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

70 THE LAY OF [CANTO II.
"And, darest thou, Warrior! seek to see
What heaven and hell alike would hide?
My breast, in belt of iron pent,
With shirt of hair and scourge of thorn;
For threescore years, in penance spent,
My knees those flinty stones have worn;
Yet all too little to atone
For knowing what should ne'er be known.
Would'st thou thy every future year
In ceaseless prayer and penance drie,
Yet wait thy latter end with fearThen, daring Warrior, follow me!"
VI.
"Penance, father, will I none;
Prayer know I hardly one;
For mass or prayer can I rarely tarry,
Save to patter an Ave Mary,
When I ride on a Border foray.'
Other prayer can I none;
So speed me my errand, and let me be gone."1 The Borderers were, as may be supposed, very ignorant
about religious matters. Colville, in his Paranesis, or Admonition, states, that the reformed divines were so far from
undertaking distant journeys to convert the Heathen, "as I
wold wis at God that ye wold only go bot to the Hielands and
Borders of our own realm, to gain our awin countreymen,
who, for lack of preching and ministration of the sacraments,
must, with tyme, becum either infidells, or atheists." But
we learn, from Lesley, that, however deficient in real religion,
they regularly told their beads, and never with more zeal
than when going on a plundering expedition.