. The author was very much struck by the
answer made to him by the last-mentioned lady, when he paid her some compliment
on the readiness which she showed in equipping her son with the means of meeting
danger, when she might have left him a fair excuse for remaining absent. »Sir,«
she replied, with the spirit of a Roman matron, »none can know better than you
that my son is the only prop by which, since his father's death, our family is
supported. But I would rather see him dead on that hearth, than hear that he had
been a horse's length behind his companions in the defence of his king and
country.« The author mentions what was immediately under his own eye, and within
his own knowledge; but the spirit was universal, wherever the alarm reached,
both in Scotland and England.
The account of the ready patriotism displayed by the country on this occasion,
warmed the hearts of Scottishmen in every corner of the world. It reached the
ears of the well-known Dr. Leyden, whose enthusiastic love of Scotland, and of
his own district of Teviotdale, formed a distinguished part of his character.
The account which was read to him when on a sickbed, stated (very truly) that
the different corps, on arriving at their alarm-posts, announced themselves by
their music playing the tunes peculiar to their own districts, many of which
have been gathering-signals for centuries. It was particularly remembered, that
the Liddesdale men, before mentioned, entered Kelso playing the lively tune -
 
O wha dare meddle wi' me,
And wha dare meddle wi' me!
My name it is little Jock Elliot,
And wha dare meddle wi' me!
 
The patient was so delighted with this display of ancient Border spirit, that he
sprung up in his bed, and began to sing the old song with such vehemence of
action and voice, that his attendants, ignorant of the cause of excitation,
concluded that the fever had taken possession of his brain; and it was only the
entry of another Borderer, Sir John Malcolm, and the explanation which he was
well qualified to give, that prevented them from resorting to means of medical
coercion.
The circumstances of this false alarm and its consequences may be now held of
too little importance even for a note upon a work of fiction; but, at the period
when it happened, it was hailed by the country as a propitious omen, that the
national force, to which much must naturally have been trusted, had the spirit
to look in the face
