In the Border Country Part 5

JAMES ORROCK, R.I.

(_See pp. 23, 35, 39, 60, 61, 89, 90, 91, 123_)

[Ill.u.s.tration]

Tweed's Well lies in the bosom of solemn, bare hills. There is nothing attractive about the spot. Grey moorlands, riddled with innumerable inky peat-bogs, the whaups crying as Stevenson heard them in his dreams, and the bleat of an occasional sheep are the chief characteristics. There is little heather, and the hills are hardly so shapely as their neighbours further down the valley. A first glance is disappointing, but the memories of the place are compensation enough. For what a stirring place it must have been in the early centuries! Here, as tradition a.s.serts, the pagan bard Merlin was converted to Christianity through the preaching of the Glasgow Saint Mungo. Here Michael Scot, the "wondrous wizard," pursued his mysteries. And even the Flower of Kings himself wandered amongst those wilds, "of fresh aventours dreaming." One of his twelve battles is claimed for the locality. More historic, perhaps, is the picture of the good Sir James of Douglas (red-handed from dirking the Comyn) plighting his troth to the Bruce at Ericstane Brae, close to Tweed's Well, which latter spot, by the way, Dr. John Brown characteristically describes in one of his shorter "Horae" papers.

Readers of the "Enterkin" also will remember his reference to the mail-coach tragedy of 1831, when MacGeorge and his companion, Goodfellow, perished in the snow in a heroic attempt to get the bags through to Tweedshaws. At Tweedsmuir, (the name of the parish--disjoined from Drumelzier in 1643)--eight miles down, the valley opens somewhat, and vegetation properly begins. Of Tweedsmuir Kirk--on the peninsula between Tweed and Talla--Lord c.o.c.kburn said that it had the prettiest situation in Scotland. John Hunter, a Covenant martyr, sleeps in its bonnie green kirk-knowe--the only Covenant grave in the Border Counties outside Dumfries and Galloway. Talla Linns recalls the conventicle mentioned in the "Heart of Midlothian," at which Scott makes Davie Deans a silent but much-impressed spectator. In the wild Gameshope Glen, close by, Donald Cargill and James Renwick, and others lay oft in hiding. "It will be a b.l.o.o.d.y night this in Gemsop," are the opening words of Hogg's fine Covenant tale, the "Brownie of Bodsbeck." The Talla Valley contains the picturesque new lake whence Edinburgh draws its augmented water supply. Young Hay of Talla was one of Bothwell's "Lambs," and suffered death for the Darnley murder. At the Beild--regaining the Tweed--Dr.

John Ker, one of the foremost pulpiteers of his generation, was born in 1819. Oliver Castle was the home of the Frasers, Lords of Tweeddale before they were Lords of Lovat. The Crook Inn was a noted "howff" in the angling excursions of Christopher North and the Ettrick Shepherd.

Mr. Lang thinks that possibly the name suggested the "Cleik.u.m Inn" of "St. Ronan's Well." At the Crook, William Black ends his "Adventures of a Phaeton" with the climax of all good novels, an avowal of love and a happy engagement. Polmood, near by, was the scene of Hogg's lugubrious "Bridal of Polmood," seldom read now, one imagines. Kingledoors in two of its place-names preserves the memory of Cuthbert and Cristin, the Saint and his hermit-disciple. Stanhope was a staunch Jacobite holding, one of its lairds being the infamous Murray of Broughton, Prince Charlie's secretary, the Judas of the cause. Murray, by the way, was discovered in hiding after Culloden at Polmood, the abode of his brother-in-law, Michael Hunter. Link.u.mdoddie has been immortalized in Burns's versicles beginning, "Willie Wastle dwalt on Tweed"--a study in idiomatic untranslateable Scots. Here is the picture of Willie's wife--a philological puzzle.

"She's bow-hough'd, she's hein-s.h.i.+nn'd, Ae limpin leg a hand-breed shorter; She's twisted right, she's twisted left, To balance fair in ilka quarter; She has a hump upon her breast, The twin o' that upon her shouther; Sic a wife as Willie had, I wadna gie a b.u.t.ton for her.

"Auld bandrons by the ingle sits, An' wi' her loof her face a-was.h.i.+n'; But Willie's wife is nae sae trig She dights her grunzie wi' a hus.h.i.+on; Her walie nieves like midden-creels, Her face wad 'fyle the Logan Water; Sic a wife as Willie had, I wadna gie a b.u.t.ton for her."

