The affair about which we are to tell took place on the 7th of July 1575, at a meeting held, on a day of truce, by the Wardens of the Marches, for redressing wrongs and adjusting difficulties which could not be prevented from arising upon the Border. The Scottish Warden was Sir John Carmichael, and among his following were the Armstrongs and Elliots, Douglas of Cavers (a descendant of the Douglas who fell at Otterbourne), Cranstoun, whose ferocious motto was "Ye shall want ere I want," Gladstain, "good at need," and the ancient head of the Rutherfoords, called in tradition the Cock of Hunthill, "with his nine sons him about." The English Warden was the haughty Sir John Forster, and he had full fifteen hundred men with him, chiefly Northumbrians, Tynedale, and Reedsdale men, who looked with scorn upon the much smaller array of their hereditary foes. The meeting, however, began meekly enough, with merriment and jests. Such Border meetings of truce, though they might wind up in blood, as was to happen now, always began as occasions of marketing and revelry. Both parties came fully armed to such a tryst, yet intermixed in mutual sports and familiar intercourse, "Some gaed to drink, and some stood still, And some to cards and dice them sped." The Scots planted their pavilions or tents and feared no ill, even when they saw five hundred Fenwicks (a powerful Northumbrian clan) "marching in a flock." The clerk began to call the rolls, and to deal with one complaint after another for the loss of cows or ewes or other property. In the course of the proceedings an accusation was raised against an English freebooter named Farnstein, at the instance of a Scotch complainant. A "true bill" was found against the man, which means that he ought to be handed over to justice. But the English Warden alleged that he had fled, and could not be found. Carmichael, considering this as a pretext to avoid making compensation for the felony, bade the Northumbrians speak out plainly, and "cloke no cause for ill nor good." Upon this Sir John Forster, a proud and insolent man, "began to reckon kin and blood," by which picturesque phrase the ballad probably means that he swiftly added up his forces. Then he drew himself up, backed by his Dalesmen, all fingering their bows, and with insulting expressions against Carmichael’s kin he bade him "match with his equals." The men of Tynedale, who only wanted a pretext for a quarrel, drew their bows and let off a flight of arrows among the Scots. The more moderate men on both sides at first tried to quell the tumult, but in vain. The fight was bound to come. "Then there was naught but bow and spear, And every man pulled out a brand."