which has been revered in Selkirk by so many generations of Souters, I fear, when it is investigated, must crumble into dust. Certainly the tradition regarding the origin of the town's Arms is impossible of maintenance. The figures are so obviously those of the Virgin and Child; the halo and the glory round their heads forbid any other interpretation. But it is easy to imagine that after the Reformation no Scottish town would care to acknowledge any connection, however remote, with the detested Church of Rome. Hence probably the legend of the dead woman and her still living baby who were found at the Lady-wood Edge by the Selkirk survivors of Flodden. Such a body, of course, may quite possibly have been discovered, and the tradition would be used later to account for the figures that appear in the town's Arms. Just in the same way is a gargoyle in Melrose Abbey, beside the reputed grave of Michael Scott, now pointed out to {257}American and English tourists as an authentic representation in stone of that mighty Wizard. As to the "Souters of Selkirk," there can be no proof either way; but I prefer to believe that the song is old, almost as old as Flodden. Perhaps I have misread Mr. Craig Brown, and am wrong in believing that he regards it as commemorating a famous football match played in 1815 between Souters and men under the leadership of Lord Home. If that were so, it could not have been sung at Dalkeith in 1804, when the Selkirkshire Yeomanry were present at a banquet there after the False Alarm. We read that Lord Home called for the song on that occasion, but that none of the Yeomanry cared to sing it before a man on whose ancestor it reflects, whereupon, amid rapturous applause, Lord Home sang it himself. If it refers to a football match, it must be to one of very ancient date, but one that surely could not fall to have left some mark on the minds of the Souters. Mr. Plummer, of Sunderland Hall, Sheriff Depute of the county prior to Sir Walter Scott, writing in 1793 says that though he had lived all his life within two miles of Selkirk and had known the song from his boyhood, there was not in his day, and he believed there never had been, any tradition connecting the song with anything of the nature of a football match. The verses may not have been written, probably were not written, immediately after the battle, but I am confident that it refers to Flodden--in spite of the fact that there was then no _Earl_ of Home. No doubt the song has had variants from time, to time; probably there was no allusion to an "Earl" in the original verses. Popular calumny shortly after Flodden taxed Lord Home with having been the cause of James's defeat and death; he was unable, as we know, to come to his Sovereign's aid. This popular belief, coupled with the fact that Selkirks representatives suffered more cruelly than did Lord Home's men---and therefore, of course local prejudice would infer, did their duty {258}better--would be quite sufficient to give