Sir Walter Scott
The Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border
The Battle of Loudon Hill

"She showed to me a box, wherein lay hid
The pictures of Cargil and Mr. Kid;
A splinter of the tree, on which they were slain;
A double inch of Major Weir's best cane;
Rathillet's sword beat down to table knife,
Which took at Magus Muir a bishop's life;
The worthy Welch's spectacles, who saw,
That windle-straws would fight against the law;
They, windle-straws, were stoutest of the two,
They kept their ground, away the prophet flew;
And lists of all the prophets' names were seen
At Petland Hills, Aird Moss, and Rullen Green.
"Don't think," she says, "these holy things are foppery;
They're precious antidotes against the power of popery."
The Cameronian Tooth - PENNYCUICK's Poems, p. 110. 

The militia and standing army soon became unequal to the task of enforcing conformity, and suppressing conventicles. In their aid, and to force compliance with a test proposed by government, the Highland clans were raised, and poured down into Ayrshire. An armed host of undisciplined mountaineers, speaking a different language, and professing many of them, another religion, were let loose to ravage and plunder this unfortunate country; and it is truly astonishing to find how few acts of cruelty they perpetrated, and how seldom they added murder to pillage. ++ Additional levies of horse were also raised, under the name of Independent Troops, and great part of them placed under the command of James Graham of Claverhouse a man well known to fame by his subsequent title of Viscount Dundee, but better remembered, in the western shires, under the designation of the Bloody Clavers. In truth, he appears to have combined the virtues and vices of a savage chief. Fierce, unbending, and rigorous, no emotion of compassion prevented his commanding and witnessing every detail of military execution against the non-conformists. Undauntedly brave, and steadily faithful to his prince, he sacrificed himself in the cause of James, when he was deserted by all the world. If we add to these attributes, a goodly person, complete skill in martial exercises, and that ready and decisive character, so essential to a commander, we may form some idea of this extraordinary character. The Whigs, whom he persecuted, daunted by his ferocity and courage, conceived him to be impassive to their bullets, +++ and that he had sold himself, for temporal greatness, to the seducer of mankind. It is still believed that a cup of wine, presented to him by his butler, changed into clotted blood; and that, when he plunged his feet into cold water, their touch caused it to boil. The steed, which bore him, was supposed to be the gift of Satan; and precipices are shown, where a fox could hardly keep his feet, down which the infernal charger conveyed him safely, in pursuit of the wanderers. It is remembered with terror, that Claverse was successful in every engagement with the Whigs, except that of Drumclog, or Loudon Hill, which is the subject of the following ballad. The history of Burly, the hero of the piece, will bring us immediately to the causes and circumstances of that event. 

