advancing in firm array, bore back the crushed. and broken ranks of their opponents. A total rout ensued, accompanied by a terrible destruction and loss on the part of the Scots. What added greatly to their confusion and dismay, the valets and pages, in order to make sure of their own safety, seeing the Scottish army being routed and driven down the hill, rode off in flight with their masters' horses. The English on the contrary had their own horses in readiness and pursued the Scots, whom, with all the fury of old hatred, they slaughtered in large numbers, while as many more were taken prisoners.

The English, flushed with success, and eager to complete the conquest, rode past, turned, and intercepted the fugitives in their flight. In this way detached portions of the Scottish army were surrounded and almost exterminated by the vastly superior numbers of the victors. In these circumstances, pitted though they were against overwhelming odds, feats of heroism were performed by many of the Scots, and not a few of their opponents fell in these desultory and unequal combats. In some instances indeed they did not wait to allow the English to pass and intercept them, but, hopeless of victory, though spent with fatigue, they would turn round, face their opponents, and make a determined stand, only, however, to be ultimately overpowered.

In the pursuit many persons of note were slain; amongst them John Stewart and James Stewart, uncles of the Steward of Scotland. Malise, Earl of Strathern, John de Graham, Alexander de Lindsay, and other barons were also cut down. It is said that all the way to Ayton, a distance of six miles, the ground was strewed with their dead bodies.

It is impossible to state precisely the number of slain on either side. Historians differ widely on this point. English authorities greatly overestimate the Scotch loss. "Anonymous History "Anonymous History of Edward III." states the number at 60,000; Walshingham gives 25,712; and Barnes quotes a MS. of Cambridge, which gives 56,640. These are all manifest exaggerations. That the loss on the part of the Scots greatly exceeded that of the English is certain, for in that first flight of English arrows the Scots must have fallen by hundreds if not by thousands. It is probable that they lost not fewer than 14,000 men. As to the English loss on the other hand their own authorities seek to minimise the number to an extent far below what the circumstances of the case warrant. One writer estimates the number at seven, and another at fifteen. This is certainly not borne out by inference from letters which the English king

wrote ordaining a public thanksgiving that "the victory was gained without great loss upon his side."

Equally great is the conflict of opinion as to the relative strength of the armies before the battle began. Here again we must allow a considerable margin for English bias. Their own authorities affirm that the Scottish force greatly exceeded that of Edward. Referring again to the king's letters we find that no such inference can be drawn. Had he gained so decisive a victory over superior numbers undoubtedly he would have made special reference to the fact. Surely it behoved the victor to emphasise a point of such importance in giving public thanks to God. Instead of that he makes no mention whatever of the relative strength of the armies. The Scottish nobility were there in large numbers, and so great was the slaughter of those in high rank and power that it was currently reported amongst the English that the Scottish wars were at last ended, since not a man was left of that nation who had either power or ability to assemble an army or direct its operations.

As a necessary consequence of the Battle of Halidon, Berwick was immediately handed over to the victorious Edward, and Baliol was reinstated as monarch of the kingdom. Like his father, however, he was but a vassal king; and, let us charitably assume, less an object of censure than of pity-a miserable sinecure vacillating between the ill-disguised mutterings of discontent and disloyalty on the part of his subjects on the one hand, and the imperious will and haughty spirit of his superior and overlord on the other. Scottish patriotism smarted under this dead weight in the guise of monarchy, and those barons who still remained loyal to the cause of Scottish independence caused Baliol much annoyance during his brief reign of seven years. Once more, in 1339, Scotland shook herself free from the yoke of English dominion. It may thus be seen what miserable and transitory advantage Edward gained by this victory; how hopelessly ineffectual and impotent were these oft-repeated attempts of of Southern aggression to crush the spirit of freedom in the hearts of the Scottish people. Berwick, it is true, was lost to Scotland for ever. That was the sum total of Edward's achievements. It was simply a case of balancing accounts on the prevailing principle of "Might was Right," which then governed the conduct of the two nations. What the one lost the other gained. But the Treaty of Northampton, with all its bright promise of peace and tranquility, was no more. That was a loss, irreparable and profoundly

regretable, common to both England and Scotland without a shadow of compensation to either victors or vanquished.

Neither in ballad nor in song have the brave deeds of the thousands who fell at Halidon Hill been recorded. Such daring and noble selfsacrifice as marked the conduct and spirit of the vanquished are worthy of a better fate-worthy indeed of a place beside the immortal heroes of Bannockburn and Flodden.

NO. II. BATTLE OF OTTERBURN
Will appear next month.

