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

Bot it were in wedloc,
In thilke time, men hem tok,
With iuggement, with outenles,
And also quic doluen hes;
Bot sche her knewe for lizt woman,
And comoun hore to alle men;
Than was it rizt and lawe,
That sche no fchuld ben yslawe.

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:

King Bohort so smot ozan,
O the helme that hoge man,
That he sat astoned uprizt,
& nist whether it was dai or nizt.———
—Ichon other so leyd beir,
That it dined into the air;
Also thicke the aruwe schoten,
In sonne bem so doth the moten;
Gauelokes al so thicke flowe,
So gnattes ichil avowe.
Ther was so michel dust riseing,
That sen ther was sonne schineing;