Willie Wastle in His Castle

When Cromwell’s Colonel Fenwick summoned Hume Castle to surrender in February 1651, the governor is said to have answered him with a scrap of rhyme about William of the Wastle in his castle whom all the dogs in the town could not bring down. Chambers recognised it as the rhyme of a boys’ game still played in Scotland. One boy stood on a big stone or a heap of sand with a handkerchief in his hand and shouted the defiance, the rest tried to drive him off, and whoever managed it took his place. The governor’s answer proved the game was at least two hundred years old.