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

THE SCOTTISH BORDER. 113
" there as long as the weather would give me leave.
" They would stay in the Tarras Wood till I was weary
" of lying in the Waste : and when I had had my time,
" and they no whit the worse, they would play theii-
" parts, which should keep mee waking the next win-
" ter. Those gentlemen of the country that came not
" with mee, were of the same minde; for they knew
" (or thought at least,) that my force was not sufficient
" to withstand the furey of the outlawes. The time I
" staid at the fort I was not idle, but cast, by all meanes
" I could, how to take them in the great strength they
" were in. I found a meanes to send a hundred and
" fifty horsemen into Scotland (conveighed by a muf-
" fled man,* not known to one of the company,) thirty
" miles within Scotland, and the businesse was carried
" so, that none in the countrey tooke any alarm at this
<' passage. They were quietly brought to the backside
" of the Tarras, to Scotland- ward. There they divided
" themselves into three parts, and took up three pas-
" sages which the outlawes made themselves secure of,
" if from England side they should at anytime be put at.
down with oatmeal, onions, and spices, and boiled in the stoniacli of
the animal, by way of bag. When this bag is cut, the contents {if
this savoury dish be well made) should spout out with the heated air.
This wiU explain the allusion.
* A Muffled Man means a person in disguise^ a very necessary
precaution for the guide's safety ; for, could the outlaws have learned
who played them this trick, beyond all doubt it must have cost him
dear.