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Some speak of lords, some speak of lairds, And such like men of high degree; Of a gentleman I sing a song, Sometime called Laird of Gilnockie. The King he writes a loving letter, With his own hand so tenderly, And he hath sent it to Johnnie Armstrong, To come and speak with him speedily.
She spak sair against me when the King's advocate claimed for his Majesty my auld turret o' Gilnockie. I owe that quean an auld score. How lang do you want her lodged in Græme's Tower?" "Three months would maybe change her tongue," replied the Warden; "but the enterprise seems desperate, Will." "Desperate! my Lord," replied the other "that word's no kenned on the Borders.
"Thou'lt hang, Will, this time," said the Warden, with an affectation of gruffness, as he stepped forward. "It is not in the power of man to save ye!" "Begging yer Lordship's pardon," replied Will, "I believe it, however, to be in the power o' a woman. The auld lurdon will be in Gilnockie tower at yer Lordship's ain time."
The Elliotts and Armstrongs did convene, They were a gallant company; "We'll ride and meet our lawful king, And bring him safe to Gilnockie." They ran their steeds on the Langholm holm, They ran their steeds with might and main; The ladies looked from their high windows, God bring our men well back again.
"Where deep and low the hamlets lie Beneath their little patch of sky, And little lot of stars." On his return southward, he was again delighted by the sight of old Gilnockie Castle and the surrounding scenery. As he afterwards wrote to his friend Little, "Broomholm was in all his glory."
"Yes," answered the man; "who is it that wishes to see him?" "The mistress o' Gilnockie," rejoined Margaret, "has come to seek a guid word for Christie's Will, who now lies in Jedburgh jail for stealing a tether, and I fear may hang for't."
God be thankit, the mistress o' Gilnockie can deliver her ain errand." And, pushing the waiting man aside by a sudden jerk of her brawnie arm, she proceeded calmly forward to a door, which she intended to open; but the servant was at her heels, and, laying hold of her plaid, was in the act of hauling her back, when the Warden himself came out, and asked the cause of the affray.
Sir Walter Scott, however, in his Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border, gives to Will Armstrong of Gilnockie the credit, or discredit, of carrying out the abduction single-handed. Will was certainly a much more picturesque ruffian than ever was Meldrum, and many a wild deed might be safely fathered on him.
The first day passed without a single glimpse being had of the grave senator, who was probably occupied in the consultation of legal authorities, little conscious of the care that was taken about his precious person by so important an individual as the far-famed Christie's Will of Gilnockie.
"Ha! ha! my old lass," said Will to himself; "ye little ken that the Laird o' Gilnockie, whom ye tried to deprive of his birthright, sits afore ye; and will a' the lear 'neath that big wig tell ye that that same Laird o' Gilnockie sits here contriving a plan to run awa wi' ye? Faith, an' it's a bauld project; but the baulder the bonnier, as we say in Liddesdale.
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