■160 Transactionii. 



with tails ' "* The jest was dearly paid for when Clifford's 

 dogs of war were let loose ! Apparently the ribaldry at their 

 expense stirred them into action sooner than had been intended. 

 The foot wei:e still far in the rear ; there was great disparity in 

 numbers, but the irate Englishmen did not pause. The compact 

 body of cavalry, horse and man heavily armed from head to heel, 

 made short work of the brave but undisciplined rabble of 

 Annandalers, not yet inured to arms by centuries of unceasing 

 war. A well directed charge, in which many of the Scotsmen 

 fell, drove into flight the defenders of Annan. A wing of the 

 fugitives was cut off" and surrounded, says the chronicle, " in a 

 certain marsh." There the horse could not follow, but soon the 

 foot came up, and the ill-fated occupants of the marsh were 

 attacked a second time — now by overwhelming odds. Of their 

 number 308 were slain, and a few survivors became the prisoners 

 of Clifford. 



On Annan Moor close to the march line of Annan and Dornock 

 parishes there is a house called Battlefield. The place bore the 

 name long before the house was built. Beside it there stood, 

 until about the year 1830, a rude monument of three stones 

 formed into a cros.s. The hillside .slopes down to a low-lying wet 

 piece of ground, known as Grichan's Mire, now traversed by the 

 railway. Near by is a farm called Swordwell. Of Grichan's 

 Mire and Battlefield a varying tradition is recorded, and still 

 lingers on the lips of the inhabitants.! Its versions, in minor 

 particulars divergent, unite in testimony of hard fighting on the 

 hillside and in the " mire." The stone cross, they say, was raised 

 in memory of the brave Scots who fell, and there is never omitted 

 the incident of the washing of gory swords in the adjoining well. 



In the neighbouring churchyard of Dornock, a few hundred 

 yards distant from the traditional battlefield, lie three very ancient 

 coped tombstones I uninscribed, but with a simple and rude floral 

 ornament carved along their sides. These tombstones also have 

 always been associated with the fighting in the mire. After 

 allowing for the long lapse of time since the event, and for the 

 inevitable distortions which attend local tradition — in this case 

 turning a defeat into a victory — there seems scarce a doubt that 



* Canes caudatos. 



+See the Statistical Accounts, the Old (vol. ii., p. 24), and the New 

 ( Dumfrienshiri' ), pp, 257, .525-6. 

 JTriangular in general section with top ridge horizontal. 



