I think that for narrative speed, pathos and use of dialogue this week’s offering, ‘The Baron o’ Brackley’ (Child 203) ranks among the finest of the Scots ballads, at least in this punchy version (there are other wordier texts). It is apparently based on a real incident, when in 1666 John Farquaharson of Inveray killed John Gordon of Brackley, head of Clan Gordon, in a feud over some stolen cattle.

It is not hard to follow. Inveray turns up at Brackley’s gates and invites him to come out and be killed. Knowing that he is greatly outnumbered (in this version he has only his brother for support against Inveray and thirty-three of his men) Brackley reasonably enough decides that he would rather stay in bed, but his wife Peggy (who turns out to be in cahoots with Inveray), taunts him with cowardice and calls on her serving-maids to fight instead: ‘take up your rocks, lassies, and fight a’ like men’. (This doesn’t mean pick up stones: ‘rocks’ in this sense means distaffs, the things you spin wool on). This shames Brackley enough that he and his brother ride out and are duly cut down. (One feels a bit for the brother, whose loyalty to his sibling is not even rewarded in the poem with a name). Peggy then opens the gates to let Inveray in, serves him food, lets him stay the night and advises him on the best route home the next morning to avoid a potential posse of avenging Gordons. Of course, we don’t know what the state of the Brackley marriage had been, but the ballad-maker leaves us in no doubt that he thinks this has all been a pretty poor show on her part.

The ballad, which has a fine tune to go with it, has been covered by many folk artists, as can be found on YouTube, often with words that vary somewhat from those below. I favour the Ray Fisher version.

yates: gates
gar: make
spin: spill
kye: cattle
gang: go
graith: gear, armour
laith: loth
bann: curse
riving: tearing
syne: then
ha: hall         

The Baron O’ Brackley

O Inverey came down Dee side, whistling and playing;
He’s landed at Braikly’s yates at the day dawing.
Says, Baron of Braikly, are ye within?
There’s sharp swords at the yate will gar your blood spin.

The lady raise up, to the window she went;
She heard her kye lowing oer hill and oer bent.
‘O rise up, John,’ she says, ‘Turn back your kye;
They’re oer the hills rinning, they’re skipping away.’
‘Come to your bed, Peggie, and let the kye rin,
For were I to gang out, I would never get in.’

Then she’s cry’d on her women, they quickly came ben:
‘Take up your rocks, lassies, and fight a’ like men.
‘Though I’m but a woman, to head you I’ll try,
Nor let these vile Highland-men steal a’ our kye.’

Then up gat the baron, and cry’d for his graith;
Says, ‘Lady, I’ll gang, tho to leave you I’m laith.
Come, kiss me, my Peggie, nor think I’m to blame;
For I may well gang out, but I’ll never win in.’

When the Baron of Braikly rade through the close,
A gallanter baron neer mounted a horse.
Tho there came wi Inverey thirty and three,
There was nane wi bonny Braikly but his brother and he.
Twa gallanter Gordons did never sword draw;
But against four and thirty, wae’s me, what was twa?

Wi swords and wi daggers they did him surround,
And they’ve pierc’d bonny Braikly wi mony a wound.
Frae the head of the Dee to the banks of the Spey,
The Gordons may mourn him, and bann Inverey.

‘O came ye by Braikly, and was ye in there?
Or saw ye his Peggy dear riving her hair?’
‘O I came by Braikly, and I was in there,
But I saw not his Peggy dear riving her hair.’

‘O fye on ye, lady! how could ye do sae?
You opend your yate to the faus Inverey.’
She eat wi him, drank wi him, welcomed him in;
She welcomed the villain that slew her baron.
She kept him till morning, syne bad him be gane,
And showd him the road that he woud na be tane.

‘Thro Birss and Aboyne,’ she says, ‘lyin in a tour,
Oer the hills of Glentanor you’ll skip in an hour.’
There is grief in the kitchen, and mirth in the ha,
But the Baron of Braikly is dead and awa.

Anon