We can always track them by their too
decorative, too literary interpolations. On this I lay much stress.
The ballad next gives (xvi.-xxv.) the spirited stanzas on the ride to
the Border -
There were five and five before them a',
Wi' hunting horns and bugles bright;
And five and five came wi' Buccleuch,
Like Warden's men arrayed for fight.
And five and five like a mason gang,
That carried the ladders lang and hie;
And five and five like broken men,
And so they reached the Woodhouselee.
- a house in Scotland, within "a lang mile" of Netherby, in England,
the seat of the Grahams, who were partial, for private reasons, to the
Scottish cause. They were at deadly feud with Thomas Musgrave, Captain
of Bewcastle, and Willie had married a Graham.
Now in my opinion, up to stanza xxvi., all the evasive answers given to
Salkeld by each gang, till Dicky o' Dryhope (a real person) replies
with a spear-thrust -
"For never a word o' lear had he,"
are not an invention of Scott's (who knew that Salkeld was not met and
slain), but a fantasy of the original ballad.
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