John Balfour of Kinloch, commonly called Burly, was one of the fiercest of the proscribed sect. A gentleman by birth, he was, says his biographer, "zealous and honest-hearted, courageous in every enterprise, and a brave soldier, seldom any escaping that came in his hands." - Life of John Balfour. Creichton says, that he was once chamberlain to Archbishop Sharpe, and, by negligence or dishonesty, had incurred a large arrear, which occasioned his being active in his master's assassination. But of this I know of no other evidence than Creichton's assertion, and a hint in Wodrow. Burly (for that is his most common designation) was brother-in-law to Hackston of Rathillet, a wild enthusiastic character, who joined daring courage and skill in the sword to the fiery zeal of his sect. Burly, himself, was less eminent for religious fervour, than for the active and violent share which he had in the most desperate enterprises of his party. His name doe not appear among the Covenanters, who were denounced for the affair of Pentland. But, in 1677, Robert Hamilton, afterwards commander of the insurgents at Loudon Hill, and Bothwell Bridge, with several other non-conformists, were assembled at this Burly's house, in Fife. There they were attacked by a party of soldiers, commanded by Captain Carstairs, whom they beat off, wounding desperately one of his party. For this resistance to authority, they were declared rebels. The next exploit in which Burly was engaged, was of a bloodier complexion and more dreadful celebrity. It is well know, that James Sharpe, Archbishop of St. Andrews, was regarded by the rigid Presbyterians, not only as a renegade, who had turned back from the spiritual plough, but as the principal author of the rigours exercised against their sect. He employed, as an agent of his oppression, one Carmichael, a decayed gentleman. The industry of this man, in procuring information, and in enforcing the severer penalties against conventiclers, having excited the resentment of the Cameronians, nine of their number, of whom Burly and his brother-in-law, Hackston, were the leaders, assembled with the purpose of waylaying and murdering Carmichael; but, while they searched for him in vain, they received tidings that the Archbishop himself was at hand. The party resorted to prayer; after which they agreed unanimously that the Lord had delivered the wicked Haman into their hand. In the execution of the supposed will of Heaven, they agreed to put themselves under the command of a leader; and they requested Hackston of Rathillet to accept the office, which he declined, alleging, that, should he comply with their request, the slaughter might be imputed to a private quarrel, which existed betwixt him and the Archbishop. The command was then offered to Burly, who accepted it without scruple; and they galloped off in pursuit of the Archbishop's carriage, which contained himself and his daughter. Being well mounted, they easily overtook and disarmed the prelate's attendants. Burly, crying out, "Judas, be taken!" rode up to the carriage, wounded the postilion, and hamstrung one of the horses. He then fired into the coach a piece, charged with several bullets, so near, that the archbishop's gown was set on fire. The rest, coming up, dismounted, and dragged him out of the carriage, when frightened and wounded, he crawled towards Hackston, who still remained on horseback, and begged for mercy. The stern enthusiast contented himself with answering that he would not himself lay a hand on him. Burly and his men again fired a volley upon the kneeling old man; and were in the act of riding off, when one, who remained to girth his horse, unfortunately heard the daughter of their victim call to the servant for help, exclaiming that his master was still alive. Burly then again dismounted, stuck off the prelate's hat with his foot, and split his skull with his shable, (broadsword) although one of the party (probably Rathillet) exclaimed, "Spare these grey hairs!" *+ The rest pierced him with repeated wounds. They plundered the carriage, and rode off, leaving, beside the mangled corpse, the daughter, who was herself wounded, in her pious endeavour to interpose betwixt her father and his murderers. The murder is accurately represented, in bas relief, upon a beautiful monument, erected to the memory of Archbishop Sharpe, in the Metropolitan Church of St. Andrews. This memorable example of fanatic revenge was acted upon Magus Muir, near St. Andrews, 3d May, 1679. **+ 

Burly was, of course, obliged to leave Fife; and, upon the 25th of the same month, he arrived in Evandale, in Lanarkshire, along with Hackston, and a fellow called Dingwall, or Daniel, one of the same bloody band. Here he joined his old friend Hamilton, already mentioned; and, as they resolved to take up arms, they were soon at the head of such a body of the "chased and tossed western men," as they thought equal to keep the field. They resolved to commence their exploits upon the 29th of May, 1679, being the anniversary of the Restoration, appointed to be kept as a holyday, by act of Parliament; an institution which they esteemed a presumptious and unholy solemnity. Accordingly, at the head of eighty horse, tolerably appointed, Hamilton, Burly, and Hackston, entered the royal burgh of Rutherglen; extinguished the bonfires made in honour of the day; and burned at the cross the acts of parliament in favour of Prelacy, and for suppression of conventicles, as well as those acts of council which regulated the indulgence granted to Presbyterians. Against all these acts they entered solemn protest, or testimony, as they called it; and, having affixed it to the cross, concluded with prayer and psalms. Being now joined by a large body of foot, so that their strength seems to have amounted to five or six hundred men, though very indifferently armed, they encamped upon Loudon Hill. Claverhouse, who was in garrison at Glasgow, instantly marched against the insurgents, at the head of his own troop of cavalry and others, amounting to about one hundred and fifty men. He arrived at Hamilton on the 1st of June, so unexpectedly, as to make prisoner John King, a famous preacher among the wanderers; and rapidly continued his march, carrying his captive along with him, till he came to the village of Drumclog, about a mile east of Loudon Hill, and twelve miles south-west of Hamilton. At some distance from this place, the insurgents were skilfully posted in a boggy strait, almost inaccesssible to cavalry, having a broad ditch in their front. Claverhouse's dragoons discharged their carabines, and made an attempt to charge; but the nature of the ground threw them into total disorder. Burly, who commanded the handful of horse belonging to the Whigs, instantly led them down on the disordered squadrons of Claverhouse, who were, at the same time, vigorously assaulted by the foot, headed by the gallant Cleland, ***+ and the enthusiastic Hackston. Claverhouse himself was forced to fly, and was in the utmost danger of being taken; his horse's belly being cut open by the stroke of a scythe, so that the poor animal trailed his bowels for more than a mile. In his flight, he passed King, the minister, lately his prisoner, but now deserted by his guard in the general confusion. The preacher hallooed to the flying commander, "to halt, and to take his prisoner with him;" or, as others say, "to stay, and take the afternoon's preaching." Claverhouse, at length remounted, continued his retreat to Glasgow. He lost, in the skirmish, about twenty of his troopers, and his own cornet and kinsman, Robert Graham, whose fate is alluded to in the ballad. Only four of the other side were killed, among whom was Dingwall, or Daniel, an associate of Burly in Sharpe's murder. "The rebels," says Creichton, "finding the cornet's body, and supposing it to be that of Clavers, because the name of Graham was wrought in the shirt-neck, treated it with the utmost inhumanity; cutting off the nose; picking out the eyes; and stabbing it through in a hundred places." The same charge is brought by Guild, in his Bellum Bothwellianum.

