406 Mme of tbe 1buntinG*jfiel6 



with ' the doughty Earl of Douglas,' what time he 

 crossed the Border and ' harried the dales o' Tyne,' till 

 ' the proud Lord Percy ' met him at Otterburn on that 

 fateful day which both the great houses had cause to 

 mourn for many a year. And well 'Jock' knew the 

 grand old ballad in which the story of that fierce fight 

 is told — a ballad unsurpassed in our language for beauty 

 and pathos. Sir Walter Scott was not ashamed to 

 confess that the tears always came into his eyes when 

 he read the last words of the dying Douglas, anxious 

 that his fall should be hidden from his followers, lest the 

 tidings should quench their ardour. 



" ' My wound is deep : I fain would sleep ! 

 Take thou the vanguard of the three 

 And hide me in the bracken bush 

 That grows on yonder lily lea. 

 O bury me by the bracken bush, 

 Beneath the blumin' brier ; 

 Let never living mortal ken 

 That a kindly Scot lies there ! " 



This deed was dune at the Otterburn 

 About the breaking of the day. 

 Earl Douglas was buried by the bracken bush 

 And Percy led captive away.' 



The Trotters claim connection, too, with the Dukes of 

 Athole, though themselves always commoners, the un- 

 titled lairds of Morton Hall in Midlothian and Charter 

 Hall in Berwickshire. ' Jock ' was entered to hounds by 

 the late Lord Wemyss, father of the present Earl, best 

 known, at any rate among riflemen, as Lord Elcho. 

 From Harrow the future Master of the Meath went into 

 the army and was gazetted as a cornet to the 5th 

 Dragoon Guards, with whom he soldiered and hunted 

 for seven years in England and Ireland. But the love 

 of hunting was far stronger than the love of soldiering, 



