ORD SOULIS. This ballad is the composition of John Ley. den; it was first published in the "Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border," and subsequently, in the collected works of the estimable and accomplished writer. The hero of the story is supposed to be William Lord Soulis, who was of royal descent, and who entered, with several other nobles of rank, into a conspiracy against Robert de Bruce, the object of which was the elevation of Soulis to the Scottish throne.* "Local tradition," writes Sir Walter Scott, "more faithful to the popular sentiment than history, has recorded the character of the chief, and attributed to him many actions which seem to correspond with that character. His portrait is by no means flattering; uniting every quality which could render strength formidable, and cruelty detestable. Combining prodigious bodily strength with cruelty, avarice, dissimulation, and treachery, is it surprising that a people, who attributed every event of life, in a great measure, to the interference of good or evil spirits, should have added to such a character the mystical horrors of sorcery? Thus, he is represented as a cruel tyrant and sorcerer; constantly employed in oppressing his vassals, harassing his neighbours, and fortifying his Castle of Hermitage against the King of Scotland; for which purpose he employed all means, human and infernal; invoking the fiends by his incantations, and forcing his vassals to drag materials, like beasts of burden. Tradition proceeds to relate, that the Scottish King, irritated by reiterated complaints, peevishly exclaimed to the petitioners, Boil him if you please, but let me hear no more of him.' Satisfied with this answer, they proceeded with the utmost haste to execute the commission; which they accomplished by boiling him alive on the Nine-stane Rig, in a cauldron, said to have been long preserved at Skelf-hill, a hamlet betwixt Hawick and the Hermitage. Messengers, it is said, were immediately despatched by the King, to prevent the effects of such a hasty declaration: but they only arrived in time to witness the conclusion of the ceremony. The Castle of Hermitage, unable to support the load of iniquity which had been long accumulating within its walls, is supposed to have partly sunk beneath the ground; and its ruins are still regarded by the peasants with peculiar aversion and terror. The door of the chamber, where Lord Soulis is said to have held his conferences with the evil spirits, is supposed to be opened once in seven years, by that demon to which, when he left the castle never to return, he committed the keys, by throwing them over his left shoulder, and desiring it to keep them till his return. Into this chamber, which is really the dungeon of the castle, the peasant is afraid to look; for such is the active * One of his accomplices, David de Brechin, was executed. He was nephew to the king, and his only crime was his having concealed the treason in which he disdained to participate." As the people thronged to the execution of the gallant youth, they were bitterly rebuked by Sir Ingram de Umfraville, an English or Norman knight, then a favourite follower of Robert Bruce. Why press you,' said he,' to see the dismal catastrophe of so generous a knight? I have seen ye throng as eagerly around him to share his bounty, as now to behold his death.' With these words he turned from the scene of blood, and, repairing to the king, craved leave to sell his Scottish possessions, and to retire from the country. My heart,' said Umfraville, will not, for the wealth of the world, permit me to dwell any longer, where I have seen such a knight die by the hands of the executioner.' With the king's leave, he interred the body of David de Brechin, sold his lands and left Scotland for ever. The story is beautifully told by Barbour, Book 19th."

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malignity of its inmate, that a willow inserted at the chinks of the door, is found peeled, or stripped of its bark, when drawn back. The Nine-stane Rig, where Lord Soulis was boiled, is a declivity, about one mile in breadth and four in length, descending upon the Water of Hermitage, from the range of hills which separate Liddesdale and Teviotdale. It derives its name from one of those circles of large stones, which are termed Druidical, nine of which remained to a late period. Five of these stones are still visible; and two are particularly pointed out, as those which supported the iron bar upon which the fatal cauldron was suspended."

The ruins of the Castle of Hermitage still exist; and still, according to Stephen Oliver-"Rambles in Northumberland, and on the Scottish Border,”—the neighbouring peasantry whisper of the evil spirit believed to be confined there, and who, after locking the door of the dungeon, had thrown the key over his shoulder into the stream. The author also states that the cauldron, the muckle pot in which Soulis was reported to have been boiled, is an old kail-pot, of no very extraordinary size, which was purchased by some of the rebel army in 1715. The castle is now the property of the Duke of Buccleugh. It was, in 1546, the residence of the Earl of Bothwell; and here Queen Mary is said to have visited him, riding from Jedburg to Hermitage, and back again, in one day. The Earl was lying ill of a wound received from John Elliot of the Park, a desperate freebooter, whom he had attempted to apprehend.

Sir Walter Scott considers that the idea of Lord Soulis' familiar was derived from the curious story of the "Spirit Orthone and the Lord of Corasse," which he prints in a note to the ballad, "in all its Gothic simplicity, as translated from Froissart, by the Lord of Berners." Orthone enters the service of the knight:

"So this spyrite Orthone loved so the knyght, that oftentymes he would come and vysyte him, while he lay in his bedde aslepe, and outher pull him by the eare, or els stryke at his chambre dore or windowe. And whan the knyght awoke, than he would saye, Orthone lat me slepe.' Nay,' quod Orthone, that I will nat do, tyll I have shewed thee such tydinges as are fallen a-late.' The ladye, the knyghtes wife, wolde be sore afrayed, that her heer wald stand up, and hyde herself under the clothes. Than the knyght wolde saye, Why, what tydinges hast thou brought me?' Quod Orthone, I am come out of England, or out of Hungry, or some other place, and yesterday I came hens, and such things are fallen, or such other.'"

The connection between them was broken by the knight unwisely desiring to see the form of the spirit, with whose voice he had become familiar. Orthone appeared before him in the semblance of "a leane and yvell favoured sow." The knight set his hounds upon it, at which the spirit took offence, and never afterwards came to the "bedde syde" of the lord.

"The formation of ropes of sand, according to popular tradition, was a work of such difficulty, that it was assigned by Michael Scott to a number of spirits, for which it was necessary for him to find some interminable employment. Upon discovering the futility of their attempts to accomplish the work assigned, they petitioned their taskmaster to be allowed to mingle a few handfuls of barley-chaff with the sand. On his refusal, they were forced to leave untwisted the ropes which they had shaped. Such is the traditionary hypothesis of the vermicular ridges of the sand on the shore of the sea."