Although Burly was among the most active leaders in the action, he was not the commander-in chief, as one would conceive from the ballad. That honour belonged to Robert Hamilton, brother to Sir William Hamilton of Preston, a gentleman, who, like most of those at Drumclog, had imbibed the very wildest principles of fanaticism. The Cameronian account of the insurrection states, that "Mr. Hamilton discovered a great deal of bravery and valour, both in the conflict with, and pursuit of the enemy; but when he and some others were pursuing the enemy, others flew too greedily upon the spoil, small as it was, instead of pursing the victory; and some, without Mr. Hamilton's knowledge and against his strict command, gave five of these bloody enemies quarters, and then let them go; this greatly grieved Mr. Hamilton, when he saw some of Babel's brats spared, after the Lord had delivered them to their hands, that they might dash them against the stones. Psalm cxxxvii. 9. In his own account of this, he reckons the sparing of these enemies, and letting them go, to be among their first stepping aside; for which he feared that the Lord would not honour them to do much more for him; and says, that he was neither for taking favours from, nor giving favours to, the Lord's enemies."

Burly was not a likely man to fall into this sort of backsliding. He disarmed one of the Duke of Hamilton's servants who had been in the action, and desired him to tell his master, he would keep, till meeting, the pistols he had taken from him. The man described Burly to the Duke as a little stout man, squint-eyed, and of a most ferocious aspect; from which it appears that Burly's figure corresponded to his manners, and perhaps gave rise to his nickname - Burly signifying strong. He was with the insurgents till the battle of Bothwell Bridge, and afterwards fled to Holland. He joined the Prince of Orange, but died at sea during the expedition. The Cameronians still believe he had obtained liberty from the Prince to be avenged of those who had persecuted the Lord's people; but, through his death, the laudable design of purging the land with their blood, is supposed to have fallen to the ground. - Life of Balfour of Kintoch.

The consequences of the battle of Loudon Hill will be detailed in the introduction to the next ballad. 


