THE HUNTING OF THE CHEVIOT. After Hearne, who first printed it from a manuscript in the Ashmolean collection at Oxford. It was next printed in the Reliques, under title of Chevy-Chase,--a title now reserved for the later and inferior broadside version which was singularly popular throughout the seventeenth century and is still better known than this far more spirited original. "With regard to the subject of this ballad,"--to quote from Bishop Percy,--"although it has no countenance from history, there is room to think it had originally some foundation in fact. It was one of the laws of the Marches, frequently renewed between the nations, that neither party should hunt in the other's borders, without leave from the proprietors or their deputies. There had long been a rivalship between the two martial families of Percy and Douglas, which, heightened by the national quarrel, must have produced frequent challenges and struggles for superiority, petty invasions of their respective domains, and sharp contests for the point of honour; which would not always be recorded in history. Something of this kind, we may suppose, gave rise to the ancient ballad of the Hunting o' the Cheviat. Percy, Earl of Northumberland, had vowed to hunt for three days in the Scottish border, without condescending to ask leave from Earl Douglas, who was either lord of the soil, or lord warden of the Marches. Douglas would not fail to resent the insult, and endeavour to repel the intruders by force; this would naturally produce a sharp conflict between the two parties; something of which, it is probable, did really happen, though not attended with the tragical circumstances recorded in the ballad: for these are evidently borrowed from the Battle of Otterbourn, a very different event, but which aftertimes would easily confound with it." The date of the ballad cannot, of course, be strictly ascertained. It was considered old in the middle of the sixteenth century, being mentioned in _The Complaynt of Scotland_ (1548) among the "sangis of natural music of the antiquite." Not much can be said for its "natural music," yet despite its roughness of form and enviable inconsistencies of spelling, it has always found grace with the poets. Rare Ben Jonson used to say that he would rather have been the author of _Chevy Chase_ than of all his works; Addison honored the broadside version with two critiques in the _Spectator_; and Sir Philip Sidney, though lamenting that the ballad should be "so evil apparrelled in the dust and cobwebs of that uncivill age," breaks out with the ingenuous confession: "I never heard the olde song of Percy and Duglas that I found not my heart mooved more then with a trumpet, and yet is it sung but by some blinde crouder, with no rougher voice then rude stile." Mauger, despite. _Let_, hinder. _Meany_, company. _Shyars_, shires. _Bomen_, bowmen. _Byckarte_, moved quickly, rattling their weapons. _Bent_, open field. _Aras_, arrows. _Wyld_, wild creatures,