That grows on yonder lilye lea.

"O bury me by the braken bush,
Beneath the blooming brier;
Let never living mortal ken
That ere a kindly Scot lies here."

The story of Flodden is the darkest, perhaps, on the page of Scottish
history, and like Otterburn, has been written in strains grand and
majestic, and certainly the most heart-moving in the whole realm of
northern minstrelsy. There Scotland lost her King, the Archbishop of St.
Andrew's, James's natural son, two abbots, twelve earls, seventeen
lords, four hundred knights, and fifteen thousand others, all sacrificed
to the fighting pride of James IV. of Scotland. Pierced by several
strong arrows, the left hand hacked clean from the arm, the neck laid
open in the middle, James's body was carried mournfully to Berwick. He
had died a hero's death, albeit a foolish one. His last words have lived
in the lines of the rhymer:

"Fight on, my men,
Yet Fortune she may turn the scale;
And for my wounds be not dismayed,
Nor ever let your courage fail.

Thus dying did he brave appear
Till shades of death did close his eyes;
Till then he did his soldiers cheer,
And raise their courage to the skies."

The era of Blood and Iron on the Borders has passed long since. Peace
and prosperity prevail on both sides of the Tweed. Old animosities are
seldom spoken of, and hardly ever remembered. A cordial amity and
good-will and co-operation evidence the strength of the cementing
element which no loyal heart, either north or south, can ever desire to
see broken.

PLATE 6

TWIZEL BRIDGE OF THE

XIV. CENTURY

FROM A WATER-COLOUR SKETCH

PAINTED BY

JAMES ORROCK, R.I.

(_Famous in connection with Flodden Field_)

[Illustration]

II. THE ENGLISH BORDER

NORTHUMBERLAND

A line drawn from Berwick to Carlisle, and across England to the Coquet,
thence north again, coast-wise, to the old Tweedside borough will give
us, for all practical purposes, the English Border Country. Only a part
of the Roman Wall, as far as Crag Loch and Borcovicus (Housesteads),
will come within the present purview, which excludes Newcastle itself
and the "coaly Tyne." We are to deal with rural Northumberland rather,
and with a little corner of Cumberland, the immediate and true Border.
Even at this time of day much of the English Border is still a kind of
_terra incognita_ to the tourist and holiday-maker. For travelli