At Drumelzier Castle the turbulent, tyrannical Tweedies reigned in their day of might. Of their ghostly origin, the Introduction to the "Betrothed" supplies the key. They were constantly at feud with their neighbours, specially the Veitches, and were in the Rizzio murder. See their history (a work of genuine local interest) written quite recently by Michael Forbes Tweedie, a London scion of the clan. In the same neighbourhood, the fragment of Tinnis Castle (there is a Tinnis on Yarrow, too,) juts out from its bold bluff, not unlike a robber's eyrie on the Rhine. Curiously, this is a reputed Ossian scene (see the poem, "Calthon and Colmal.") The "blue Teutha," is the Tweed--"Dunthalmo's town," Drumelzier. Merlin's Grave, near Drumelzier Kirk, should not be forgotten. Bower's "Scotichronicon" narrates the circ.u.mstances of his death: "On the same day which he foretold he met his death; for certain shepherds of a chief of a country called Meldred set upon him with stones and staves, and, stumbling in his agony, he fell from a high bank of the Tweed, near the town of Drumelzier (the ridge of Meldred), upon a sharp stake that the fishers had placed in the waters, and which pierced his body through. He was buried near the spot where he expired."

"Ah! well he loved the Powsail Burn (_i.e._, the burn of the willows) Ah! well he loved the Powsail glen; And there, beside his fountain clear, He soothed the frenzy of his brain.

Ah! Merlin, restless was thy life, As the bold stream whose circles sweep Mid rocky boulders to its close By thy lone grave, in calm so deep.

For no one ever loved the Tweed Who was not loved by it in turn; It smiled in gentle Merlin's face, It soughs in sorrow round his bourn."

A prophecy of Thomas the Rhymer--

"When Tweed and Powsail meet at Merlin's Grave, England and Scotland shall one monarch have,"

is affirmed to have been literally fulfilled on the coronation day of James VI. and I. Pa.s.sing on, we reach the resplendent Dawyck Woods. Here are some of the finest larches in the kingdom, the first to be planted in Britain, having that honour done them by the great Linnaeus himself, it is said. Stobo--semi-Norman and Saxon--was the _plebania_ or mother-kirk of half the county. Here lies all that is mortal of Robert Hogg, a talented nephew of James Hogg. He was the friend and amanuensis of both Scott and Lockhart, whom he a.s.sisted in the _Quarterly_.

Possessed of a keen literary sense, he would almost certainly have taken a high place in literature but for the consumption which cut short his promising career. (See "Life of Scott," vol. ix). At Happrew, in Stobo parish, Wallace is said to have suffered defeat from the English in 1304. One of the most perfect specimens (recently explored) of a Roman Camp is in the Lyne Valley, to the left, a little above the Kirk of Lyne. On a height overlooking the Tarth and Lyne frowns the ma.s.sive pile of Drochil, planned by the Red Earl of Morton, who never lived to occupy it, or to finish it, indeed, the "Maiden," in 1581, cutting short his pleasures, his treacheries and hypocrisies. Now we touch the Black Dwarf's Country--in the Manor Valley, to the right.

Barns Tower, a very complete peel specimen, stands sentinel at the entrance to this "sweetest glen of all the South." It is around Barns that John Buchan's "John Burnet of Barns" centres. The Black Dwarf's grave is at Manor Kirk, and the cottage a.s.sociated with his misanthropic career is also pointed out. Scott, in 1797, visited Manor (Hallyards) at his friend Ferguson's, and foregathered with David Ritchie, the prototype of one of the least successful and most tedious of his characters. (See William Chambers's account of the visit). St. Gordian's Cross, mentioned in a previous chapter, is further up the valley, where also are the ruins of Posso, a place-name in the "Bride of Lammermoor."

Presently we come to Neidpath Castle, dominating Peebles, the key to the Upper Tweed fastnesses. When or by whom it was built is unknown. In 1795, it was held by "Old Q," fourth Duke of Queensberry. Wordsworth's sonnet on the spoliation of its magnificent woods (an act done to spite the heir of entail) stigmatises for all time the memory of one of the worst reprobates in history.

PLATE 16

MELROSE AND THE EILDONS FROM BEMERSYDE HILL: SCOTT'S FAVOURITE VIEW

FROM A WATER-COLOUR SKETCH PAINTED BY

JAMES ORROCK, R.I.

