Page:Scotish Descriptive Poems - Leyden (1803).djvu/142



P. 94. v. 308. Perhaps no part of Britain has been the scene of so many sanguinary conflicts as the vicinity of the Roman Wall. The Romans and the Caledonians, the Southern and Northern Britons, the Saxons, the Picts, the Welch, and the Scots, had all fallen on these fields, before the plains of Falkirk and Bannockburn were whitened with the bones of the more modern English and Scots. "The sore battaile of Camlan," in which Arthur and Modred fell, was probably fought in the same vicinity. The following passage of an old romance, presents a vivid picture of one of these battles in the middle ages: