74 
‘* Four and twenty ganging mills, 
That gang thro’ a the year to me.” 
with good red wheat to fill them; then, he promises that 
‘* Four and twenty sisters’ sons 
Shall all for thee fight, tho’ a’ should flee; 
All between here and Newcastle town, 
Shall pay their yearly rent to thee.” 
Nothing apparently touches him more keenly than that the king 
should consider him a traitor or dishonest— 
‘Ve lie, ye lie, now king,” he says, 
‘*Altho’ a king and a prince ye be ; 
For I’ve loved nothing in my life, 
I well dare say it—but honestie.” 
Save, and there are, I regret to say, one or two exceptions to our 
friend’s honesty—I suppose to prove the rule— 
Save a fast horse and a fair woman, 
Twa bonny dogs to kill a deir: 
But England should have found me meal and malt, 
If I had lived this hundred year. 
She should have found me meal and malt, 
And beef, and mutton, in a’ plentie ; 
But niver a Scotch wife could have said 
That e’er I skaithed her a puir flee. 
Armstrong’s notions of honesty were those common among his 
fellow reivers: as we understand it, they blotted it from their 
list of virtues ; and when one remembers that these men lived only 
three hundred years ago, and looks round and finds oneself in an 
era of magistrates’ courts, and rural policemen, and sanitary 
authorities, and school boards, one begins to understand what 
progress is, and how slowly, how gradually it is won. All Arm- 
strong’s pleas, however, were made in vain: having exhausted all 
his eloquence, he bitterly exclaims— 
To seek het water beneath cauld ice, 
Surely it is a great folie ; 
I have asked, grace at a graceless face, 
But there is nane to my men and me! 