* In the year 1684, Peden, one of the Cameronian preachers, about ten o'clock at night, sitting at the fire-side, started up to his feet, and said, "Flee, auld Sandie (thus he designed himself) and hide yourself; for Colonel --- is coming to this house to apprehend you; and I advise you all to do the like, for he will be here within an hour!" which came to pass; and when they had made a very narrow search, within and without the house, and went round the thorn bush, under which he was lying praying, they went off without their prey. He came in, and said, "And has this gentleman (designed by his name) given poor Sandie, and thir poor things, such a fright? For this night's work, God shall give him such a blow, within a few days, that all the physicians on earth shall not be able to cure;" which came to pass, for he died in great misery. - Life of Alexander Peden.
** See the life of this booted apostle of prelacy, written by Swift, who had collected all his anecdotes of persecution, and appears to have enjoyed them accordingly. {Scott's edition of Swift, vol x. p. 101.} 
*** "They raved," says Peden's historian, "like fleshly devils, when the mist shrouded from their pursuit the wandering Whigs." One gentleman closed a declaration of vengeance against the conventiclers, with this strange imprecation, "Or may the devil make my ribs a gridiron to my soul!" - MS Account of the Presbytery of Penpont. Our armies swore terribly in Flanders, but nothing to this.
+ Peden complained heavily, that, after a heavy struggle with the devil, he had got above him, spur-galled him hard, and obtained a wind to carry him from Ireland to Scotland, when, behold! another person had set sail, and reaped the advantage of his prayer-wind before he could embark.
++ Cleland thus describes this extraordinary army:

-"Those who were their chief commanders,
As such who bore the pirnie standards,
Who led the van and drove the rear,
Were right well mounted of their gear;
With brogues, and trews, and pirnie plaids,
With good blue bonnets on their heads,
Which, on the one side, had a flipe,
Adorn'd with a tobacco-pipe,
With durk, and snap-work, and snuff-mill,
A bag, which they with onions fill;
And, as their strict observers say,
A tup-horn filled with usquebay;
A slasht-out coat beneath their plaides,
A targe of timber, nails, and hides;
With a long two-handed sword,
As good's the country can afford.
Had they not need of bulk and bones,
Who fought with all these arms at on.

Of mortal honestie they're clean,
Nought like religion they retain;
In nothing they're accounted sharp,
Except in bag-pipe, and in harp;
For a misobliging word,
She'll durk her neighbour o'er the boord,
And then she'll flee like fire from flint,
She'll scarcely ward the second dint;
If any ask her of her thrift,
Forsooth her nainsell lives by thrift."
CLELAND'S Poems, Edin, 1697, p. 12. 

+++ It was, and is believed, that the devil furnished his favourites, among the persecutors, with what is called proof against leaden bullets, but against those only. During the battle of Pentland Hills, Paton of Meadowhead conceived he saw the bullets hop harmlessly down from General Dalziel's boots, and, to counteract the spell, loaded his pistol with a piece of silver coin. But Dalzeil, having his eye on him, drew back behind his servant, who was shot dead - Paton's Life. At a skirmish in Ayrshire, some of the wanderers defended themselves in a sequestered house, by the side of a lake. They aimed repeatedly, but in vain, at the commander of the assailants, an English officer, until, their ammunition running short, one of them loaded his piece with the ball at the head of the tongs, and succeeded in shooting the hitherto impenetrable captain. To accommodate Dundee's fate in their own hypothesis, the Cameronian tradition runs, that in the battle of Killiecrankie he fell, not by the enemy's fire, but by the pistol of one of his own servants, who, to avoid the spell, had loaded it with a silver button from his coat. One of their writers argues thus, "Perhaps some may think this, anent proof shot, a paradox. And be ready to object here, as formerly, concerning Bishop Sharpe and Dalziel - How can the devil have, or give, power to save life? Without entering upon the thing in its reality, I shall only observe, 1. That it is neither in his power or of his nature, to be a saviour of men's lives; he is called Apollyon, the destroyer. 2. That, even in this case, he is said only to give enchantment against one kind of metal, and this does not save life; for, though lead could not take Sharpe and Claverhouse's lives, yet steel and silver could do it; and, for Dalziel, though he died not on the field, yet he did not escape the arrows of the Almighty." - God's Judgment against Persecutors. If the reader be not now convinced of the thing in its reality, I have nothing to add to such exquisite reasoning. 
*+ They believed Sharpe to be proof against shot; for one of the two murderers told Wodrow, that at the sight of cold iron his courage fell. They no longer doubted this, when they found in his pocket a small clew of silk, rolled round a bit of parchment, marked with two long words, in Hebrew or Chaldaic characters. Accordingly, it is still averred that the balls only left blue marks on the prelate's neck and breast although the discharge was at least as near as to burn his clothes. 
**+ The question, whether the Bishop of St. Andrew's death was murder, was a shibboleth, or experimentum cruces, frequently put to the apprehended conventiclers. Isabel Alison, executed at Edinburgh, 26th January, 1681, was interrogated before the Privy Council, if she conversed with David Hackston? "I answered, I did converse with him, and I bless the Lord that ever I saw him; for I never saw ought in him but a godly pious youth. They asked, if the killing of the Bishop of St. Andrews was a pious act? I answered, I never heard him say he killed him; but, if God moved any, and put it upon them to execute his righteous judgment upon him, I have nothing to say to that. They asked me, when saw ye John Balfour, (Burly) that pious youth! I answered, I have seen him. They asked, when? I answered, these are frivolous questions. I am not bound to answer them." - Cloud of Witnesses, p. 85.
***+ William Cleland, a man of considerable genius, was author of several poems published in 1691. His Hudibrastic verses are poor scurrilous trash, as the reader may judge from the description of the Highlanders, already quoted. But, in a wild rhapsody entitled, "Hollo, my Fancy," he displays some imagination. His anti-monarchical principles seem to break out in the following lines: -

