J. F. Campbell Collection > Minstrelsy of the Scottish border > Volume 1

THE SCOTTISH BORDER. 107
JOHNIE ARMSTRANG.
There will be such frequent occasion, in the course of
this volume, to mention the clan, or sept, of the Arm-
strongs, that the editor finds it necessary to prefix to
this ballad some general account of that tribe.
The Armstrongs appear to have been at an early pe-
riod in possession of great part of Liddesdale, and of
the Debateable Land. Their immediate neighbovirhood
to England rendered them the most lawless of the Bor-
der depredators ; and, as much of the country possessed
by them was claimed by both kingdoms, the inhabitants,
protected from justice by the one nation, in opposition
to the other, securely preyed upon both.* The chief
was Armstrong of Mangertoun ; but, at a later period,
" In illustration of this position, the reader is referred to a long cor-
respondence betwixt Lord Dacre and the Privy CouncU of England,
in 1550, concerning one Sandye Armstrang, a partizan of England,
and an inhabitant of the Debateable Land, who had threatened to be-
come a Scottishman, if he was not protected by the English warden
against the Lord of Maxwell. — See Introduction to Nicholson and
Burns'' History of Cu?iibcrland and Westmoreland,