(_See pp. 89 and 123_)

[Ill.u.s.tration]

Both Scott and Campbell have sung of the unhappy Maid of Neidpath spent with grief and disease, waiting her lover on the Castle walls, and beholding him ride past all unconscious of her ident.i.ty.

"He came--he pa.s.sed--a heedless gaze, As o'er some stranger glancing; Her welcome, spoke in faltering phrase, Lost in his courser's prancing-- The Castle arch whose hollow tone Returns each whisper spoken, Could scarcely catch the feeble moan Which told her heart was broken."

The literary a.s.sociations of Peebles--a charming towns.h.i.+p--are outstanding. William and Robert Chambers (founders of _Chambers's Journal_) were natives. So were Thomas Smibert and John Veitch, poets and essayists both. Mungo Park (a Gideon Gray prototype) was the town's surgeon for a time--an eternal longing for Africa in his soul. "Meg Dods," the best landlady in fiction, was one of its heroines. And "Peblis to the Play," probably by James I., is a Scots cla.s.sic. Traquair is poetic ground every foot of it. At its "bonnie bush" how many singers have caught inspiration from Crawford of Drumsoy in 1725, to Princ.i.p.al Shairp in our own day! Shairp's lyric may well be quoted in full. It is by far the finest contribution to modern Border minstrelsy. "Thank ye again for this exquisite song; I would rather have been the man to write it than Gladstone in all his greatness and goodness," was the exuberant "Rab" Brown's compliment to the author:

"Will ye gang wi' me and fare To the bush aboon Traquair?

Owre the high Minchmuir we'll up and awa', This bonny simmer noon, While the sun s.h.i.+nes fair aboon, And the licht sklents saftly doun on holm and ha'.

"And what would you do there, At the bush aboon Traquair?

A lang dreich road, ye had better let it be; Save some auld skrunts o' birk I' the hillside lirk, There's nocht i' the warld for man to see.

"But the blithe lilt o' that air, 'The Bush aboon Traquair,'

I need nae mair, it's eneuch for me; Owre my cradle its sweet chime, Cam' soughin' frae auld time, Sae tide what may, I'll awa' and see.

"And what saw ye there At the bush aboon Traquair?

Or what did ye hear that was worth your heed?

I heard the cus.h.i.+es croon Thro' the gowden afternoon And the Quair burn singing doun to the Vale o' Tweed.

"And birks saw I three or four, Wi' grey moss bearded owre,-- The last that are left o' the birken shaw, Whar mony a simmer e'en Fond lovers did convene, Thae bonny, bonny gloamins that are lang awa'.

"Frae mony a but and ben, By muirland, holm, and glen, They cam' ane hour to spen' on the greenwood swaird; But lang hae lad an' la.s.s I Been lying 'neth the gra.s.s, The green, green gra.s.s o' Traquair kirkyard.

"They were blest beyond compare, When they held their trysting there, Among thae greenest hills shone on by the sun; And then they wan a rest, The lownest and the best, I' Traquair kirkyard when a' was dune.

"Now the birks to dust may rot, Names o' lovers be forgot, Nae lads and la.s.ses there ony mair convene; But the blithe lilt o' yon air Keeps the bush aboon Traquair, And the love that ance was there, aye fresh and green."

PLATE 17

DRYBURGH ABBEY AND SCOTT'S TOMB

FROM A WATER-COLOUR SKETCH

PAINTED BY

JAMES ORROCK, R.I.

(_See pp. 35, 39, 91, 92, 103_)

[Ill.u.s.tration]

Traquair House--possibly Scott's Tully-Veolan, "pallid, forlorn, stricken all o'er with eld," claims to be the oldest inhabited house in Scotland. It certainly looks it. The great gate, flanked with the huge Bradwardine Bears, has not been opened since the '45. There seems no reason to question the legend. It is not so "foolish" as Mr. Lang supposes. Innerleithen, Scott's "St. Ronan's," is near at hand, and the peel of Elibank--a mere sh.e.l.l. Harden's marriage to Muckle-mou'ed Meg Murray was not quite accounted for in the traditional way, however,--a choice between the laird's dule-tree and the laird's unlovely daughter.

