relations of the deceased baron
accused of the murder Sir William Bisat, a powerful nobleman, who
appears to have been in such high favour with the young queen, that
she offered her oath, as a compurgator, to prove his innocence. Bisat
himself stood upon his defence, and proffered the combat to his
accusers; but he was obliged to give way to the tide, and was banished
from Scotland. This affair interested all the northern barons; and it
is not impossible, that some share, taken in it by this Sir Hugh de
Arbuthnot, may have given a slight foundation for the tradition of the
country.--WINTON, B. vii. ch. 9. Or, if we suppose Sir Hugh le Blond
to be a predecessor of the Sir Hugh who flourished in the thirteenth
century, he may have been the victor in a duel, shortly noticed as
having occurred in 1154, when one Arthur, accused of treason, was
unsuccessful in his appeal to the judgment of God. _Arthurus regem
Malcolm proditurus duello periit._ Chron. Sanctae Crucis ap. Anglia
Sacra, Vol. I. p. 161.

But, true or false, the incident, narrated in the ballad, is in the
genuine style of chivalry. Romances abound with similar instances, nor
are they wanting in real history. The most solemn part of a knight's
oath was to defend "all widows, orphelines, and maidens of gude
fame."[A]--LINDSAY'S _Heraldry, MS._ The love of arms was a real
passion of itself, which blazed yet more fiercely when united with the
enthusiastic admiration of the fair sex. The knight of Chaucer exclaims,
with chivalrous energy,

To fight for a lady! a benedicite!
It were a lusty sight for to see.

It was an argument, seriously urged by Sir John of Heinault, for making
war upon Edward II., in behalf of his banished wife, Isabella, that
knights were bound to aid, to their uttermost power, all distressed
damsels, living without council or comfort.

[Footnote A: Such an oath is still taken by the Knights of the Bath;
but, I believe, few of that honourable brotherhood will now consider it
quite so obligatory as the conscientious Lord Herbert of Cherbury, who
gravely alleges it as a sufficient reason for having challenged divers
cavaliers, that they had either snatched from a lady her bouquet, or
ribband, or, by some discourtesy of similar importance, placed her, as
his lordship conceived, in the predicament of a distressed damozell.]

An apt illustration of the ballad would have been the combat, undertaken
by three Spanish champions against three Moors