of Chiviot, seemeth indeed poetical, and a mere fiction, perhaps to stir up virtue; yet a fiction whereof there is no mention, either in the Scottish or English Chronicle.  Neither are the songs, that are made of them, both one; for the Scots song made of Otterbourne, telleth the time, about Lammas; and also the occasion, to take preys out of England; also the dividing the armies betwixt the earls of Fife and Douglas, and their several journeys, almost as in the authentic history.  It beginneth thus;

  “It fell about the Lammas tide,
  “When yeomen win their hay,
  “The doughty Douglas ’gan to ride,
  “In England to take a prey.”—­

GODSCROFT, ed.  Edin. 1743.  Vol.  I. p. 195.

I cannot venture to assert, that the stanzas, here published, belong to the ballad alluded to by Godscroft; but they come much nearer to his description than the copy published in the first edition, which represented Douglas as falling by the poignard of a faithless page.  Yet we learn, from the same author, that the story of the assassination was not without foundation in tradition.—­“There are that say, that he (Douglas) was not slain by the enemy, but by one of his own men, a groom of his chamber, whom he had struck the day before with a truncheon, in ordering of the battle, because he saw him make somewhat slowly to.  And they name this man John Bickerton of Luffness, who left a part of his armour behind, unfastened, and when he was in the greatest conflict, this servant of his came behind his back, and slew him thereat.”—­Godscroft, ut supra.—­“But this narration,” adds the historian, “is not so probable."[102] Indeed, it seems to have no foundation, but the common desire of assigning some remote and extraordinary cause for the death of a great man.  The following ballad is also inaccurate in many other particulars, and is much shorter, and more indistinct, than that printed in the Reliques, although many verses are almost the same.  Hotspur, for instance, is called Earl Percy, a title he never enjoyed; neither was Douglas buried on the field of battle, but in Melrose Abbey, where his tomb is still shown.

[Footnote 102:  Wintown assigns another cause for Douglas being carelessly armed.

  “The erle Jamys was sa besy,
  For til ordane his cumpany;
  And on his Fays for to pas,
  That reckles he of his armyng was;
  The Erle of Mwrrawys Bassenet,
  Thai sayd, at that tyme was feryhete.”

Book VIII.  Chap 7.

The circumstance of Douglas’ omitting to put on his helmet, occurs in the ballad.]

This song was first published from Mr. Herd’s Collection of Scottish Songs and Ballads, Edin. 1774:  2 vols. octavo; but two recited copies have fortunately been obtained from the recitation of old persons residing at the head of Ettrick Forest, by which the story is brought out, and completed, in a manner much more correspondent to the true history.