The legend is not uncommon to German folk-lore. At Ashestiel, thrice renowned, Scott spent the happiest years of his life (1804-1812), writing "Marmion," the "Lady of the Lake," and the first draft of "Waverley." In many respects the place is more important to students of Scott than Abbotsford itself. Yet for a thousand who rush to Abbotsford only a very few find their way up here. Yair, a Pringle house, and Fairnalee, comfortable little demesnes, lie further down the Tweed. At the latter, Alison Rutherford wrote her version of the "Flowers of the Forest"--"I've seen the smiling of Fortune beguiling." Abbotsford was Cartley Hole first--not Clarty--which is a mere vulgar play on the original. From a small villa about 1811 it has grown to the present n.o.ble pile. After Scott's day, Mr. Hope Scott did much for the place.

But it is of Sir Walter that one thinks. What a strenuous life was his here! What love he lavished on the very ground that was dear to him--in a double sense! And what longing for home during that vain sojourn under Italian skies! "To Abbotsford; let us to Abbotsford!"--a desire now echoed on ten thousand tongues year by year from all ends of the earth. Behind Abbotsford are the Eildons, the "Delectable Mountains" of Was.h.i.+ngton Irving's visit, "three crests against a saffron sky" always in vision the wide Border over. Scott said he could stand on the Eildons and point out forty-three places famous in war and verse. "Yonder," he said, "is Lammermoor and Smailholm; and there you have Galas.h.i.+els, and Torwoodlee, and Gala Water; and in that direction you see Teviotdale and the Braes of Yarrow, and Ettrick stream winding along like a silver thread to throw itself into the Tweed. It may be pertinacity, but to my eye these grey hills, and all this wild Border Country have beauties peculiar to themselves. When I have been for some time in the rich scenery about Edinburgh which is like ornamented garden land, I begin to wish myself back again among my own honest grey hills; and if I did not see the heather at least once a year, I think I should die." Melrose is the "Kennaquhair" of the "Monastery" and the "Abbot." Its glory, of course, is its Abbey, unsurpa.s.sed in the beauty of death, but all grace fled from its environment. Were it possible to transplant the Abbey together with its rich a.s.sociations to the site of the original foundation by the beautiful bend at Bemersyde, Melrose would sit enthroned peerless among the shrines of our northern land. Within Melrose Abbey, near to the High Altar, the Bruce's heart rests well--its fitful flutterings o'er. Here, too, lie the brave Earl Douglas, hero of Chevy Chase; Liddesdale's dark Knight--another Douglas; Evers and Latoun, the English commanders at Ancrum Moor, that ran so deadly red with the blood of their countrymen; and, according to Sir Walter, Michael Scot--

"Buried on St. Michael's night, When the bell toll'd one, and the moon shone bright, Whose chamber was dug among the dead, When the floor of the chancel was stained red."

One is not surprised at Scott's love for Melrose. As the grandest ecclesiastical ruin in the country, it must be seen to be understood.

Mere description counts for little in dealing with such a subject. Every window, arch, cloister, corbel, keystone, door-head and b.u.t.tress of this excellent example of mediaeval Gothic is a study in itself--all elaborately carved, yet no two alike. The sculpture is unequalled both in symmetry and in variety, embracing some of the loveliest specimens of floral tracery and the most quaint and grotesque representations imaginable. The great east oriel is its most imposing feature. But the south doorway and the chaste wheeled window above it are equally superb.

For what is regarded as the finest view of the building, let us stand for a little at the north-east corner, not far from the grave of Scott's faithful factotum, Tom Purdie. Here the _coup d'oeil_ is very striking; and the contour of the ruins is realised to its full. Or if it be preferred, let us look at the pile beneath the lee light o' the moon--the conditions recommended in the "Lay."

"If thou would'st view fair Melrose aright, Go visit it by the pale moonlight; For the gay beams of lightsome day Gild, but to flout, the ruins grey.

When the broken arches are black in night, And each shafted oriel glimmers white, When the cold light's uncertain shower Streams on the ruined central tower; When b.u.t.tress and b.u.t.tress, alternately, Seem framed of ebon and ivory; When silver edges the imagery, And the scrolls that teach thee to live and die; When distant Tweed is heard to rave, And the owlet to hoot o'er the dead man's grave, Then go--but go alone the while-- Then view St. David's ruined pile; And, home returning, soothly swear Was never scene so sad and fair!"

Three inscriptions--one inside, two in the churchyard, are worth halting by. "HEIR LYIS THE RACE OF YE HOVS OF ZAIR," touches many hearts with its simple pathos. "The Lord is my Light," is the expressive text (self-chosen) on Sir David Brewster's tomb--the greatest master of optics in his day; and the third, covering the remains of a former Melrose schoolmaster was frequently on the lips of Scott: