HIGHWAYS AND BYWAYS IN THE BORDER
By Andrew Lang and John Lang
With Illustrations by Hugh Thomson
[Illustration: 0008]
[Illustration: 0009]
PREFACE
At the time of his death, my brother had proceeded but a little way
in this task which he and I began together, and I must frankly own my
inability to cope with it on the lines which he would doubtless have
followed. It is probable, for example, that his unrivalled knowledge of
"the memories, legends, ballads, and nature of the Border" would have
led him to show various important events in a light different from that
in which my less intimate acquaintance with the past has enabled me to
speak of them; whilst, as regards the Ballad literature of the Border,
I cannot pretend to that expert knowledge which he possessed, I do not
think, therefore, it is fitting that I should attempt to carry out his
intention to deal more fully with those of the Ballads which are most
closely connected with places treated of in this volume.
To him, more perhaps than to any other Borderer, every burn and stream,
every glen and hill of that pleasant land was
". . . lull ot ballad notes,
Borne out of long ago."
It is many a year since he wrote those verses wherein he spoke of
" Old songs that sung themselves to me,
Sweet through a boy's day-dream."
But it was not alone in a boy's day-dream that they sounded. To the end,
they echoed and re-echoed in his heart, and no voice ever spoke to
him so eloquently as that of Tweed,--by whose banks, indeed, in a spot
greatly loved, had it been permitted he would fain have slept his long
sleep.
JOHN LANG.
_The artist wishes to call attention to the fact that his drawings
were made during the long drought of 1911, when all the rivers were
exceptionally low._
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
KELSO abbey....................................Frontispiece
HALIDON HILL AND THE TWO BRIDGES, BERWICK...............003
OLD BRIDGE AT BERWICK...................................006
BUTTRESSES WITH CANOPIED NICHES AT EDROM................014
AT CHIRNSIBE........................................... 015
DOORWAY IN GRAVEYARD AT EDROM...........................016
NORHAM CASTLE...........................................046
LADY KIRK...............................................047
FORD CASTLE FROM THE ROAD...............................049
LOOKING UP THE TILL FROM TWIZEL BRIDGE..................050
THE RIDGE ON WHICH THE SCOTTISH ARMY WAS ENTRENCHED
BEFORE THE BATTLE OF FLODDEN............................051
TWIZEL BRIDGE...........................................052
THE SLOPES AT BRANXTON ON WHICH THE
BATTLE OF FLODDEN WAS FOUGHT............................053
SYBIL GREY'S WELL AT FLODDEN............................055
BRIDGE OVER THE LEET, COLDSTREAM........................057
THE CHEVIOTS FROM COLDSTREAM FERRY......................060
FLOORS CASTLE FROM KELSO................................072
KELSO...................................................073
KELSO ABBEY.............................................075
KELSO. TEVIOT IN FOREGROUND.............................076
MEETING OF TWEED AND TEVIOT NEAR KELSO..................077
RUINS OF ROXBURGH CASTLE................................079
JEDBURGH FROM THE PARK..................................091
JEDBURGH ABBEY..........................................103
QUEEN MARY'S HOUSE, JEDBURGH............................105
FERNIHIRST CASTLE.......................................131
CATCLEUCH RESERVOIR LOOKING SOUTH.......................142
BRIDGE OVER JED WATER AT OLD SOUDEN KIRK.
THE CHEVIOTS BEHIND.....................................148
OTTERBURNE..............................................162
OTTERBURNE..............................................163
SOUDEN KIRK.............................................166
JOHN LEYDEN'S BIRTHPLACE, DENHOLM.......................179
CAVERS..................................................185
HAWICK..................................................186
THE TOWER INN, HAWICK...................................187
HORNSHOLE BRIDGE........................................188
ST. MARY'S, HAWICK......................................189
VALE OF THE BORTHWICK WATER LOOKING TOWARDS HAWICK......191
A GLIMPSE OF HARDEN.....................................192
GOLDIELANDS TOWER AND THE TEVIOT........................193
BRANKSOME...............................................194
BRANKSOME...............................................196
LOOKING DOWN TEVIOTDALE FROM CAERLANRIG.................197
TEVIOTHEAD KIRK.........................................202
TOMB OF SIR WALTER SCOTT, DRYBURGH......................207
SMAILHOLME TOWER........................................210
THE EILDONS FROM BEMERSYDE HILLS........................211
EARLSTON................................................218
THE RIVER AT DRYBURGH ABBEY.............................221
EILDON HILLS AND GORGE OF THE TWEED FROM LESSUDDEN......223
MELROSE FROM NEWSTEAD...................................224
MELROSE CROSS...........................................225
EAST WINDOW, MELROSE ABBEY..............................226
DARNICK TOWER...........................................228
ABBOTSFORD..............................................230
THE RHYMER'S GLEN.......................................232
GALASHIELS, THE EILDONS IN THE DISTANCE.................238
THE TWEED FROM THE FERRY, ABBOTSFORD....................241
TOR WOOD LEE............................................243
ABBOTSFORD FROM THE LEFT BANK OF THE TWEED.
