But you shall have it as I had it, saving that, as usual, I have
sometimes helped the metre without altering one original word.
Hogg here gives his version from recitation as far as stanza xxiv.
Here Hogg stops and writes:-
The ballad, which I have collected from two different people, a crazy
old man and a woman deranged in her mind, seems hitherto considerably
entire; but now, when it becomes most interesting, they have both
failed me, and I have been obliged to take much of it in plain prose.
However, as none of them seemed to know anything of the history save
what they had learned from the song, I took it the more kindly. Any
few verses which follow are to me unintelligible.
He told Sir Hugh that he was dying, and ordered him to conceal his
body, and neither let his own men nor Piercy's know; which he did, and
the battle went on headed by Sir Hugh Montgomery, and at length -
Here follow stanzas up to xxxviii.
Hogg then goes on thus:-
Piercy seems to have been fighting devilishly in the dark.
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