They seemed stationed there to be spectators of the engagement, by which their own fate, as well as that of their parents, husbands, and sons, was to be decided.

Like the females of the ancient German tribes, the shrill cries which they raised, when they beheld the glittering ranks of their enemy appear on the brow of the opposing eminence, acted as an incentive to their relatives to fight to the last in defence of that which was dearest to them.

Such exhortations seemed to have their full and emphatic effect; for a wild halloo, which went from rank to rank on the appearance of the soldiers, intimated the resolution of the insurgents to fight to the uttermost.
As the horsemen halted their lines on the ridge of the hill, their trumpets and kettle-drums sounded a bold and warlike flourish of menace and defiance, that rang along the waste like the shrill summons of a destroying angel.

The wanderers, in answer, united their voices, and sent forth, in solemn modulation, the two first verses of the seventy-sixth Psalm, according to the metrical version of the Scottish Kirk: "In Judah's land God is well known, His name's in Israel great: In Salem is his tabernacle, In Zion is his seat.
There arrows of the bow he brake, The shield, the sword, the war.
More glorious thou than hills of prey, More excellent art far." A shout, or rather a solemn acclamation, attended the close of the stanza; and after a dead pause, the second verse was resumed by the insurgents, who applied the destruction of the Assyrians as prophetical of the issue of their own impending contest:-- "Those that were stout of heart are spoil'd, They slept their sleep outright; And none of those their hands did find, That were the men of might.
When thy rebuke, O Jacob's God, Had forth against them past, Their horses and their chariots both Were in a deep sleep cast." There was another acclamation, which was followed by the most profound silence.
While these solemn sounds, accented by a thousand voices, were prolonged amongst the waste hills, Claverhouse looked with great attention on the ground, and on the order of battle which the wanderers had adopted, and in which they determined to await the assault.
"The churls," he said, "must have some old soldiers with them; it was no rustic that made choice of that ground." "Burley is said to be with them for certain," answered Lord Evandale, "and also Hackston of Rathillet, Paton of Meadowhead, Cleland, and some other men of military skill." "I judged as much," said Claverhouse, "from the style in which these detached horsemen leapt their horses over the ditch, as they returned to their position.

It was easy to see that there were a few roundheaded troopers amongst them, the true spawn of the old Covenant.