, that
Claverhouse was successful in every engagement with the whigs, except
that at Drumclog, or Loudon-hill, which is the subject of the following
ballad. The history of Burly, the hero of the piece, will bring us
immediately to the causes and circumstances of that event.

[Footnote A: Peden complained heavily, that, after a heavy struggle with
the devil, he had got above him, _spur-galled_ him hard, and obtained a
wind to carry him from Ireland to Scotland, when, behold! another person
had set sail, and reaped the advantage of his _prayer-wind,_ before he
could embark.]

[Footnote B: Cleland thus describes this extraordinary army:

--Those, who were their chief commanders,
As sach who bore the pirnie standarts.
Who led the van, and drove the rear,
Were right well mounted of their gear;
With brogues, and trews, and pirnie plaids,
With good blue bonnets on their heads,
Which, oil the one side, had a flipe,
Adorn'd with a tobacco pipe,
With durk, and snap-work, and snuff-mill,
A bag which they with onions fill;
And, as their strict observers say,
A tup-born filled with usquebay;
A slasht out coat beneath her plaides,
A targe of timber, nails, and hides;
With a long two-handed sword,
As good's the country can afford.
Had they not need of bulk-and bones.
Who fought with all these arms at once?

* * * *

Of moral honestie they're clean,
Nought like religion they retain;
In nothing they're accounted sharp,
Except in bag-pipe, and in harp;
For a misobliging word,
She'll durk her neighbour o'er the boord,
And then she'll flee like fire from flint,
She'll scarcely ward the second dint;
If any ask her of her thrift.
Forsooth her nainsell lives by thift.
_Cleland's Poems,_ Edin. 1697, p. 12.
]

[Footnote C: It was, and is believed, that the devil furnished his
favourites, among the persecutors, with what is called _proof_
against leaden bullets, but against those only. During the battle of
Pentland-hills Paton of Meadowhead conceived he saw the balls hop
harmlessly down from General Dalziel's boots, and, to counteract the
spell, loaded his pistol with a piece of silver coin. But Dalziel,
having his eye on him, drew back behind his servant, who was shot
dead.--_Paton's Life._ At a skirmish, in Ayrshire, some of the wanderers
defended themselves in a sequestered house, by the side of a lake. They
aimed repeatedly, but in vain