Friar Tuck.  And that same curtal friar was probably matched in manners and appearance by the ghostly fathers of the Tynedale robbers, who are thus described in an excommunication fulminated against their patrons by Richard Fox, Bishop of Durham, tempore Henrici viii.:  ’We have further understood, that there are many chaplains in the said territories of Tynedale and Redesdale, who are public and open maintainers of concubinage, irregular, suspended, excommunicated, and interdicted persons, and withal so utterly ignorant of letters, that it has been found by those who objected this to them, that there were some who, having celebrated mass for ten years, were still unable to read the sacramental service.  We have also understood there are persons among them who, although not ordained, do take upon them the offices of priesthood, and, in contempt of God, celebrate the divine and sacred rites, and administer the sacraments, not only in sacred and dedicated places, but in those which are prophane and interdicted, and most wretchedly ruinous, they themselves being attired in ragged, torn, and most filthy vestments, altogether unfit to be used in divine, or even in temporal offices.  The which said chaplains do administer sacraments and sacramental rites to the aforesaid manifest and infamous thieves, robbers, depredators, receivers of stolen goods, and plunderers, and that without restitution, or intention to restore, as evinced by the act; and do also openly admit them to the rites of ecclesiastical sepulchre, without exacting security for restitution, although they are prohibited from doing so by the sacred canons, as well as by the institutes of the saints and fathers.  All which infers the heavy peril of their own souls, and is a pernicious example to the other believers in Christ, as well as no slight, but an aggravated injury, to the numbers despoiled and plundered of their goods, gear, herds, and chattels.’”

74.  Benharrow.  A mountain near the head of Loch Lomond.

77.  Brook.  See on i. 566 above.

81.  The hallowed creed.  The Christian creed, as distinguished from heathen lore.  The Ms. has “While the blest creed,” etc.

85.  Bound.  That is, of his haunts.

87.  Glen or strath.  A glen is the deep and narrow valley of a small stream, a strath the broader one of a river.

89.  He prayed, etc.  The Ms. reads: 

    “He prayed, with many a cross between,
     And terror took devotion’s mien.”

91.  Of Brian’s birth, etc.  Scott says that the legend which follows is not of his invention, and goes on to show that it is taken with slight variation from “the geographical collections made by the Laird of Macfarlane.”

102.  Bucklered.  Served as a buckler to, shielded.