to cast thy castle down
And mak a widow of thy gay lady."

But Murray is defiant, and James is equally resolved to crush him.
Friends are pressed into the Outlaw's service, and very soon he has a
goodly number of troopers all ready to render service in the hour of
their kinsman's need, well knowing that in aiding him they would be
doing the best thing for themselves, as "landless men they a' wad be" if
the King got his own way in Ettrick Forest. But, like all good ballads,
this, too, ends happily. A compromise is effected, by which the Outlaw
obtains the post he had long coveted--Sheriff of the Forest:

"He was made Sheriff of Ettrick Forest,
Surely while upward grows the tree;
And if he was na traitour to the King,
Forfaulted he should never be.

"Wha ever heard, in ony times,
Siccan an Outlaw in his degree
Sic favour get before a King
As the Outlaw Murray of the Forest free?"

Of right "Tamlany"--by far the finest of the Border fairy
ballads--belongs more to Ettrick than to Yarrow. The scene is laid in
Carterhaugh, at the confluence of the two streams, two miles above
Selkirk. The ballad (24 stanzas) is too long to quote, but may be read
in all good collections. For the same reason also we must pass over the
"Battle of Philiphaugh," commemorating Leslie's victory over Montrose in
1645; and the "Gay Goss-Hawk," the dramatic ending of which is laid at
St. Mary's Kirk, high upon the