32 MEMORIALS OF EDINBURGH,
of the Scottish army from the capital, though familiar to many, are too intimately associated
with our local history to be omitted here. The King had already been warned against the
war, by an apparition of St John, at Linlithgow; “yet this but hasted him fast to Edinburgh,
to make him ready, and to make provision for himself and his army against the day
appointed. That is, he had seven great cannons out of the Castle of Edinburgh, called
the Seven Sisters, casten by Robert Borthwik, the master-gunner ; furnished with powder
and lead to them at their pleasure; and in the meantime, they were taking out the artillery,
the King himself being in the Abbey, there was a cry heard at the Market-cross of Edinburgh,
about midnight, proclaiming, as it had been, a Bummons, which was called by the
proclaimer thereof the summon of Plotcok,’ desiring all earls, lords, barons, gentlemen,
and sundry burgesses within the town, to compear before his master within forty days ; and
so many as were called, were designed by their own names. But whether this summons
was proclaimed by vain persons, night walkers, for their pastime, or if it was a spirit, I
cannot tell. But an indweller in the town, called Mr Richard Lawsoun, being evil disposed,
ganging in his gallery-stair, foment the Cross, hearing this voice, thought marvel
what it should be : So he cried for his servant to bring him his purse, and took a crown
and cast it over the stair, saying, ‘ I, for my part, appeal from your summons and judgment,
and take me to the mercy of God.’ Verily, he who caused me chronicle this, was
a sufficient landed gentleman, who was in the town in the meantime, and was then twenty
years of age ; and he swore after the field there was not a man that was calledat that time
that escaped, except that one man, that appealed from their judgment.”* But neither this,
nor the entreaties of his Queen, who urged that ‘(she had but one son to him, quilk was
over weak ane warrand to the realme of Scotland!” could turn back the King from his
rash purpose. In defiance, as it seemed, alike of earth and heaven, the gallant, but headstrong
and devoted Monarch led forth the flower of Scottish chivalry to perish with him on
the bloody field of Flodden. The body of the King having fallen, as is understood, into
the hands of the victors, he was believed by many to have gone on his intended pilgrimage
to the Holy Land; and popular tradition continued long after to regard him as another
King Arthur, or Sebastian, who was yet to return in the hour of danger, and right the
nation’s wrongs.
We shall close this chapter with a curious, and we believe unique fragment of a ballad,
embodying this tradition, with other more local and apposite allusions.
An about the mids 0’ the night.
He crap to the field 0’ the bluid ;
Laigh he bowit an dour he lookit,
Eut never a worde he spak.’
He turned the dead knight round about,
Till the moon shon on his bree ;
But hia Both wm tined wit a bluidy gash,
Drumbelee grew his ee.
1 Pluto. Pitscottie, vol. i. p. 266. Probably should be “said”
