[A composite volume : containing The ballads and songs of Ayrshire ...

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THE NOBLE FAMILY OF MONTGOMERIE.
" He had a bow bent in his hand,
Made of a trusty tree,
An arrow of a cloth-yard long
Unto the head drew he.
" Against Sir Hugh Montgomerie,
So right his shaft he set.
The gray goose wing that was thereon,
In his heart-blood was wet."
Sir Walter Scott admits that the Minstrelsy ballad is inaccurate in several
particulars. But it is worthy of remark, that the inaccuracies alluded to
occur in all the ballads. "Earl Percy" is invariably spoken of as having
been present, which, according to the most authentic accounts of the affair,*
was not the case. Sir Henry Percy, eldest son of the Earl, better known \
as Hotspur, and his brother Ralph, led on the English forces. Both were
taken prisoners—Hotspur by the Montgomerie ; but whether by Sir Hugh I
or John—or whether the latter was the son or a younger brother of the
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former—it is impossible to decide.
All the metrical accounts of the battle
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\ were evidently composed long after the event itself; and tradition is sel-
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dom
precise in matters of detail. But that Hotspur was taken prisoner
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by one of the family of Montgomerie, is a fact apparently too well estab-
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lished by concurrent testimony to be disputed. According to Crawford's
genealogy, that individual was the John de Montgomerie already men-
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I tioned, who, he states, lost his eldest son. Sir Hugh, in the battle, thus i
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differing essentially from the Montgomerie ballad as to the propinquity of «
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the two Montgomeries. The descendants of the heir of Otterbourne, on \
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whom the titles of Baron Montgomerie and Earl of Eglintoun were re-
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spectively conferred in 1448 and 1607, continued in possession in a direct
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male line down to Hugh, the fifth Earl, who, dying without issue, was I
! succeeded by his cousin and heir, Sir Alexander Seton of Foulstruther,
whose mother, Lady Margaret, was daughter of Hugh, the third Earl of
i Eglintoun, and who assumed the name of Montgomerie. In consequence
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! of this connection, the noble house of Seton, as well as Montgomerie, is ;
* Scott, in remarking this blunder, does not observe that the historians—Fordun, i
Froissart, and others—fall into a similar error in stating that " Harry Percy himself
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\ was taken by Lord Montgomerie"—a title which none of the family possessed at that
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\ time.
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