Glen Collection of printed music > Printed text > Scottish ballads

97
Then wicked Claverse turn'd about,
I wot an angry man was he ;
And he has lifted up his hat,
And cried, " God bless his Majestie !'*
Then he's awa to London toun.
Ay, e'en as fast as he can drie ;
Fause witnesses he has wi' him taen,
And taen Monmouth's head frae his bodye.
Alang the brae, beyond the brig,
Mony brave man lies cauld and still :
But lang we'll mind, and sair we'll rue,
The bloody battle o' Bothwell Hill *
THE THREATENED INVASION. f
Tune — Hoxv are ye^ Kimmer'^
ELSPAT.
" Fy, fy, Margaret ! woman, are ye in ?
I nae sooner heard it, than fast I did rin
* From the Border Minstrelsy, the editor of which procured it from re-
citation. The hero is Gordon of Earlstoun, a gentleman of Galloway, who,
after fighting at Bothwell-bridge, and escaping from it ; after being several
times under sentence of death, and on tlie point of being executed ; was at
length released from the grasp of his persecutors by the Revolution, which
event he suivived many years. The reader will scarce fail to be touched
with the fine desjiair which this gentleman is made to express in the first
few stanzas of the ballad.
t This very curious and amusing little rustic dramatic poem seems to
have been composed in 1719, when Spain, with which this country was
then at war, threatened the coasts of Britain with an invasion in iavour of
the Chevalier de St George ; an invasion which partially did take effect in the
north of Scotland, though in so slight a degree as to be lepelled by only a
few companies of men imder General Wightman. This version of the bal-
lad is composed out of two imperfect and confused copies, one of which is
in Mr Sharpe's " Ballad Book," and the other in Mr Peter IJuehan's
" Gleanings of Scarce Old Ballads." In arranging the various verses, I
have been guided partly by the sense, and partly by my recollection of
their recital by an old schoolmaster of Peebles-shire, who, attired in petti-
coats and head-gear, and carrying a roke under his arms, used, in my young
days, to act this strange fully, to its very last verse, before gentleme'n and
ladies, when he had arrived at a particular stage of convivial raerrimenl.
I