At least once again the ill-omened cry was heard. It was on the eve of the battle of Dupplin, which was fought on the 12th of August, 1332, between Edward Baliol, with his English supporters, and the army of David II, under the Earl of Mar. Trusting to their superior numbers and to their advantageous position, the Scots were confident of success. They spent a part of the night in drinking and in singing songs that contained insulting reference to "The English 'tailards', jeered at for their tails", and they bragged that they would turn those same tails to practical use, by binding their wearers, and dragging them to the gallows with them.[331] But the boastful Scots were beaten, and one of the chroniclers who record their defeat, reminds them of Seneca's saying, that never did proud joy stand on a sure footing. "Now," he adds, by way of moral, "you who, but the day before, declared you would make ropes of the Englishmen's tails to bind them with, are yourselves bound in real fetters."[332] In Wright's collection of medieval political songs, there are some doggerel verses, which are ascribed to this same half of the fourteenth century, and which probably refer to the driving out of the English from some of the strongholds which they had occupied. In his crabbed Latin, the writer, doubtless some monkish patriot, bids Scotland rejoice at the happy deliverance: "The 'tails' appeared, a while they held their sway, But now, at last, they've all been lopped away; The 'tails' have gone, and fearlessly we may Proclaim 'O Scotland, hail the happy day!'"[333] Those lines, such as they are, may serve as a connecting link between the historical instances of the use of the derogatory appellation and those which refer to no special incident, but are merely adaptations of the old scoff for the purpose of literary invective. The latter are not numerous; but one of them is interesting from the fact that it introduces the familiar "tails" under a new name. It occurs in The _Flyting of Dunbar and Kennedy_, that remarkable production which, though probably nothing more than a _jeu d'esprit_, a kind of friendly sparring-match between two adversaries "who give each other plaguy knocks with all the love and fondness of a brother", is assuredly one of the most astonishing instances of verbal scurrility to be found in literature. In this wordy tournament the two poets allude in uncomplimentary language to each other's family history, and Kennedy reproaches Dunbar, who was a native of Lothian, with being descended from a traitor, from Corspatrick, who, "Throu his tressoun brocht Inglis 'rumpillis' in".[334]