To feed my men and me.

The deer rins wild frae dale to dale,
The birds fly wild frae tree to tree,
And there is neither bread nor kale,
To fend my men and me.


These seem to me sound true ballad lines, like -


My hounds may a' rin masterless
My hawks may fly frae tree to tree,


in Child's variant of Young Beichan. The speakers, we see, are
"inverted." Percy, in the English, promises Douglas's men pheasants--
absurd provision for the army of 40,000 men of the English ballad. In
the Ettrick text Douglas says that there are no supplies, merely ferae
naturae, but he will wait at Otterburn to give Percy his chance.

Colonel Elliot takes the inversion of parts as a proof of modern
pilfering and deliberate change to hide the theft; at least he mentions
them, and the "prettier verses," with a note of exclamation (!). {73a}
But there are, we repeat, similar inversions in the English and in
Herd's old copy, and nobody says that Scott or Hogg or any modern faker
made the inversions in Herd's text. The differences and inversions in
the English and in Herd are very ancient; by 1550 "the Percy and the
Montgomery met," in the line quoted in The Complaynte of Scotland. At