160 Transactions. 
with tails!”* The jest was dearly paid for when Clifford’s 
dogs of war were let loose! Apparently the ribaldry at their 
expense stirred them into action sooner than had been intended. 
The foot were still far in the rear ; there was great disparity in 
numbers, but the irate Englishmen did not pause. The compact 
body of cavalry, horse and man heavily armed from head to heel, 
made short work of the brave but undisciplined rabble of 
Annandalers, not yet inured to arms by centuries of unceasing 
war. A well directed charge, in which many of the Scotsmen 
fell, drove into flight the defenders of Annan. A wing of the 
fugitives was cut off and surrounded, says the chronicle, “in a 
certain marsh.” There the horse could not follow, but soon the 
foot came up, and the ill-fated occupants of the marsh were 
attacked a second time—now by overwhelming odds. Of their 
number 308 were slain, and a few survivors became the prisoners 
of Clifford. 
On Annan Moor close to the march line of Annan and Dornock 
parishes there is a house called Battlefield. The place bore the 
name long before the house was built. Beside it there stood, 
until about the year 1830, a rude monument of three stones 
formed into a cross. The hillside slopes down to a low-lying wet 
piece of ground, known as Grichan’s Mire, now traversed by the 
railway. Near by is a farm called Swordwell. Of Grichan’s 
Mire and Battlefield a varying tradition is recorded, and still 
lingers on the lips of the mhabitants.t Its versions, in minor 
particulars divergent, unite in testimony of hard fighting on the 
hillside and in the “ mire.” The stone cross, they say, was raised 
in memory of the brave Scots who fell, and there is never omitted 
the incident of the washing of gory swords in the adjoining well. 
In the neighbouring churchyard of Dornock, a few hundred 
yards distant from the traditional battlefield, lie three very ancient 
coped tombstones} uninscribed, but with a simple and rude floral 
ornament carved along their sides. These tombstones also have 
always been associated with the fighting in the mire. After 
allowing for the long lapse of time since the event, and for the 
inevitable distortions which attend local tradition—in this case 
turning a defeat into a victory—there seems scarce a doubt that 
*Canes caudatos. 
+See the Statistical Accounts, the Old (vol. ii., p. 24), and the New 
(Dumfriesshire ), pp. 257, 525-6. 
tTriangular in general section with top ridge horizontal. 
