CHEVY-CHASE.

[Percy, Earl of Northumberland, had vowed to hunt for three days in the Scottish border, without condescending to ask leave from Earl Douglas, who was either lord of the soil or lord warden of the Marches. This provoked the conflict which was celebrated in the old ballad of the "Hunting a' the Cheviot." The circumstances of the battle of Otterbourne (A. D. 1388) are woven into the ballad and the affairs of the two events confounded. The ballad preserved in the Percy Reliques is probably as old as 1574- The one following is a modernized form of the time of James I.]

GOD prosper long our noble king,

Our lives and safeties all;

A woful hunting once there did
In Chevy-Chase befall.

To drive the deer with hound and horn
Earl Percy took his way;

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

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

His pleasure in the Scottish woods
Three summer days to take,
The chiefest harts in Chevy-Chase
To kill and bear away.
These tidings to Earl Douglas came,
In Scotland where he lay;
Who sent Earl Percy present word
He would prevent his sport.
The English earl, not fearing that,
Did to the woods resort,
With fifteen hundred bowmen bold,
All chosen men of might,
Who knew full well in time of need
To aim their shafts aright.
The gallant greyhounds swiftly ran
To chase the fallow deer;
On Monday they began to hunt
When daylight did appear;

And long before high noon they had
A hundred fat bucks slain;
Then, having dined, the drovers went
To rouse the deer again.

The bowmen mustered on the hills,
Well able to endure;

And all their rear, with special care,
That day was guarded sure.

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

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

Lord Percy to the quarry went,

To view the slaughtered deer;
Quoth he, "Earl Douglas promised
This day to meet me here;

"But if I thought he would not come,
No longer would I stay";
With that a brave young gentleman
Thus to the earl did say :-

"Lo, yonder doth Earl Douglas come,
His men in armor bright;
Full twenty hundred Scottish spears
All marching in our sight;

"All men of pleasant Teviotdale,
Fast by the river Tweed ";

"Then cease your sports," Earl Percy said, "And take your bows with speed;

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

"That ever did on horseback come,
But if my hap it were,

I durst encounter man for man,
With him to break a spear."

Earl Douglas on his milk-white steed,
Most like a baron bold,

Rode foremost of his company,
Whose armor shone like gold.

"Show me," said he, "whose men you be, That hunt so boldly here,

That, without my consent, do chase

And kill my fallow-deer."