e domain,
And rich the soil, had purple heath been grain;
But what the niggard ground of wealth denied,
From fields more bless'd his fearless arm supplied."[37]

[Footnote 37: Leyden, the author of these beautiful lines,
has borrowed, as _The Lay of the Last Minstrel_ did also,
from one of Satchells's primitive couplets--

"If heather-tops had been corn of the best,
Then Buccleugh mill had gotten a noble grist."]

It {p.056} was to this wild retreat that the Harden of The Lay of the
Last Minstrel, the Auld Wat of a hundred Border ditties, brought home,
in 1567, his beautiful bride, Mary Scott, "the Flower of Yarrow,"
whose grace and gentleness have lived in song along with the stern
virtues of her lord. She is said to have chiefly owed her celebrity to
the gratitude of an English captive, a beautiful child, whom she
rescued from the tender mercies of Wat's moss-troopers, on their
return from a foray into Cumberland. The youth grew up under her
protection, and is believed to have been the composer both of the
words and the music of many of the best old songs of the Border. As
Leyden says,

"His are the strains whose wandering echoes thrill
The shepherd lingering on the twilight hill,
When evening brings the merry folding hours,
And sun-eyed daisies close their winking flowers.
He lived o'er Yarrow's Flower to shed the tear,
To strew the holly leaves o'er Harden's bier;
But none was found above the minstrel's tomb,
Emblem of peace, to bid the daisy bloom.
He, nameless as the race from which he sprung,
Saved other names, and left his own unsung."

We are told that when the last bullock which Auld Wat had provided
from the English pastures was consumed, the Flower of Yarrow placed on
her table a dish containing a pair of clean spurs; a hint to the
company that they must bestir themselves for their next dinner. Sir
Walter adds, in a note to the Minstrelsy, "Upon one occasion when the
village herd was driving out the cattle to pasture, the old laird
heard him call loudly to drive out Harden's cow. 'Harden's _cow_!'
echoed the affronted chief; 'is it come to that pass? By my faith they
shall soon say Harden's _kye_' (cows). Accordingly, he sounded his
bugle, set out with his followers, and next day returned with _a bow
of kye, and a bas