To this may be added the many local examples of the preservation of laws or legal formulæ by means of their form in verse. The most interesting of these, perhaps, is that by which the Kentishman redeemed his land from the lord by repeating, as it was said, in the language of his ancestors:-- "Nighon sithe yeld And nighon sithe geld, And vif pund for the were, Ere he become healdere." The first verse, "Dog draw Stable stand Back berend And bloody hand" justified the verderer in his punishment of the offender. In King Athelstane's grant to the good men of Beverley, and inscribed beneath his effigy in the Minster, "Als fre Mak I the As heart may think Or eigh may see," we have perhaps the ancient form of manumission or enfranchisement,[136] just as we have the surrender by a freeman who gave up his liberty by putting himself under the protection of a master, and becoming his man, still preserved among children, when one of them takes hold of the foretop of another and says:-- "Tappie, tappie, tousie, will ye be my man?"[137] All over the country we meet with these rhyming or rhythmical formulæ which have legal significance. In the north the chief of the Macdonalds gave grants in the following form:-- "I, Donald, chief of the Macdonalds, give here, in my castle, a right to Mackay, to Kilmahumag, from this day till to-morrow and so on for ever." "Mise Donull nau Donull, Am shuidh air Dun Donuill, Toirt còir do Mhac-aigh air Kilmahumaig, O'n diugh gus a màireach 'S gu la bhràth mar sin."[138] At Scarborough there is an old proverbial saying as to "Scarborough Warning," which has had various accounts given of its origin,[139] but the true explanation of which is that it is the fragment of an ancient legal formula of the kind we are investigating. Abraham De la Pryme describes it in his seventeenth-century diary as follows:-- "Scarburg Warning is a proverb in many places of the north, signifying any sudden warning given upon any account. Some think it arose from the sudden comeing of an enemy against the castle there, and haveing dischargd a broad side, then commands them to surrender. Others think that the proverb had it's original from other things, but all varys. However, this is the true origin thereof.