THE EILDON HILLS BEHIND.................................244
WHERE TWEED AND ETTRICK MEET............................245
SELKIRK FROM THE HEATHERLIE.............................250
THE ETTRICK FROM THE OUTSKIRTS OF SELKIRK...............260
SELKIRK.................................................264
THE ETTRICK AT BOWHILL..................................274
OAKWOOD TOWER...........................................277
KIRKHOPE TOWER..........................................279
LOOKING UP ETTRICKDALE FROM HYNDHOPE....................280
ETTRICK WATER AT THE DELORAINES.........................281
THE BRIDGE AT TUSHIELAW.................................283
ETTRICK VALE FROM HYNDHOPE..............................284
BUCCLEUCH...............................................285
A GLIMPSE OF CLEARBURN LOCH.............................286
ETTRICK KIRK............................................288
MILL GANG AT ETTRICK....................................290
HYNDHOPE BURN...........................................291
ST. MARY'S LOCH AND THE LOCH OF THE LOVERS..............293
ST. MARY'S LOCH.........................................295
SITE OF ST. MARY'S CHURCH...............................296
THE DOUGLAS BURN AND BLACKHOUSE TOWER...................297
COCKBURNE'S GRAVE.......................................299
COPPERCLEUCH POST-OFFICE AND A GLIMPSE UP MEGGETDALE....301
TIBBIE SHIEL'S..........................................302
DRYHOPE TOWER...........................................304
THE GORDON ARMS.........................................306
VALE OF YARROW--THE GORDON ARMS IN THE DISTANCE.........307
DEUCHAR BRIDGE..........................................310
THE DOWIE DENS..........................................311
NEWARK..................................................315
YAIR BRIDGE.............................................317
FAIRNILEE...............................................320
CADDONFOOT LOOKING TOWARDS YAIR.........................321
THE INN AT CLOVENFORDS..................................322
THOMAS PURDIE'S GRAVE, MELROSE ABBEY....................323
THE TWEED AT ASHIESTEEL.................................325
THE TWEED BETWEEN ASHIESTEEL AND THORNILEE..............326
TOWER OF ELIBANK........................................328
INNERLEITHEN............................................329
A ROAD BESIDE THE TWEED, NEAR CADDONFOOT................331
THE CLOSED GATES AT TRAQUAIR HOUSE......................332
TRAQUAIR HOUSE..........................................333
WHERE THE QUAIR ENTERS THE TWEED ABOVE INNERLEITHEN.....335
ON THE ROAD TO PEEBLES..................................336
NELDPATH CASTLE.........................................341
PEEBLES FROM NEIDPATH...................................343
THE "BLACK DWARF'S COTTAGE IN THE MANOR VALLEY..........344
LOOKING UP THE MANOR VALLEY.............................346
BRIDGE OVER THE LYNE WATER..............................348
LOOKING UP TALLA FROM TWEEDSMUIR POST-OFFICE............360
BRIDGE OVER TWEED AT TWEEDSMUIR.........................361
TWEEDSMUIR..............................................363
TALLA RESERVOIR FROM TALLA LINN.........................366
A SKETCH ON THE GAMESHOPE BURN..........................368
THE DEVIL'S BEEF TUB....................................376
HERMITAGE CASTLE........................................384
MEETING OF THE HERMITAGE AND LIDDEL.....................386
MILLHOLME OR MILNHOLM CROSS.............................389
ON THE LIDDEL AT MANGERTON..............................390
CARLISLE CASTLE.........................................393
CARLISLE AND THE RIVER EDEN.............................394
CARLISLE FROM THE CASTLE RAMPARTS.......................395
A BYWAY IN CARLISLE.....................................396
THE MARKET CROSS, CARLISLE..............................397
DICK'S TREE. THE BLACKSMITH'S SHOP WHERE
KINMONT WILLIE'S FETTERS WERE TAKEN OFF.................399
THE REPUTED GRAVE OF KINMONT WILLIE IN SARK GRAVEYARD...400
SARK BRIDGE AND TOLL-BAR................................402
THE BLACKSMITH'S SHOP, GRETNA GREEN.....................403
SOLWAY MOSS.............................................404
ANCIENT CROSS, ARTHURET.................................405
GORGE ON THE LIDDEL.....................................406
STUDY IN CARLISLE CATHEDRAL.............................407
BRAMPTON................................................408
BEWCASTLE CHURCH AND CASTLE.............................410
BEWCASTLE CROSS.........................................411
NAWORTH CASTLE..........................................412
BEWCASTLE CROSS.........................................414
KIRK ANDREWS TOWER, NETHERBY............................417
THE ARMSTRONG TOWER ON THE ESK..........................419
GILNOCKIE BRIDGE........................................420
ON THE ESK AT HOLLOWS...................................422
LANGHOLM................................................424
MAP--THE ENGLISH AND SCOTTISH BORDER..........End of Volume
{001}
HIGHWAYS AND BYWAYS IN THE BORDER
CHAPTER I BERWICK, TWEED, WHITADDER
|The "Border" is a magical word, and on either side of a line that
constantly varied in the course of English and Scottish victories and
defeats, all is enchanted ground, the home of memories of forays and
fairies, of raids and recoveries, of loves and battles long ago. In the
most ancient times of which record remains, the English sway, on the
east, might extend to and include Edinburgh; and Forth, or even Tay,
