to have been utterly destitute of the
divine quality of mercy.

"The axe he bears, it hacks and tears;
'Tis form'd of an earth-fast flint;
No armour of knight, tho' ever so wight,
Can bear its deadly dint.

No danger he fears, for a charm'd sword he wears,
Of adderstone the hilt;
No Tynedale knight had ever such might,
But his heart-blood was spilt."

He invited the young laird of Mangerton to a feast, and treacherously
murdered him. The "Cout of Keeldar," also, was drowned by the retainers of
Lord Soulis in a pool near the castle, being held down in the water by the
spears of his murderers.

"And now young Keeldar reach'd the stream,
Above the foamy linn;
The Border lances round him gleam,
And force the warrior in.

The holly floated to the side,
And the leaf on the rowan pale;
Alas! no spell could charm the tide,
Nor the lance of Liddesdale.

Swift was the Cout o' Keeldar's course
Along the lily lee;
But home came never hound nor horse,
And never home came he.

Where weeps the birch with branches green,
Without the holy ground,
Between two old gray stones is seen
The warrior's ridgy mound.

And the hunters bold, of Keeldar's train,
Within yon castle's wall,
In a deadly sleep must aye remain,
Till the ruin'd towers down fall.

Each in his hunter's garb array'd,
Each holds his bugle horn;
Their keen hounds at their feet are laid
That ne'er shall wake the morn."

Tradition says that, when the people complained to the King of the
atrocities committed by Lord Soulis, he said to them in a fit of
irritation--"Go, boil Lord Soulis and ye list, but let me hear no more of
him." No sooner said than done--

"On a circle of stones they placed the pot,
On a circle of stones but barely nine;
They heated it red and fiery hot,
Till the burnish'd brass did glimmer and shine.

They roll'd him up in a sheet of lead,
A sheet of lead for a funeral pall;
They plunged him in the cauldron red,
And melted him, lead, and bones and all.

At the Skelfhill, the cauldron still
The men of Liddesdale can show;
And on the spot where they boil'd the pot
The spreat and the deer-hair ne'er shall grow."

At a place called the "Nine Stane Rig" there may still be seen a circle of
stones where it is supposed this gruesome tragedy was enacted. The
"cauldron red," in which Lord Soulis was boiled,