(Herd, 4-8.)
Hume of Godscroft (about 1610), author of the History of the Douglases,
was fond of quoting ballads. He gives a form of the first verse in
Otterburn which is common to Herd and the English copy. He says that,
according to some, Douglas was treacherously slain by one of his own
men whom he had offended. "But this narration is not so probable," and
the fact is fairly meaningless in Herd's fragment (the boy has no
motive for stabbing Douglas, for if his report is true, he will be
rewarded). The deed is probably based on the tradition which Godscroft
thought "less probable,"--the treacherous murder of the Earl.
In the English ballad, Douglas marches on Newcastle, where Percy,
without fighting, makes a tryst to meet and combat him at Otterburn, on
his way home from Newcastle to Scotland. Thither Douglas goes, and is
warned by a Scottish knight of Percy's approach: as in Herd, he is
sceptical, but is convinced by facts. (This warning of Douglas by a
scout who gallops up is narrated by Froissart, from witnesses engaged
in the battle.
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