side of the heaviest battalion, as Napoleon
was wont to affirm, then the Scots on this occasion are in imminent danger
of having "short shrift." But it has been found that the fortunes of war
depend on a variety of circumstances that are frequently of more
importance than the number of troops, either on the one side or the other.
Discipline and valour, when combined with patriotism and pride-of-arms,
have accomplished feats which the heaviest battalions are sometimes
impotent to achieve. We by no means wish to imply that the English were
deficient in these desirable qualities; far from it. They were splendidly
led, and in the encounter displayed the most heroic qualities; but they
were matched by a small body of men, of the most dauntless courage and
invincible determination who were thoroughly inured to battle, and ever
ready at the call of duty, to encounter the most powerful foes. The Scots
were taken by surprise. Some were at supper, and others had gone to rest
when the alarm was given that the English were approaching.

But up then spake a little page,
Before the peep of dawn--
"O waken ye, waken ye, my good lord,
For Percy's hard at hand."

"Ye lie, ye lie, ye liar loud!
Sae loud I hear ye lie;
For Percy had not men yestreen,
To dight my men and me.

"But I have dream'd a dreary dream,
Beyond the Isle of Sky;
I saw a dead man win a fight,
And I think that man was I."

He belted on his guid braid sword,
And to the field he ran;
But he forgot the helmit good,
That should have kept his brain.

The battle now raged in earnest. A bright warm day had been followed by a
clear still moonlight night. "The fight," says Godscroft, "was continued
very hard as among noble men on both sides, who did esteem more of glory
than life. Percy strove to repair the foil he got at Newcastle, and the
Earl Douglas did as much labour to keep the honour he had won. So in
unequal numbers, but both eager in mind, they continued fighting a great
part of the night. At last a cloud covering the face of the moon, not
being able to discern friend from foe, they took some respite for a while;
but so soon as the cloud was gone, the English gave so hard a charge,
that the Scots were put back in such sort, that the Douglas standard was
in great peril to have been lost. This did so irritate him, that he
himself in the one wing, and the two Hepburns (father and son) in the
other, pressing thr