IO8 COUNTRY ESSAYS. 



Far over the Teviot in front gleams Carter Mountain, on 

 which is the Reidswire, where a skirmish took place at one of 

 the Border Courts in Elizabeth's time, which is handed down 

 by a ballad. The character of such a meeting when Sir John 

 Carmichael and Sir John Foster, being the respective wardens 

 for the two kingdoms, met to redress mutual grievances under a 

 hollow truce, is graphically told in the following lines from it, 



" Yet was our meeting meek enough, 



Begun wi' merriment and mowes, 

 And at the brae, aboon the heugh, 



The clerk sat down to call the rowes [rolls], 

 And some for kyne and some for ewes, 



Call'd in of Dandrie, Hob, and Jock 

 We saw come marching ower the knows, 



Five hundred Fenwicks in a flock 

 With jack and speir, and bows all bent, 



And warlike weapons at their will : 

 Although we were na weel content, 



Yet, by my troth, we feared no ill. 

 Some gaed to drink, and some stude still, 



And some to cards and dice them sped." 



Leaving the great chain of the Cheviots with their dark fells 

 and lonely dales in Dumfriesshire, we reach the district so 

 pathetically regretted in the ballad which relates Lord Max- 

 well's farewell, on having to flee the country after murdering 

 his enemy, one of the Johnstones, " Lochmaben's gate sae 

 fair," "Langholm where birks there be," and " Fair Eskdale." 



" The wind was fair, the ship was clear, 



That good Lord went away ; 

 And most part of his friends were there, 



To give him a fair convey. 

 They drank the wine, they didna spare, 



Even in that guid Lord's sight, 

 Sae now he's o'er the floods sae grey, 



And Lord Maxwell has ta'en his good-night." 



Still passing westward in Liddisdale, at Suport, is localised 

 that wild chant " The Fray of Suport," which is perhaps the 



