It is to be considered, however, that the old broader
pronunciation of some letters developed some syllables and the
swiftness of speech slurred over others, which will account for many
an apparent halt in the music of what was actually, on the lips of the
ballad-singer, a good metrical line.
"Chevy Chase" is, most likely, a corruption of the French word
chevauchee, which meant a dash over the border for destruction and
plunder within the English pale. Chevauchee was the French equivalent
to the Scottish border raid. Close relations between France and
Scotland arose out of their common interest in checking movements
towards their conquest by the kings of England, and many French words
were used with a homely turn in Scottish common speech. Even that
national source of joy, "great chieftain of the pudding-race," the
haggis, has its name from the French hachis. At the end of the old
ballad of "Chevy Chase," which reads the corrupted word into a new
sense, as the Hunting on the Cheviot Hills, there is an identifying of
the Hunting of the Cheviot with the Battle of Otterburn:--
"Old men that knowen the ground well enough call it the Battle of
Otterburn.
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