We now descended into Yarrow, and forgathered with a shepherd who was taking his lambs over to the great Melrose fair. He was a fine specimen of a border herd--young, tall, sagacious, self-contained, and free in speech and air. We got his heart by praising his dog _Jed_, a very fine collie, black and comely, gentle and keen--"Ay, she's a fell yin; she can do a' but speak." On asking him if the sheep dogs needed much teaching--"Whyles ay and whyles no; her kind (Jed's) needs nane. She sooks't in wi' her mither's milk." On asking him if the dogs were ever sold, he said--"Never, but at an orra time. Naebody wad sell a gude dowg, and naebody wad buy an ill ane." He told us with great feeling, of the death of one of his best dogs by poison. It was plainly still a grief to him. "What was he poisoned with?" "Strychnia," he said, as decidedly as might Dr Christison. "How do you know?" "I opened him, puir fallow, and got him analeezed!" Now we are on Birkindale Brae, and are looking down on the same scene as did "James Boyd (the Earle of Arran, his brother was he)," when he crossed Minchmoor on his way to deliver James the Fifth's message to "Yon outlaw Murray, Surely whaur bauldly bideth he." "Down Birkindale Brae when that he cam He saw the feir Foreste wi' his ee." How James Boyd fared, and what the outlaw said, and what James and his nobles said and did, and how the outlaw at last made peace with his King, and rose up "Sheriffe of Ettricke Foreste," and how the bold ruffian boasted, "Fair Philiphaugh is mine by right, And Lewinshope still mine shall be; Newark, Foulshiels, and Tinnies baith My bow and arrow purchased me. And I have native steads to me The Newark Lee o' Hangingshaw. I have many steads in the Forest schaw, But them by name I dinna knaw." And how King James snubbed "The kene Laird of Buckscleuth, A stalwart man and stern was he." When the Laird hinted that, "For a king to gang an outlaw till Is beneath his state and dignitie. The man that wins yon forest intill He lives by reif and felony." "Then out and spak the nobil King, And round him cast a wilie ee. 'Now haud thy tongue, Sir Walter Scott, Nor speak o' reif or felonie-- _For, had every honest man his awin kye,_ _A richt puir clan thy name wud be_!'" (by-the-bye, why did Professor Aytoun leave out this excellent hit in his edition?)--all this and much more may you see if you take up _The Border Minstrelsy_, and read "The Song of the Outlaw Murray," with the incomparable notes of Scott. But we are now well down the hill. There to the left, in the hollow, is _Permanscore_, where the King and the outlaw met:-- "Bid him mete me at Permanscore, And bring four in his companie; Five Erles sall cum wi' mysel', Gude reason I sud honoured be."