Could it be that the first four verses record the ride of mary Queen of Scots to visit Bothwell while the fifth transports to modern time and compares the castle and its surrounds to former days.

One of the things that strikes anyone who goes to Hermitage is the atmosphere around the castle and its seeming total isolation. In the time of Mary Queen of Scots, as George MacDonald Fraser stated in his book "Steel Bonnets" this castle lay in the heart of the most lawless place in Europe, either Monarch, Scot or English to impose his rule or authority on the place had to raise an army to do it.