# The Lay of the Last Minstrel/Notes on Canto 5

NOTES
ON
CANTO V.
The chief of this potent race of heroes, about the date of the poem, was Archibald Douglas, seventh Earl of Angus, a man of great courage and activity. The bloody heart was the well-known cognizance of the house of Douglas, assumed from the time of Good Lord James, to whose care Robert Bruce committed his heart, to be carried to the Holy Land.
The Earls of Home, as descendants of the Dunbars, ancient Earls of March, carried a lion rampant, argent ; but, as a diffe​rence, changed the colour of the shield from gules to vert, in allusion to Greenlaw, their ancient possession. The slogan, or war-cry of this powerful family, was, "a Home! a Home!" It was anciently placed in an escroll above the crest. The helmet is armed with a lion's head erased gules, with a cap of state gules, turned up ermine.
The Hepburns, a powerful family in East Lothian are usually in close alliance with the Homes. The chief of this clan: was Hepburn, Lord of Hailes; a family which terminated in the too famous Earl of Bothwell.
Pursued the foot-ball play.—St. VI. p. 133.
The foot-ball was anciently a very favourite sport all through Scotland, but especially upon the Borders. Sir John Carmichael of Carmichael, warden of the middle marches, was killed in 1600 by a band of the Armstrongs, returning from a foot-ball match. Sir Robert Carey, in his Memoirs, mentions a great meeting appointed by the Scottish riders, to be held at Kelso, for the purpose of playing at foot-ball, but which terminated in an incursion upon England. At present the football is often played by the inhabitants of adjacent parishes, or of the opposite banks of a stream. The victory is contested with the utmost fury, and very serious accidents have sometimes taken place in the struggle.
Notwithstanding the constant wars upon the Borders, and the occasional cruelties which marked the mutual inroads, the inhabitants on either side do not appear to have regarded each other with that violent and personal animosity which might have been expected. On the contrary, like the outposts of hostile armies, they often carried on something resembling friendly intercourse, even in the middle of hostilities; and it is evident, from various ordinances against trade and intermarriages between English and Scottish Borderers, that the governments of both countries were jealous of their cherishing too intimate a connection. Froissart says of both nations, that "Englyshemen on the one party, and Scottes on the other party, are good men of warre; for when they meet, there is a harde fight without sparynge. There is no hoo (truce) between them as longe as spears, swords, axes, or daggers, will endure, but lay on eche upon other; and whan they be well beaten, and that the one partye hath obtayned the victory, they than gloryfye so in theyre dedes of armes, and are so joyfull, that such as be taken they shall be ransomed, or that they go out of the felde; so that shortly eche of them is so content with other, that at their departynge, curtyslye they will say, God thank you." Berner's Froyssart, vol. ii. p. 153. The Border meetings of truce, which, although places of merchandize and merriment, often witnessed the most bloody scenes, may serve to illustrate the description in the text. They are vividly ​pourtrayed in the old ballad of the Reidsquair. Both parties came armed to a meeting of the wardens, yet they intermixed fearlessly and peaceably with each other in mutual sports and familiar intercourse, until a casual fray arose.
In the 29th stanza of this canto, there is an attempt to ex~ press some of the mixed feelings, with which the Borderers on each side were led to regard their neighbours.
Patten remarks, with bitter censure, the disorderly conduct of the English Borderers, who attended the Protector Somerset on his expedition against Scotland. "As we wear then a setling, and the tents a setting up, among all things els commendable in oure hole jorney, one thing semed to me an intollerable disorder and abuse; that whearas allweys, both in all tounes of war, and in all campes of armies, quietnes and stilnes, without nois, is principally in the night, after the watch is set, observed (I nede not reason why), our northern prikkers, the Borderers, notwithandyng, with great enormitie (as thought me), and not unlike (to be playn) unto a masterles hounde howlyng in a hie wey when he hath lost him he waited upon, sum hoopynge, sum whistlyng, and most with crying, A Berwyke, ​a Berwyke! A Fenwyke, a Fenwyke! A Bulmer, a Bulmer! or so otherwise as theyr captains names wear, never lin'de these troublous and dangerous noyses all the nighte longe. They said they did to finde their captain and fellows; but if the souldiours of our other countreys and sheres had used the same manner, in that case we shoold have oft tymes had the state of our camp more like the outrage of a dissolute huntyng, than the quiet of a well ordred armye. It is a feat of war, in mine opinion, that might right well be left. I could teherse causes (but yf I take it, they ar better unspoken than uttred, unless the faut wear sure to be amended) that might shew thei move alweis more peral to our armie, hut in their one night's so doynge, than thei shew good service (as sum sey) in a hoole vyage."—Apud Dalzell's Fragments, p. 75.
The pursuit of Border marauders was followed by the injured party and his friends with blood-hounds and bugle-horn, and was called the hot-trod. He was entitled, if his dog could trace the scent, to follow the invaders into the opposite kingdom; a privilege which often occasioned blood-shed. In addition to what has been said of the blood-hound, I may add, that the breed was kept up by the Buccleuch family on their border estates till within the 18th century. A person was alive in the memory of man, who remembered a blood-hound being kept at Eldinhope, in Ettricke Forest, for whose maintenance he tenant had an allowance of meal. At that time the sheep ​were always watched at night. Upon one occasion, when the duty had fallen on the narrator, then a lad, he became exhausted with fatigue, and fell asleep upon a bank near sun-rising. Suddenly he was awakened by the tread of horses, and saw five men well mounted and armed, ride briskly over the edge of the hill. They stopped and looked at the flock; but the day was too far broken to admit the chance of their carrying any of them off. One of them, in spite, leaped from his horse, and coming to the shepherd, seized him by the belt he wore round his waist; and setting his foot upon his body, pulled it till it broke, and carried it away with him. They rode off at the gallop; and the shepherd giving the alarm, the blood-hound was turned loose, and the people in the neighbourhood alarmed. The marauders, however, escaped, notwithstanding a sharp pursuit. This circumstance serves to shew, how very long the license of the Borderers continued in some degree to manifest itself.