The conflict was speedily ended. The Captain of Bewcastle was badly
wounded, and taken prisoner; his house was ransacked, his cattle driven
off, and Jamie Telfer returned to the "Fair Dodhead" with thirty-three
cows instead of ten.--
"When they cam' to the fair Dodhead,
They were a wellcum sight to see!
For instead of his ain ten milk kye,
Jamie Telfer has gotten thirty and three.
And he has paid the rescue shot,
Baith wi' goud and white monie:
And at the burial o' Willie Scott,
I wat was mony a weeping ee."
The eldest son of Wat of Harden was destined to become as famous as his
father, though in a different way. He had evidently, from what we learn of
him, inherited all the reiving tendencies of his race. But the difficulty
of crossing the Border had been considerably increased. Buccleuch, the
Keeper of Liddesdale, had changed his tactics. He had now begun to use his
utmost endeavour to bring about a better understanding, and a better state
of feeling, between the two countries. Willie Scott no doubt realised that
a raid on the English Border, though successful, might now get the whole
family into serious trouble. But the kye "were rowting on the loan and the
lea," and something had to be done to augment the quickly vanishing herd.
He took into his confidence a farmer, who lived on the banks of the
Ettrick--William Hogg--well known as the "Wild Boar of Fauldshope." This
redoubtable reiver was a progenitor of the Ettrick Shepherd, whose family,
it is said, possessed the lands of Fauldshope, under the Scotts of Harden,
for a period of 400 years. He was a man of prodigious strength, courage,
and ferocity, and ever ready for the fray. For some reason or other he had
a strong antipathy to Sir Gideon Murray of Elibank, the picturesque ruins
of whose Castle may still be seen on the banks of the Tweed, a mile or two
above Ashiesteel. That young Harden could have no particular liking for
him is easily understood, as he was one of the men who had been
commissioned by the government to destroy Harden castle as a punishment
for the part taken by his father in the Raid of Falkland. Sir Gideon had a
splendid herd of cattle pasturing on the green slopes above the Tweed, and
so Willie Scott resolved, with the assistance of his powerful coadjutor,
to transfer as many of them as possible to his own pastures. The night was
set, the expedition was carefully planned, and fortune seemed to smile
upon the project. But--
The best laid schemes o' mice and men
Gang aft a glee.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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