The poetical works of Sir Walter Scott, with memoir of the author.

CANTO III.] ROKEBY. 117
Announcing Jedwood-axe and spear,
And Lid'sdale riders in the rear;
And well his venturous life had proved
The lessons that his childhood loved.
III.
Oft had he shown, in climes afar
Each attribute of roving war;
The sharpen'd ear, the piercing eye,
The quick resolve in danger nigh;
The speed, that in the flight or chase,
Outstripp'd the Charib's rapid race;
The steady brain, the sinewy limb,
To leap, to climb, to dive, to swim;
The iron frame, inured to bear
Each dire inclemency of air,
generally addicted to rapine, that no faith should be reposed
in those proceeding from " such lewde and wicked progenitors." This regulation continued to stand unrepealed until
1771. A beggar, in an old play, describes himself as " born
in Redesdale, in Northumberland, and come of a wight-riding
surname, called the Robsons, good honest men and true,
saving a little shifting for their living, God help them! "-a
description which would have applied to most Borderers on
both sides.
Reidswair, famed for a skirmish to which it gives name
[see Border Minstrelsy, vol. ii. p. 15,] is on the very edge of
the Carter-Fell, which divides England from Scotland. The
Rooken is a place upon Reedwater. Bertram, being described
as a native of these dales, where the habits of hostile depredation long survived the union of the crowns, may have
been, in some degree, prepared by education for the exercise
of a similar trade in the wars of the Buccaneers.