A New Theory of the Catrail.*

ح

'HIS pamphlet as its title page tells us contains a paper read before the Hawick Archæological Society on Tuesday, 13th February. In it the author puts forward a new theory regarding the object of the Catrail that peculiar earthwork which is the standing mystery. among Border Antiquities. Of theories regard ing the object for which it was formed there have been several. It has been suggested, first that it was simply a boundary racial or tribal, secondly, that it was a war fence, offensive and defensive, and thirdly, that it was a strategic road subsidiary to and connecting forts. To these may be added the airy remark of Dr. J. A. H. Murray which is given on the authority of the Rev. J. B. Johnstone of Falkirk who states in his work on the place-names of Scotland that "Dr. Murray informs me that this (the word 'catrail') is an invented name for an invented rampart, both due to the imagination of Chalmers (Caledonia 1807)." It is indeed difficult to understand how a careful philologist like Dr. Murray could make such a statement seeing that as Mrs. Craig points out the word 'catrail' occurs in a work published eighty-one years before Chalmers' Caledonia was issued, to wit the 'Itinerariuni Septemtrionale' of Alexander Gordon. To say that the rampart was invented is absurd for the ditch is there, visible to the naked eye, and the rivulets of Roxburghshire have not the faculty of going up one side of a hill, along the top, and down the other side, so the Catrail cannot be due to aqueous erosion.

Mrs. Craig's idea of the purpose of the Catrail differs widely from all the earlier theories and may be expressed in her own words. She believes it to be a portion of the boundary of "the 'Great Quadrangular area of the Dominion,' mentioned in the Four Ancient Books of Wales,' 'the great central power'—the Ior, or sacred enclosure of the Druids, where they trained their

*Enclosures, with special reference to a Border Survival. By M. C. Craig. Hawick, Craw & Edgar, Express Office,

pupils in all manner of mystic lore as well as in warfare and feats of strength. Indeed, its very name tells us so, for I am of opinion with Williams (Y'Gododin) that the names Catrail and Catraith are one, and as Khat in all the ancient tongues believed to have had one common home, means at once shut, sealed, secret, Raithe means judgment, and Rail, we already know the meaning of, we take it that in the first place it was the sealed or secret place retired from the common things of life, as Khat, the body, was the sealed casquet of the soul; secondly, it came to mean the judgment of the body as to its fitnesss for warfare, etc.; and last of all, the warriors boundary. The remains found in the district also favour the idea of mimic warfare, for here the small bronze axes which have been thought only fit to wear as ornamental trappings abound, four of them having been found by a farmer (Mr. Douglas, Essenside) in one field, and one having been found years ago by a member of this society at Northhouse in the very track of the Catrail. It may also be noticed that this territory was called the Reged down to historical times." It would of course require a person of special knowledge to contradict this theory and speaking without the information of a specialist we can only say that it seems to have as much probability as the other suggestions above mentioned. We can never know exactly what the Catrail was intended for and Mrs. Craig's theory is as inherently possible as any of the others. Indeed it will be much more plausible provided that Mrs. Craig can show that the Catrail was really once a portion of the enclosing mark of a square tract of country. Hitherto it has been generally believed to be but one more or less straight line but our author remarks that "every writer, since Chalmers, has carefully avoided mentioning the northern portion of the work mentioned by Maitland, with the exception of the late Mr. Kemp of Galashiels, who, after describing the route of the Catrail from that fort to Rink Camp, near Selkirk, says :-'From the Rink two lines run down to the Tweed, one by Rink House, which can be clearly traced by the side of the old road to the ford,' the other further north, by the Howden burn, he traces round the Crib Hill. The former is now entirely obliterated, but the very mention of it as existing in Mr. Kemp's time bears out the statement of Maitland regarding it, for the other is the route followed by modern explorers, this northern portion running from this point to the ancient Henwood, on the banks of the Oxnam, near Jedburgh, once authenticated, the Catrail is not difficult to restore-from Torwoodlee Broch, near Galashiels, along the Yarrow and Ettrick—

for I do not believe the work ever went near Wallace's Trench-to Henwoody on the Borthwick, from there to Wormscleuch at the head of Deadwater, from thence over hill by Ravensburn and Jed to that other Henwood, the water itself forming the boundary, as its name implies, and from thence through Bowden Moor and Faldonside to the road mentioned by Kemp." The crucial point therefore, it will be seen, lies in the authentication of" this Northern portion." Can that be done and if so how? We confess we are at a loss for an answer to the question, but there is not in the domain of prehistoric archæology a more industrious scholar than Mrs. Craig and we can only hope that she will continue her researches on the subject. At present, however, the verdict must be "Not proven." In these remarks we have only dealt with the portion of Mrs. Craig's paper which treats directly of the Catrail. Her introduction is an elaborate reference to enclosures generally, a subject of great interest and particulary so to Borderers, for in some of the towns and villages of the border, ex gratia, Hawick and Lauder, we have undoubtedly traces still remaining of the old primitive village community which existed in our land long before the Roman invasion and which must be contemporaneous with the dawn of reason in what is now the human species. W.

