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'And lost the chance of going with Sir Patie and his wife, and got plighted to the red-haired Master of Angus never see sweet Meg and her braw court, and the tilts and tourneys, but live among murderous caitiffs and reivers all my days, sobbed Jean. 'I would not be such a fule body as to give in for a hasty word or two, specially of Jamie's, said Eleanor composedly.
But fear was a thing unknown to the Border reivers, and the flower of them rode with Buccleuch that night close on his horse's heels Wat o' Harden, Walter Scott of Goldielands, and Kinmont's own four stalwart sons Jock, Francie, Geordie, and Sandy. As the dark night hours wore on, sleet and wind were reinforced by a thunderstorm.
The Baron, meanwhile, paced the room in silent indignation, and at length fixing his eye upon an old portrait, whose person was clad in armour, and whose features glared grimly out of a huge bush of hair, part of which descended from his head to his shoulders, and part from his chin and upper-lip to his breastplate, 'That gentleman, Captain Waverley, my grandsire, he said, 'with two hundred horse, whom he levied within his own bounds, discomfited and put to the rout more than five hundred of these Highland reivers, who have been ever LAPIS OFFENSIONIS, ET PETRA SCANDALI, a stumbling-block and a rock of offence to the Lowland vicinage he discomfited them, I say, when they had the temerity to descend to harry this country, in the time of the civil dissensions, in the year of grace sixteen hundred forty and two.
The damsel smiled sadly when she heard him say 'She, and when he had done she said: "And I have heard, and not from yesterday, that at Hampton dwelleth the Fellowship of the Dry Tree, and that those of the fellowship are robbers and reivers.
After he married the great English fortune, folk called him less of a Scottishman than Edward. 'Folk lee'd, then, said Summertrees; 'poor Harry was none of your bold-speaking, ranting reivers, that talk about what they did yesterday, or what they will do to-morrow; it was when something was to do at the moment that you should have looked at Harry Redgauntlet.
But we were never such thieves and marauders, caterans bloody and unashamed, as the Galloway kerns and the Northmen, and in all my time we had plenty to do to fend our straths against reivers and cattle-drovers from the bad clans round about us. We lift no cattle in all Campbell country.
And, however "indifferent honest" we ourselves may be, which of us does not lay aside even that most futile mask and boast unashamedly when we can claim descent from one of those princes among reivers Wat o' Harden, Johnnie Armstrong, or Kinmont Willie? William Armstrong, better known as Kinmont Willie, lived in the palmiest days of the Border reivers.
ORRA, odd, unemployed. ORRA-TIME, occasionally. OWER, over. PEEL-HOUSE, a fortified tower. PENDICLE, a small piece of ground. PINGLE, a fuss, trouble. PLENISHING, furnishings. PLOY, sport, entertainment. PRETTY MEN, stout, warlike fellows. REIFS, robberies. REIVERS, robbers. RIGGS, ridges, ploughed ground. ROKELAY, a short cloak. RUDAS, coarse, hag-like.
For there be men of violence dwelling no great way off, reivers and rovers, who would be well pleased to take from us anything which we deem dear; besides others who would think the lifting of such a jewel good hap indeed. Sir Aymeris, have a care of the Red Knight; and if thou mightest come by a few more stout lads, to wage them, it were well.
"Let us follow him then, and raise the country, and mak mair help as we ride, and then have at the Cumberland reivers! Take, burn, and slay they that lie nearest us shall smart first." "Whisht! haud your tongues, daft callants," said an old man, "ye dinna ken what ye speak about. What! wad ye raise war atween two pacificated countries?"
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