Page:Marmion - Walter Scott (ed. Bayne, 1889).pdf/239



l. 301. Ayton is on the Eye, a little above Eyemouth, in Berwickshire.

'''Stanza XIX. l.305'''. 'The garrisons of the English castles of Wark, Norham, and Berwick were, as may be easily supposed, very troublesome neighbours to Scotland. Sir Richard Maitland of Ledington wrote a poem, called "The Blind Baron's Comfort," when his barony of Blythe, in Lauderdale, was harried by Rowland Foster, the English captain of Wark, with his company, to the number of 300 men. They spoiled the poetical knight of 5000 sheep, 200 nolt, 30 horses and mares; the whole furniture of his house of Blythe, worth 100 pounds Scots (8l. 6s. 8d.), and every thing else that was portable. "This spoil was committed the 16th day of May, 1570, (and the said Sir Richard was threescore and fourteen years of age, and grown blind,) in time of peace; when nane of that country lippened [expected] such a thing."—"The Blind Baron's Comfort" consists in a string of puns on the word Blythe, the came of the lands thus despoiled. Like John Littlewit, he had "a conceit left him in his misery—a miserable conceit."

'The last line of the text contains a phrase, by which the Borderers jocularly intimated the burning a house. When the Maxwells, in 1685, burned the castle of Lochwood, they said they did so to give the Lady Johnstone "light to set her hood." Nor was the phrase inapplicable; for, in a letter, to which I have mislaid the reference, the Earl of Northumberland writes to the King and Council, that he dressed himself at midnight, at Warkworth, by the blaze of the neighbouring villages burned by the Scottish marauders."—.

'''Stanza XXI. l. 332.''' Bp. Podsey, in 1154, restored the castle and added the donjon, See Jemingham's 'Norham Castle,' v. 87.

'''l. 841. too well in case''', in too good condition, too stout. For a somewhat similar meaning of case, see Tempest, iii. 2. 25:—

l. 342. Scott here refers to Holinshed's account of Welsh, the