Tom For.

"Dryburgh, February 1896.

DEAR MADAM, "I give you full permission to use me in any way you may think proper, only 'dinna mak' me ony blacker than I am, for guidness kens that's black enough.' I hope you are all well, and your father going about.

S

"I am, yours truly,

"TAM FOX." UCH is the reply I received to my question whether or not I might make Tom the subject of a magazine article. His letter, short, pithy, and humorous, brings him right before the reader as no number of words from another pen can possibly do.

Under the inexorable rule of modern education, native originality is being gradually trimmed down to a uniformly conventional standard. Its sharp shears are busy clipping and pruning from day to day, and the good old-time type of pure Scottish character is, as a matter of course, fast dying out.

Of this type, the passing of which I deplore, Tom Fox is a singularly striking and interesting specimen.

In his office as collector of pontage for the

Suspension Bridge at Dryburgh, Tom for many years daily occupied the little wooden box erected for his convenience on the Berwickshire bank of the Tweed. Few have travelled to or from Dryburgh during the past fifty years or so without making his acquaintance. In that quiet corner of the bridge, many jokes were cracked with passing neighbours, or with gentlemen fishers who had dropped in to rest and refresh themselves, and to most of whom Tom was an old and esteemed friend. There, too, Tom's keen unaffected wit, and dry quaint humour, had numberless opportunities of displaying themselves. His humour always quaint, his wit just seasoned at times with acerbity enough to give it a rare flavour in the mouth of the individual who was not so unfortunate as to be its butt.

A penny each way was, at one time, exacted for the passage of the bridge. Moderate as this charge might be, there were those who were only too ready to skulk by without paying it when they could contrive to elude Tom's vigilance.

On one memorable occasion, a large party composed of members of the Pan-Presbyterian Council had visited Dryburgh, dutifully laying down their pennies as they went. On returning, however, it was resolved to steal a march on Tom. Hurrying en masse past his box, the party swarmed on to the slight bridge. Tom, it may be a trifle alarmed, shouted words of warning and expostulation in vain.

"Weel, weel, gang ye'r weys," he was heard to mutter testily to himself, "ye may ca' ye'rsel's Pan - Presbyterians the now, but ye'll a' be Baptists 'ore lang, or ma name's no Tam Fox."

At another time, a gentleman remonstrated indignantly against the paying of the return toll. He had, he said, just "walked from Norhamhe had crossed the bridge there, and was only asked to pay one penny for both ways." Tom heard him out with the utmost patience, then, in his driest and most caustic tones, asked reflectively—

"Div ye no' think, sir, div ye no' think ye'rsel' na, that ye micht juist gang roond again by Norham ?" The gentleman paid his penny

without further parley.

A friend of mine was one day enjoying a chat with Tom when a young lady stepped up to the bridge. She paid her fare, and stood doubtfully regarding the airy oscillating structure. "Is it safe?" she asked, hesitatingly. Quite safe, ma'am." Another very glance before her--then, "Quite safe, you say?"

66

doubtful

"Perfectly safe, ma'am, perfectly safe."

Apparently reassured, the young lady moved briskly on. She had not, however, taken more than half-a-dozen steps when she suddenly turned, ran back, and accosted Tom with

"Oh, I hope you are sure that the bridge is quite safe."

"I assure ye, ma'am, it's perfectly safe; perfectly safe, ma'am." Tom's tones were by this time assuming an ominous sauvity. When, after again essaying to cross, the lady returned for the fourth time with the same query there was a second's pause, then in even unctuous accents came Tom's reply

"It's absolutely safe, ma'am. Oo've a contrac'

In common with most strong characters, Tom entertains a profound and ill-concealed contempt for whatever seems to savour of cant. More given to act out his own religion than to undertake the direction of other people's, he views with pronounced distrust all who, as he would probably express it, "like tae hear themsel's speak." The minister, and none but he, has a right to dictate to any man in the matter of his religion. A member of some lay persuasion or other was unfortunate enough to incur his displeasure. It is to be supposed that this individual had been concerning himself about Tom's future welfare, and that the object of his

wi' the brig, ye see. It's only tae fa' on Tuesdays an' Thursdays-this is Wednesday."

"Oh, Tom, Tom," laughed my friend, "that was heavy. You're too severe."

"Hoots," replied Tom, with an easy dismissing of the subject, "whae div ye think has time tae waste on a silly stupid crater like that. Couldna' she hae seen for hersel' that half-adizzen cattle are alloo'ed on at yince?"

