Skeletons exhumed at Elsdon. By Dr. E. C. Robertson. 509 



ecclesiastical architect andatitlior of "Churclies of Lindisfarne," 

 to whose enlightened taste we owe the conservative restoration 

 of this fine old parish church, also assigns the erection of this 

 edifice to about the same period. No doubt a much older and 

 probably smaller church had existed at Elsdon for many centuries 

 — small remains of it are to be found in the west part of the 

 church in the round Norman pilasters, and in the small round- 

 headed windows, but the edi6ce as it at present stands, dates back 

 undoubtedly to about the year 1400. Now in the autumn, 

 '•'About the Lammase tyde, when husbonds wynn ther haye" 

 of the year 1388, there was fought 3 miles distant from Elsdon, the 

 famous Battle of Otterburn, where there was slain a large num- 

 ber of knights and men of high degree. The great Scottish 

 leader fell in the combat, and his dead body was with those of 

 Sir Eobert Hart and Sir Simon Glendinning carried away long 40 

 miles to Melrose for burial. No historian tells us what became 

 of the corpses of men nearly equally distinguished, who fell in the 

 fray, but the ballad in a touching stanza tells us. 



" Then one the morne they made them beeres, 



Of byrch and haysell graye ; 

 Many a widowe with wepyng teyres, 



Ther makes they fette awaye." 



The probability seems strong, that the bodies of the glorious 

 dead, lying on their rustic biers, were carried to the parish church 

 for interment with all solemn rites, in the consecrated ground, 

 whilst the bodies of the meaner soldiers found a grave where they 

 fell. There is no account extant of any battle about that period, 

 except the battle of Otterburn, having occurred near Elsdon, 

 which could have produced so many bodies "in one red burial 

 blent," as those mentioned by Hodgson as discovered outside the 

 church at Elsdon and to which must be added the skeletons I 

 found extending under the walls, and probably within the Nave 

 of the old Border church. "We thus find ourselves arriving at the 

 conclusion, that the mouldering bones I have been dilating upon 

 are the remains of those warriors true, who in the autumn of 

 1388 met in deadly warfare on the now peaceful slopes of Otter- 

 burn, and whose heroic deeds are handed down to all generations 

 in that chief est of ballads — which will live as long as the English 

 language endures — " The Battle of Otterburne." 