"Fain would I know (if beasts have any reason)
If falcons killing eagles do commit treason."

He was s strict non-conformist, and, after the Revolution, became lieutenant-colonel of the Earl of Angus' regiment, called the Cameronian regiment. He was killed 21st August, 1689, in the churchyard of Dunkeld, which his corps manfully and successfully defended against a superior body of Highlanders. His son was the author of the letter prefixed to the Dunciad, and is said to have been the notorious Cleland, who in circumstances of pecuniary embarrassment, prostituted his talents to the composition of indecent and infamous works; but this seems inconsistent with dates, and the latter personage was probably the grandson of Colonel Cleland. 

THE BATTLE OF LOUDON HILL

You'l marvel when I tell ye o',
Our noble Burly, and his train;
When last he march'd up through the land,
Wi' sax-and-twenty Westland men.

Than they I ne'er o' braver heard,
For they had a' baith wit and skill;
They proved right well, as I heard tell,
As they cam up o'er Loudon Hill.

Weel prosper a' the gospel lads,
That are into the west countrie;
Ye wicked Claver'se to demean,
And aye an ill deid may he die!

For he's drawn up i' battle rank,
An' that baith soon an' hastilie;
But they wha live till simmer come,
Some bludie days for this will see.

But up spak cruel Claver'se then,
Wi' hastie wit, an' wicked skill;
"Gae fire on yon Weslan' men;
I think it is my sov-reign's will."

But up bespake his Cornet, then,
It's be wi' nae consent o' me!
I ken I'll ne'er come back again,
An' mony mae as weel as me.

"There is not ane of a' yon men,
But wha is worthy other three;
There is na ane amang them a',
That in his cause will stap to die.

"An' as for Burly, him I knaw;
He's a man of honour, birth, and fame;
Gie him a sword into his hand,
He'll fight thysell an' other ten." -

But up spake wicked Claver'se, then,
I wat his heart it raise fu' hie!
And he has cried that a' might hear.
"Man, ye hae sair deceived me.

"I never ken'd the like afore,
Na, never since I came frae hame,
That you sae cowardly here suld prove,
An' yet come of a noble Graeme." -

But up bespake his Cornet, then,
"Since that it is your honour's will, 
Mysell shall be the foremost man,
That shall gie fire on Loudon Hill -

"At your command I'll lead them on,
But yet wi' nae consent o' me;
For weel I ken I'll ne'er return,
And mony mae as weel as me." -

Then up he drew in battle rank;
I wat he had a bonny train!
But the first time that bullets flew,
Aye he lost twenty o' his men.

Then back he came the way he gaed,
I wat right soon and suddenly!
He gave command amang his men,
And sent them back, and bade them flee.

Then up came Burly, bauld an' stout,
Wi's little train o' Westland men;
Wha mair than either ance or twice
In Edinburgh confined had been.

They hae been up to London sent,
An' yet they're a come safely down;
Sax troop o' horsemen they hae beat,
And chased them into Glasgow town.