The fact that the young lady was all unconscious of Tom's sarcasm adds zest to the story. She was entirely satisfied with the explanation offered, and made her transit of the bridge thereafter with the utmost confidence.

solicitude bitterly resented his interference. In a state of extreme exasperation, Tom at length brought him up with

"Wull ye tell me hoo an ignorant man like you has the face tae stand up an' make a pretence o' preachin' tae folk better learned than ye'rsel'? The like o' you canna hae muckle tae say tae onybody yin wud think."

"I can always say that I have been born again," was the mild answer.

"H'm," commented Tom, drily, "ye wudna be muckle the waur o' bein' born a third time in ma opeenion."

The wholesome, work-a-day turn of Tom's

mind comes out markedly in the following:An excellent lady in the neighbourhood was in the habit of talking very confidentially with him. Discussing a proposed change of residence she said, referring to a certain house

"I don't think, after all, that I shall take it, Tom. The rent is really more than I ought to give. What shall I answer to the Lord on the great day of judgment when He asks me how I came to pay such a sum for a house?"

"Never fash ye'r heid aboot that, ma leddy," said Tom, naively, "take ma word for't, the Lord'll never ask ye ony sic question."

A plump volume might be filled with these and numberless stories of similar character, all of them shewing up more or less forcibly the sound common sense and homely intelligence, the keen penetration and shrewd thoughtful temperament of the man with whom they are associated.

Tom was born at Morebattle in 1824. Ten years later he migrated to Dryburgh, where, with one or two short breaks, he has since resided.

The trade of joiner, for which he received an early training, was abandoned for that of weaver. It was while pursuing this calling in a Galashiels tweed mill, and while still a young man, that he fell a victim to a painful disorder which partially deprived him of the use of his lower limbs, and made the aid of a crutch or a stick an almost constant necessity. Weaving was now, for Tom, impossible, and he returned to Dryburgh to make of his life under its altered conditions what he could, or would.

Many natures of weaker calibre would have been for ever embittered by such mischance; but Tom's spirit rose high above his trouble. With admirable energy he turned his attention to whatever form of industry he found it possible to pursue in his crippled and half-helpless condition. As fisherman and ferryman he kept himself busily employed during the long interval between the destruction of the former bridge by wind storm and the building of that now standing, in 1872, at which date he took up the office in which he is best and most widely known. In 1887 the County Council came into power, the charge on the bridge was consequently removed, and Tom's services as collector were no longer required. His resources as a breadwinner, however, were by no means exhausted. A small shop was conveniently built on to the side of his cottage immediately overlooking the bend of the road which leads by a sharp ascent to the Abbey. Here, on a hot summer's day, the jaded tourist naturally pauses, and here Tom carries on what, in the

season, must be a brisk trade in sweets, biscuits, and aerated waters, the excellence of which I have frequently tested.

His skill in the manufacture of inlaid paper knives and pretty knick-knacks in carved or fret-work was for many years turned to good account, and even now occupies a spare moment when the shop does not demand his attention. The perseverance which he brought to bear on whatever his hand found to do, proved how brave was the heart and how strong the will that could so frankly face and defy the bar of unkindly circumstance. Tom is no Egoist. All through his own struggle for a living, he has never been able to forget that there were others struggling alongside him. His ready hand has helped many lame dogs over the proverbial stile. His goodness of heart has been largely and frequently drawn upon, and has seldom, if ever, failed to respond to the demands made upon it. Tom is modest about his good deeds, like every true man. None would be more astonished than he to learn that he is looked upon as a hero in the strife, but as such I have long regarded him.

Childless, and since 1888 a widower, he will yet never be a lonely man. His instincts are too truly human to admit of such a possibility.

His success in winning the confidence and affection of the feathered tribe is well known in his own neighbourhood. It is pretty to see Tom among his friends. I have watched them swoop down in scores, and sit perched in long rows on an iron fence in front of the toll-bar at the bridge, while Tom would stand feeding them and talking to them familiarly, as if they were so many intelligent human beings. The more daring would fly right in his face, and snatch a crumb from his mouth, while all or any would eat confidingly from his hands. What the little creatures thought, or said among themselves, when they found their friend and benefactor no longer at the bridge end, is undiscoverable. What is certain, however, is the fact that they speedily discovered him in his new quarters, and gave him to understand in their bird fashion that they had no intention of permitting him to drop their acquaintance.

Tom is happy in his surroundings. He is, indeed, a dweller on truly classic ground. The situation of his cottage is altogether ideal. The venerable ruins of the old monastery, wherein rests the sacred dust of Scott, though not to be seen from this particular spot, are but a stone's cast distant. From the open door a long vista of wood, water, and hill delights the eye and rests the senses. "Tweed's fair river, broad and deep," flows serenely by on its long march to the sea, decked on its either side by green