The
inveteracy of this custom may be inferred from the following
incident:--
Bernard Gilpin, the apostle of the north, the first who undertook
to preach the Protestant doctrines to the Border dalesmen, was
surprised, on entering one of their churches, to see a gauntlet
or mail-glove hanging above the altar. Upon inquiring; the
meaning of a symbol so indecorous being displayed in that sacred
place, he was informed by the clerk that the glove was that of a
famous swordsman, who hung it there as an emblem of a general
challenge and gage of battle to any who should dare to take the
fatal token down. "Reach it to me," said the reverend churchman.
The clerk and the sexton equally declined the perilous office,
and the good Bernard Gilpin was obliged to remove the glove with
his own hands, desiring those who were present to inform the
champion that he, and no other, had possessed himself of the gage
of defiance. But the champion was as much ashamed to face
Bernard Gilpin as the officials of the church had been to
displace his pledge of combat.
The date of the following story is about the latter years of
Queen Elizabeth's reign; and the events took place in Liddesdale,
a hilly and pastoral district of Roxburghshire, which, on a part
of its boundary, is divided from England only by a small river.
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