For knightly chiualry.

255

In honour of which noble day,

And for his ladies sake, A challenge in king Arthurs court Tom Thumbe did brauely make.

Gainst whom these noble knights did run, Sir Chinon and the rest,

261

His body being so slender small,
This cunning doctor tooke
A fine prospective glasse, with which
He did in secret looke

Into his sickened body downe, And therein saw that Death

To sease his vitall breath.

His armes and leggs consum'd as small
As was a spiders web,
Through which his dying houre grew on,
For all his limbes grew dead.

His face no bigger than an ants,
Which hardly could be seene:
The losse of which renowned knight
Much grieu'd the king and queene.

And so with peace and quietnesse
He left this earth below;
And vp into the Fayry Land
His ghost did fading goe.

Whereas the Fayry queen receiu'd,

With heauy mourning cheere, The body of this valiant knight, Whom she esteem'd so deere.

300

305

310

315

For with her dancing nymphes in greene, 320 She fetcht him from his bed,

With musicke and sweet melody,

So soone as life was filed:

For whom king Arthur and his knights

Full forty daies did mourne;

285

And, in remembrance of his name

That was so strangely borne,

325

Now at these sports he toyld himselfe
That he a sicknesse tooke,
Through which all manly exercise
He carelesly forsooke.

He built a tomb of marble gray,

290

Where lying on his bed sore sicke, King Arthurs doctor came,

With cunning skill, by physicks art, To ease and cure the same.

295

Whose fame still liues in England here, Amongst the country sort;

Of whom our wives and children small Tell tales of pleasant sport.

335

THIS ballad--the composition of Sir Walter Scott was originally published in the "Tales of Wonder," edited by M. G. Lewis. The scene of the Tragedy, "Smaylho'me, or Smallholm Tower, is situated on the northern boundary of Roxburghshire, among a cluster of wild rocks, called Sandiknow Crags. The tower is a high square building, surrounded by an outer wall, now ruinous. The circuit of the outer court, being defended on three sides by a precipice and morass, is accessible only from the west by a steep and rocky path. The apartments, as usual in a Border keep, or fortress, are placed one above another, and communicate by a narrow stair; on the roof are two bartizans, or platforms, for defence or pleasure. The inner door of the tower is wood, the outer an iron gate; the distance between them being nine feet, the thickness, namely, of the wall. From the elevated situation of Smaylho'me Tower, it is seen many miles in every direction. Among the crags by which it is surrounded, one, more eminent, is called the Watch fold, and is said to have

been the station of a beacon in the times of war with England. Without the towercourt is a ruined chapel. Brotherstone is a heath, in the neighbourhood of Smaylho'me Tower."*

When the ballad was republished in the "Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border," it was accompanied by some account of the battle of "Ancram Moor," to which reference is made in the poem, as running red with English blood" from the fight between "keen Lord Evers" and

This Ballad derives additional interest from the fact that "the ancient fortress and its vicinity formed the scene of the Editor's infancy, and seemed to claim from him this attempt to celebrate them in a Border tale." References are made, in the introduction to the 3d canto of "Marmion," to

-those crags, that mountain tower, Which charm'd my fancy's wakening hour."

"It was a barren scene, and wild,

Where naked cliffs were rudely piled;

But ever and anon between

Lay velvet tufts of softest green; And well the lonely infant knew Recesses where the wallflower grew

"The Douglas true and the bold Buccleuch,"

-a

fight that was ever famous in the annals of border warfare.* It took place in 1546. Evers and his colleague Sir Brian Latoun, having been promised by the English king a feudal grant of the country they had reduced to a desert, Archibald Douglas, the seventh Earl of Angus, is said to have sworn to write the deed of investiture upon their skins with sharp pens and bloody ink, in resentment for their having defaced the tombs of his ancestors at Melrose. He kept his word; at the head of one thousand men, aided by the famous Norman Lesley with a body of Fife-men, and "the bold Buccleuch" with a small but chosen body of his retainers, Evers and Latoun were met, at Ancram Moor,† with an army consisting of three thousand mercenaries, one thousand five hundred English Borderers, and seven hundred Scotchmen of

"broken clans," who changed sides during the engagement, and, joining their countrymen, made a most merciless slaughter among

ballad which appears to have been written to commemo

In the 1st volume of " Border Minstrelsy" is printed a

rate the circumstance of Sir Ralph Evers being ennobled

on account of the vigour with which he prosecuted the

Border warfare:

"And since he has kepte Berwick upon Tweed, The town was never better kept, I wot; He maintain'd leal and order along the Border, And still was ready to prick the Scot. "With our Queen's brother he hath been,

And rode rough-shod thro' Scotland of late; They have burn'd the Mers and Tiviotdale, And knocked full loud at Edinburgh gate."

Lord Evers was slain at Ancram Moor; and "was bu ried in Melrose Abbey, where his stone coffin may still be seen a little to the left of the Great Altar."

†The spot on which the battle was fought is called Lilyard's Edge, from an Amazonian Scottish woman of that name, who is reported, by tradition, to have distinguished herself in the same manner as Squire Witherington. The old people point out her monument, now broken and defaced. The inscription is said to have been legible within this century, and to have run thus:—

"Fair maiden Lylliard lies under this stane,

Little was her stature, but great was her fame,
Upon the English louns she laid mony thumps,

And, when her legs were cutted off, she fought upon her stumps."