304 SPORTING STORIES 



When the eventful Monday arrived, players and specta- 

 tors poured from all sides into the Carterhaugh. "The 

 appearance of the various parties," says Scott, "marching 

 from the different glens to the place of rendezvous, with 

 pipes playing and loud acclamations, carried back the 

 imagination to the old times." Lady Anne Scott handed 

 the old banner of the Buccleuch family to Master Walter 

 Scott, the younger, of Abbotsford, then a boy of thirteen, 

 who rode over the field appropriately dressed, and his 

 horse caparisoned with the old Border housings, bearing 

 aloft the banner. The Duke of Buccleuch threw in the ball, 

 and the game began. 



So numerous were the players that for long the only 

 indication of play was a heaving of the dense mass, until 

 two stalwart " Flowers of the Forest " got the ball out. 

 One " passed " to the other, who at once ran off towards 

 the woods of Bowhill, intending to make a long circuit and 

 carry it to the Yarrow goal ; and he would probably have 

 succeeded had he not been ridden down by a man on 

 horseback. So excited were the players, that Lord Home 

 swore that if he had had a gun he would have shot the 

 horseman. The tide now turned against the men of the 

 Forest, and after an hour and a half's play a mason of 

 Selkirk gained a goal for his side. After three hours more 

 of fierce struggle, however, a goal was won for Yarrow. 



Honours being now equal, and the feelings of the players 

 up to the fighting-point, it was thought advisable not to 

 play a deciding game. As it was, in the heat of their 

 passion many came to blows, and, as an eye-witness says, 

 " the ba' had nearly ended in a battle." Scott, before 

 leaving the ground, in Lord Dalkeith's name and his own, 

 challenged the Yarrow men to a match with a hundred 

 picked men on each side. But this match never took 

 place ; and it was just as well, for, as Scott told Washington 

 Irving afterwards, the " old feuds, rivalries, and animosities 

 of the Scotch still slept in their ashes, and might easily be 

 aroused : the old clannish spirit was too apt to break out." 



The Yarrow men also had their poet. The Ettrick 

 Shepherd (James Hogg) acted as aide-de-camp to Lord 

 Home, and both he and Scott wrote verses specially for 



