Amongst the flying, broken rabble that represented all that was left of
the Covenanting army after the disastrous business of Bothwell Bridge, a
dismounted Borderer, with one or two other stout hearts by no means
disposed even now to give up the day, continued still to strike fiercely
at Claverhouse's pursuing troopers. But their efforts to stem the tide
of disaster were utterly without avail, and the Borderer, zealously
protesting and struggling, was at length swept off the field by a wild
panic rush of the fugitives. Missing his footing on the broken ground as
the flying mob pressed on to him, the Borderer fell, and, hampered by
the bodies of a couple of wounded and exhausted countrymen, ere he could
again struggle to his feet, the horse of more than one spurring rider
had trampled over him, and he lay disabled and helpless, at the mercy of
any dragoon who might chance to ride that way.
"'The Lord hath afflicted me in the day of His fierce anger,'" groaned
the Covenanter. "'He hath made my strength to fall; the Lord hath
delivered me into their hands, from whom I am not able to rise up.'"
"Aye!" whimpered a wounded man who lay partly across the Borderer's
legs. "'The Lord was as an enemy; He hath swallowed up Israel.' And I'm
thinkin', 'gin He send nae help, and that sune, we're no muckle better
than deid men. Eh! weary fa' the day I left my ain pleugh stilts, an' my
ain fireside."
"Na, na, freend. He that setteth his hand to the plough, let him not
look back," answered the Borderer. "'Gin I win oot o' this, I trow I'll
'hew Agag in pieces before the Lord,' or a's dune. We will yet smite the
Philistines, destroy utterly the Amalakites! Aye! smite them hip and
thigh, even from the rising of the sun to the going down thereof!"
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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