Then was there a Scottyshe prisoner tayne, Syr Hugh Montgomery was his name,

For soth as I you saye,

He borowed the Percy home agayn.

Now let us all for the Percy pray

To Jesu most of myght,

To bryng hys soule to the blysse of heven,For he was a gentyll knight.

HE various ballads to which the title of the "Huntynge of Cheviat" has been given, are all apparently distorted accounts of the battle of Otterbourne. The oldest version, first published in 1719, by Hearne, in an edition of Gulielmus Neubridgiensis, was the composition of Richard Sheale in 1558; and this was the one admired by Sir Philip Sydney. "I never heard," he says in his Defence of Poetry," the olde song of Percie and Douglas, that I found not my heart moved more than with a trumpet; and yet it is sung but by some blind crowder, with no rougher voice than rude style; which, being so evill apparelled in the dust and cobweb of that uncivill age, what would it work trimmed in the gorgeous eloquence of Pindare "

The author of the version here given is unknown. It is probably not older than the reign of Charles II.

Go

CHEVY CHASE.

OD prosper long our noble King,
Our lives and safetyes all;

A woefull hunting once there did
In Chevy Chace befall.

To drive the deere with hound and horn

Erle Percy took his way,

The child may rue that is unborne
The hunting of that day.

The stout Erle of Northumberland,
A vow to God did make,

His pleasure in the Scottish woods
Three summer days to take.

The cheefest harts in Chevy-chase
To kill and beare away,
These tydings to Erle Douglas came
In Scotland where he lay,

Who sent Erle Percy present word
He wold prevent his sport.
The English Erle, not fearing that,
Did to the woods resort

With fifteen hundred bow men bold
All chosen men of might,

Who knew full well in time of neede
To ayme their shafts arright.

The gallant greyhounds swiftly ran
To chase the fallow deere,
On munday they began to hunt
Ere day-light did appeare.

And long before high noone they had
An hundred fat buckes slain,
Then having dined, the drovyers went
To rouze the deare againe.

The bow-men mustered on the hills,

Well able to endure

Theire backs, in sooth, with speciall care, That day were guarded sure.

The hounds ran swiftly through the woods
The nimble deere to take,

That with their cryes the hills and dales
An echo shrill did make.

Lord Percy to the quarry went
To view the slaughter'd deere,
Quoth he, Erle Douglas promised
This day to meet me heere.

But if I thought he wold not come,
No longer wold I stay.

With that, a brave younge gentleman
Thus to the Erle did say,

Loe, yonder doth Erle Douglas come,
His men in armour bright,
Full twenty hundred Scottish speres
All marching in our sight.

All men of pleasant Tivydale
Fast by the river Tweede,

O cease your sports, Erle Percy said,
And take your bowes with speede.

And now with me, my countrymen
Your courage forth advance,
For there was never champion yett
In Scotland or in France,

That ever did on horsebacke come,
But if my hap it were,
I durst encounter man for man
With him to break a spere.

Erle Douglas on his milke-white steede

Most like a baron bold,

Rode formost of his company,

Whose armour shone like gold.