Very different was the guerdon which Johnie Armstrong of Gilnockie got from King James the Fifth, when, in an evil hour, he came with a gallant company from his stronghold in Eskdale to meet that monarch, who had ridden with a strong force into the heart of the moss-troopers' country, intent on taming the marchmen. Well might the ladies 'look from their loft windows,' and sigh, 'God bring our men weel hame again!' as Johnie, and the six-and-thirty Armstrongs and Elliots in his train, ran their horses through Langholm howm in their haste to welcome their 'lawful king.' This expedition of 1529 has left its mark on ballad poetry as well as history; through the hanging of Cockburn of Henderland it gave occasion for the _Lament of the Border Widow_. But no incident in it made deeper impression on the popular memory--none seems to have caused more sorrow and reprobation--than the stringing up of the Laird of Gilnockie and his followers on the trees at Carlenrig, at the head of Teviot. A 'Johnie Armstrong's Dance' was popular when the _Complaynt of Scotland_ was written twenty years later; and Sir David Lyndsay, in one of his plays, makes his Pardoner hawk about, among his relics of saints, the cords of good hemp that hanged the unlucky laird of Gilnockie Hall, with the commendation that 'Wha'ever beis hangit in this cord Neidis never to be drowned.' At the bar of judgment of the balladists, the deed was counted murder: 'Scotland's heart was ne'er sae wae To see sae mony brave men die'; and murder all the less pardonable, since the king who ordered it was himself an inspirer and, as some say, a writer of ballads. As is pointed out in the _Border Minstrelsy_, the ballad, in its account of the interview between the king and his troublesome subject, follows pretty closely the narrative of Pitscottie. 'What wants that knave that a king should have?' was the offended remark of James, when he saw the band approaching him in the bravery of their war-gear. And Johnie, when all his appeals and bribes proved to be vain, could also speak a frank word: '"To seek het water beneath cauld ice, Surely it is a great follie; I have asked grace at a graceless face, But there is nane for my men and me."' Whatever their misdeeds, Gilnockie and his men had certainly hard measure and short shrift. The king's courtiers, it is alleged, incited him to make a summary end of the Armstrongs; and he had not the biting answer ready which his father is said to have given to the 'keen laird of Buccleuch,' when that Border chieftain urged him to 'braid on with fire and sword' against the Outlaw of Ettrick Forest: 'Now haud thy tongue, Sir Walter Scott, Nor speak of reif or felonie; For had every honest man his coo, A right puir clan thy name would be.'