William Douglas, the Knight of Liddesdale, who figures in the foregoing ballad (No, 159) was assassinated in 1353, while hunting in Ettrick forest, by his kinsman and godson, William Lord Douglas. According to the Scotichronicon, the motive was said to be revenge for the death by starvation of Alexander Ramsay and the murder of Sir David Berkeley. Hume of Godscroft considers the motive assigned to be quite unnatural, and at best a pretence. A ballad known to him gave a different account. "The Lord of Liddesdale, being at his pastime, hunting in Attrick forest, is beset by William Earle of Douglas, and such as hee had ordained for that purpose, and there assailed, wounded, and slain, beside Galsewood, in the year 1353; upon a jealousie that the Earle had conceived of him with his lady, as the report goeth, for so sayes the old song." After citing the stanza which follows, Hume goes on to say: "The song also declareth how shee did write her love-letters to Liddisdale, to disswade him from that hunting. It tells likewise the manner of the taking of his men, and his owne killing at Galsewood, and how hee was carried the first night to Lindin Kirk, a mile from Selkirk, and was buried within the Abbacie of Melrose."
"The sole basis for this statement of Hume's," says Sir William Fraser(The Douglas Book, i, 223 f., 1885), "seems to be the anonymous Border ballad, part of which he quotes, to which he adds the tradition that the lady wrote to her lover to dissuade him from that hunting. Apart from the fact that this tradition is opposed to contemporary history, which states that Sir William was wholly unsuspicious of danger, the story told by Godscroft is otherwise erroneous... Douglas was not created earl until 2(ith January, 1357-8, and there was therefore no 'Countess of Douglas' to wail for the Knight of Liddesdale. Douglas's only wife was Lady Margaret of Mar, who survived him. Douglass had no countess of the family of March in 1353, while it is doubtful if at that date he was married. Popular tradition is therefore at fault in assigning matrimonial jealousy as a motive for killing the Knight of Liddesdale.''
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