112 COUNTRY ESSAYS. 



lines were often upon Sir Walter Scott's lips may be some 

 excuse, 



" ' Ye lied, ye lied now, King,' he says, 

 ' Altho' a King and prince ye be ! 

 For I've luved naething in my life, 

 I weel dare say it, but honestie 



* Save a fat horse and a fair woman, 



Twa bonny dogs to kill a deir ; 

 But England suld ha'e found me meal and mault 

 Gif I had lived this hundred yeir ! 



* She suld ha'e found me meal and mault, 



And beef and mutton in a' plentie ; 



But never a Scot's wyfe could ha'e said 



That e'er I skaithed her a puir flee. 



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 for my men and me ! ' " 



His end shows how extremes meet. With his companions he 

 was tried for cattle-lifting ; and though no fact could be proved, 

 he was conveniently condemned according to Scotch law, "by 

 repute and habit" i.e., because of his general bad character. 

 Upon this he seized and broke up a heavy oak chair whereon 

 he sat, and handing its fragments to his comrades, begged 

 them to stand by him, and he would fight his way out with them 

 safely ; but they held his hands and besought him " to suffer 

 them to die like Christians ! " 



Another nook of Ballad-land in Dumfriesshire should by no 

 means be neglected. The little river Kirtle earned itself a sad 

 notoriety a few years ago by the Kirtlebridge railway accident, 

 but it has long been celebrated in song. The ill-fated loves of 

 Helen Irving and Adam Fleming, and her death through a 

 shot which she intercepted, fired by a jealous rival from the 

 other bank of the Kirtle, form one of the most exquisite of the 

 Border ballads. Who does not love its pathetic cadences ? 



