The Rivers of Great Britain, Descriptive, Historical, Pictorial: Rivers of the East CoastVarious
History
The Rivers of Great Britain, Descriptive, Historical, Pictorial: Rivers of the East Coast
Various
Great Britain -- Description and travel; Rivers -- Great Britain
Another place on the Teviot, Carlenrig, not far from the source, near
the Dumfries border, is celebrated as the scene of Johnnie Armstrong's
execution in the course of James V.'s hanging and hunting expedition.
His keep was at Hole House, in Eskdale; but at the head of thirty-six
bravely attired horsemen he came to Teviotdale and presented himself
to the king, expecting to be received with favour. When James ordered
him and his merry men to instant execution, he is represented as making
a variety of large offers for pardon--as that he would bring in by a
certain day, either quick or dead, any English subject, were he duke,
earl, or baron, whom the king might name. But, his terms being all
rejected, he said proudly, "It is folly to seek grace at a graceless
face." So--
"John murdered was at Carlinrigg,
And all his gallant cumpanie;
But Scotland's heart was ne'er sae wae
To see sae mony brave men die."
Among the Teviot's vassal-streams are the Ale, whose "foaming
tide" William of Deloraine swam in his night ride to Melrose; and
the brawling Jed, which gives its name to the royal burgh on its
banks--famous for "Jethart staves," a species of battle-axe, and for
"Jethart justice," the equivalent of "Lydford law" in the West of
England. One of those who came into the hangman's hands at Jedburgh
was Rattling Roaring Willie, the jovial harper at whose feet the "last
minstrel" sat, with such excellent results. He could not brook that the
tongue of the scoffer--
"Should tax his minstrelsy with wrong,
Or call his song untrue:
For this, when they the goblet plied,
And such rude taunt had chafed his pride,
The bard of Reull he slew.
On Teviot's side in fight they stood,
And tuneful hands were stained with blood,"
and so forth. But the minstrel's memory had etherealised the facts. The
squalid prose of the story is that a drunken brawl arose at Newmill, on
the Teviot, between Willie and a rival from Rule Water, known as Sweet
Milk; that they fought it out there and then; and that Sweet Milk was
slain on the spot.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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