Then spak the kene laird of Buckscleuth, A stalworthye man and sterne was he: ‘For a king to gang an outlaw till Is beneath his state and his dignitie. ‘The man that wons yon foreste intill, He lives by reif and felonie; Wher_e_fore, brayd on, my sovereign liege, Wi fire and sword we’ll follow thee, Or, gif your courtrie lords fa back, Our borderers sall the onset gie.’ Then out and spak the nobil king, And round him cast a wilie ee: ‘Now haud thy tongue, Sir Walter Scott, Nor speik of reif nor felonie, For had everye honeste man his awin kye, A right puir clan thy name wad be.’[107] =B= represents that the king, after appointing a meeting with the Outlaw ‘in number not above two or three,’ comes with a company of three hundred, which violation of the mutual understanding naturally leads the Outlaw to expect treachery. The king, however, not only proceeds in good faith, but, without any stipulations, at once makes the Outlaw laird of the Forest. From the note, otherwise of no value, which accompanies the Philiphaugh MS., it is clear that the ballad was known before 1700; how much earlier it is to be put we can neither ascertain nor safely conjecture, but we may say that there is nothing in the language of the piece as it stands which obliges us to assign it a much higher antiquity.[108] As to James Murray, laird of Traquair, whose lands the king had gifted lang syne, =A= 45^3, 48^1, Sheriff Plummer remarks in Herd’s MS.: “Willielmus de Moravia had forfeited the lands of ‘trakware’ ante annum 1464. As of that date I have a charter of these lands, proceeding upon his forfeiture, granted Willielmo Douglas de Cluny.” Thomas Boyd was created Earl of Arran after his marriage with the eldest sister of James III, 1467. The Earl of Hamilton is mentioned =A= 7^1, 50^1. Sheriff Plummer observes that there was an earl of that surname till 1503. Scott, in his preface in the Border Minstrelsy, after professing himself unable to ascertain the foundation of the tale, goes on to state the following historical possibilities: