The stream runs furiously
among huge rocks, which has occasioned a popular saying--
Was ne'er are drown'd in Tarras, nor yet in doubt,
For e'er the head can win down, the harns (brains) are out.
The morass itself is so deep, that, according to an old historian, two
spears tied together would not reach the bottom. In this retreat, the
Armstrongs, _anno_ 1588, baffled the Earl of Angus, when lieutenant
on the Border, although he reckoned himself so skilful in winding a
thief, that he declared, "he had the same pleasure in it, as others in
a hunting a hare." On this occasion he was totally unsuccessful, and
nearly lost his relation, Douglas of Ively, whom the freebooters made
prisoner.--_Godscroft_ Vol. II. p. 411.
[Footnote 110: In illustration of this position, the reader is
referred to a long correspondence betwixt Lord Dacre and the Privy
Council of England, in 1550, concerning one Sandye Armstrang, a
partizan of England, and an inhabitant of the Debateable Land, who
had threatened to become a Scottishman, if he was not protected by
the English warden against the Lord Maxwell.--See _Introduction to
Nicholson and Burn's History of Cumberland and Westmoreland_.]
Upon another occasion the Armstrongs were less fortunate. They had,
in one of their incursions, plundered the town of Haltwhistle, on the
borders of Cumberland.
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