The Scots version (Herd's) insists on Douglas's burial "by the bracken
bush," to which Montgomery bids Percy surrender. This is obviously
done to hide his body and keep his death secret from both parties, AS
IN FROISSART HE BIDS HIS FRIENDS DO. The verse of the English (l.) on
the fight between Douglas and Percy, is borrowed by, or is borrowed
from, the Scottish stanza (ix.) in Herd, where Sir Hugh Montgomery
fights Percy.
Then Percy and Montgomery met,
And weel a wot they warna fain;
They swaped swords, and they twa swat,
And ay the blood ran down between.
The Persses and the Mongomry met,
as quoted, is already familiar in The Complaynte of Scotland (about
1549), and this line is not in the English ballad. So far it seems as
if the English balladist borrowed the scene from a Scots version, and
perverted it into a description of a fight, between Percy, who wins,
and Douglas--in place of the Scots version, the victory over Percy of
Sir Hugh Montgomery.
This transference of incidents in the English and Scottish ballads is a
phenomenon which we are to meet again in the ballad of Jamie Telfer of
the Fair Dodhead.
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