According to some accounts, the English men-at-arms were drawn up in a dense column, surrounding their holy standard; and the archers, consisting of peasants and yeomen from the woods and wolds of Yorkshire, Lincolnshire, and Nottingham, were posted in the van. It is certain that the Norman barons and the men-at-arms dismounted, and sent their horses to the rear, and the probability is that the mailed troops occupied the front of battle, and protected the archers, who were destitute of defensive armour. All the accounts of the battle favour this inference, although it is distinctly stated that the archers were broken, but afterwards rallied--a statement that seems incredible, for the English army being outflanked, the broken archers would have been cut to pieces, it being impossible for the dense column that surrounded the standard to open its ranks to receive the fugitives, while the charging Scots were pressing hot and hard upon their rear, and the action of the spearmen was retarded by the presence of the archers upon their front, as these unfortunates were being massacred by the enemy. The Galwegians made the first charge, with Ulgrick and Dovenald leading. Their dreadful cries of _Albanigh, Albanigh!_ ("We are the men of Albyn!") rolled like thunder over the field, as they rushed furiously upon the Norman men-at-arms, threatening to bear down all that withstood them with the forest of their long, thin pikes. The centre of the English army was pierced, but the formation was too dense to be shattered by a charge of pikemen, however furiously made, and the long pikes were broken upon shield and hauberk, or shivered by blow of sword and axe. The Galwegians bit deep, but fell in scores along the front, and as they recoiled from the meeting, the archers let fly a shower of shafts upon them. It was impossible to rally and re-form in the face of that storm of deadly shafts, beating as hard and fast as winter hail upon their naked bodies, and while numbers fell, weltering in their gore, the disordered masses began to retire, probably to the right and left, while the English taunted them with derisive cries of "_Eyrych, Eyrych!_" ("You are but Irish!") which, Scott remarks, "must have been true of that part of the Galwegians called the wild Scots of Galloway, who are undoubtedly Scotch-Irish."