It was an age of the nom de guerre. The Scotsman Sir William Douglas was called
“the Bold” or “the Hardy,” and his son, Sir James, “the Good” or (due to his
swarthy complexion) “the Black.” Their great enemy, King Edward I of England,
was earning his own moniker, “The Hammer of the Scots,” when the
twenty-year-old James appeared on the scene, returning from exile in France
after his father’s imprisonment and death.
King Edward had confiscated the Douglas
lands and given them to Sir Robert Clifford, an Englishman whose title Lord
Warden of the Marches gave him the authority to treat all Scots with
impunity. Therefore, despite the best
efforts of William Lamberton, the Bishop
of St. Andrews—who accompanied young Douglas to meet with the king during the
siege of Stirling—it should come as no surprise that Edward gave a “nothing
doing” reply. He kept the lands for
Clifford, that is sure, but he earned for himself a formidable enemy, as will
be seen anon.
Then, in 1307, Douglas began to earn
a singular reputation as a stalwart and crafty leader. The English commander Sir John Mowbray had
passed into Scotland and was making his way northward on the west coast of
Ayrshire with 1,000 soldiers, mounted and armed. Greatly outnumbered with only
60 men, Douglas devised a clever stratagem by which he might succeed. Knowing that the English would have to pass
sooner or later through the area around Kilmarnock, he chose to hide in ambush
around a narrow pass, both sides of which were lined with marshy bogs that were
pure treachery for men on horseback.
As the fourteenth-century Scottish poet
John Barbour told it in his epic poem The
Brus:
Thai baid in buschement all the nycht,
And
quhen the sone was schynand brycht
Thai
saw in bataillyng cum arayit
The
vaward with baner displayit . . . .
They waited in ambush all the night
And when the sun was shining bright
They saw in battlements come
arrayed
The vanward with banner displayed
. . . .
Remaining quiet and allowing Mowbray and
some of his men to pass through as if nothing was afoot, they suddenly
attacked, soon filling the narrow passageway with dead Englishmen and their horses. This effectively obstructed any retreat on
Mowbray’s part and forced the flight of those who had been separated from him. In
the melee, Mowbray managed to escape and make his way northwest to Inverkip:
Richt till the castell that ves then
Stuffit all with yngliſh men.
Right
to the castle that was then
Stuffed
all with English men.
Syne till a strait place gan he ga
That
is in Makyrnokis way,
The
Edirford it hat perfay,
It
lyis betwix marrais twa
Quhar
that na hors on lyve may ga.
On
the south halff quhar James was
Is
ane upgang, a narow pas,
And
on the north halff is the way
Sa
ill as it apperis today.
Then to a narrow place did he go
That is in Makernokis way,
The Ederford it is called indeed
It lies between morasses two
Where that no horse alive may go
On the south half where James was
Is a slope, a narrow pass,
And on the north half is the way
So evil as it appears today.
Though fun to read, the lines are a bit frustrating as they do not tell
exactly where this confrontation occurred.
I have been unable to turn up any map of Scotland that shows the
location of Edirford (spelled
variously as Edyrford and Ederford ). George Eyre Todd, one of Barbour’s
“translators,” speculated that Makynokis
Way could refer to the “Maich and Garnock Way,” a reference to two streams that flow into Kilbirnie
Loch. Apparently, there was an old ford, he said, across “Maich Water among the
marshes at the loch” [see illustration].
It is a pity some enterprising Douglas, like a Schliemann looking for Troy,
does not follow the clues and raise a statue in Ayrshire to his doughty
ancestor, Sir James—the Good, the Black.
Sources:
Barbour,
John. The Brus. Ed. A. A. M. Duncan. Online.
Accessed
17 Feb 2013.
“The
Exploits of the Good Sir James.” Electric Scotland. Online.
Accessed
17 Feb 2013.
Fraser, William, Sir. The Douglas Book. (1885) p. 160. Online.
Accessed 17 Feb 2013.
Old Roads of
Scotland.
Online.
Accessed
17 Feb 2013.
