ur lemans at Bannocksborne,
With rombelogh."'

Do not these jottings of grave fourteenth century churchmen, bred in the
cell but having ears open to the din of the camp and the 'song of the
maydens,' recall the exquisite words in _Twelfth Night_, that sum up the
ballad at its best?

'It is old and plain:
The spinsters and the knitters in the sun,
And the free maids that weave their thread with bones
Do use to chaunt it; it is silly sooth,
And dallies with the innocence of love
Like the old age.'

In the long struggle with our 'auld enemies' of England that followed
Bannockburn; in the quarrels between nobles and king; in the feuds of
noble with noble and of laird with laird that continued for nearly three
hundred years, themes and inspirations for the ballad muse came thick
and fast. It was not alone, or chiefly, kingly doings and great national
events that awakened the minstrel's voice and strings. Harpers and
people had their favourite clans and names--a favour won most readily by
those who were free both with purse and with sword. The Gordons of the
North; and, in the South, Graemes, Scotts, Armstrongs, Douglases, are
among the races that figure most prominently in ballad poetry. The great
house of Douglas, in particular, is in the eyes and lips of romance and
legend more honoured than the Stewarts themselves. The Douglas is the
hero of both the Scottish and English versions of _Chevy Chase_. Hume of
Godscroft, in his _History of the House of Angus_, written in 1644, has
saved for us several scraps of traditional song celebrating the wrongs
or the exploits of the Douglases, some of which must have originated at
least as early as the second half of the fourteenth century, and can be
identified in ballads that are extant and sung in the present day. One
of them, quoted by Scott in his _Minstrelsy_, and times out of number
since, unmistakably reveals the singer's sympathies. It is the verse
that commemorates the treacherous slaughter of William, sixth Earl of
Douglas, and his brother in 1440, by that great enemy of his race, James
II., after the fatal 'black bull's head' had been set before them at the
banquet to which they had been invited by the king:

'Edinburgh Castle, towne and toure,
God grant thou sink for sinne!
And that even for the black dinour
Erl Douglas gat therein.'

Another records with glee the Douglas triumph when, i