might be the southern boundary of the kingdom of the Scots. On the west,
Strathclyde, originally Cymric or Welsh, might extend over Cumberland;
and later Scottish kings might hold a contested superiority over
that province. Between east and west, in the Forest of Ettrick, the
place-names prove ownership in the past by men of English speech, of
Cymric speech, and of Gaelic speech. From a single point of view you may
see Penchrise (Welsh) Glengaber (Gaelic) and Skelfhill (English). Once
the Border, hereabouts, ran slantwise, from Peel Fell in the Cheviots,
across the Slitrig, a water which joins Teviot at{002}Hawick, thence
across Teviot to Commonside Hill above Branksome tower, to the Rankle
burn, near Buccleuch, an affluent of Ettrick. Thence, across Ettrick
and Yarrow, over Minchmuir, where Montrose rode after the disaster at
Philiphaugh, across Tweed, past the camp of Rink, to Torwoodlee, goes
that ancient Border, marked by the ancient dyke called the Catrail,
in which Sir Walter Scott once had a bad fall during his "grand
rides among the hills," when he beat out the music of _Marmion_ to the
accompaniment of his horse's hooves. The Catrail was a Border, once,
and is a puzzle, owing to its ditch between two ramparts. There are many
hill forts, mounds even now strong and steep in some places, on the
line of the Catrail. The learned derive the word from Welsh _cad_,
Gaelic _Cath_, "a battle," and some think that the work defended
the Border of the Christian Cymric folk of Strathclyde from the pagan
English of Northumbria. In that case, Sir Herbert Maxwell has expressed
the pious hope that "the Britons were better Christians than they were
military engineers." Is it inconceivable that the word Catrail is a mere
old English nickname for a ditch which they did not understand, _the
cat's trail_, like Catslack, the wild cat's gap, and other local cat
names? I am no philologist!
Once when taking a short cut across a hill round which the road runs
from Branksome to Skelfhill, I came upon what looked like the deeply
cut banks of an extinct burn. There was no water, and the dyke was not
continued above or below. Walking on I met an old gentleman sketching
a group of hill forts, artificial mounds, and asked him what this
inexplicable deep cutting might be. "It is the Catrail," he said: I had
often heard of it, and now I had seen it. The old man went on to show
that the Border is still a haunted place. "Man, a queer thing happened
to me on Friday nicht. I was sleeping at Tushielaw Inn, (on the Upper
Ettrick) I had steikit the door and the windows: I woke in the middle o'
the nicht,--there {003}was a body in the bed wi' me!" (I made a flippant
remark. He took no notice of it.) "I got up and lit the candle, and
looked. There was naebody in the bed. I fell asleep, and wakened again.
The body was there, it _yammered_. I canna comprehend it." Nor can I,
but a pah of amateur psychical researchers hastened to sleep a night
at Tushielaw. _They_ were undisturbed; and the experience of the old
antiquary was "for this occasion only."
"My work seeks digressions," says Herodotus, and mine has already
wandered far north of the old Border line of Tweed on the east, and
Esk on the western marches, far into what was once the great forest of
Ettrick, and now is mainly pasture land, _pastorum loca vasta_. In
the old days of the Catrail and the hill forts this territory, "where
victual never grew," must have been more thickly populated than it has
been in historic times.
[Illustration: 0023]
We may best penetrate it by following the ancient natural tracks, by the
sides of Tweed and its tributaries. We cross the picturesque bridge of
Tweed at Berwick to the town which first became part of the kingdom
of Scotland, when Malcolm II, at Carham fight, won Lothian from
Northumbria. That was in 1018, nine centuries agone. Thenceforward
Berwick was one of the four most important places of Scottish
{004}trade; the Scots held it while they might, the English took it
when they could; the place changed hands several times, to the infinite
distress of a people inured to siege and sack. They must have endured
much when Malcolm mastered it; and again, in 1172, when Richard de Lacy
and Humphrey de Bohun, at war with William the Lion, burned the town.
William, after he inadvertently, in a morning mist, charged the whole
English army at Alnwick, and was captured, surrendered Berwick to
England, by the Treaty of Falaise, when he did homage for his whole
kingdom. The English strongly fortified the place, though the fragments
of the girdling wall near the railway station, are, I presume, less
ancient than the end of the twelfth century. William bought all back
again from the crusading Richard of the Lion Heart: the two kings were
"well matched for a pair of lions," but William the Lion was old by this
time.
In 1216, Alexander II attacked England at Norham Castle, but King John,
though seldom victorious, was man enough to drive Alexander off, and
brute enough to sack Berwick with great cruelty, setting a lighted torch
to the thatch of the house in which he had lain; and "making a jolly
fire," as a general of Henry VIII later described his own conduct at
Edinburgh. Fifty years later the woman-hating friar who wrote _The
Chronicle of Lanercost_ describes Berwick as the Alexandria of the
period; the Tweed, flowing still and shallow, taking the place of the
majestic river of Egypt. One is reminded of the Peebles man who, after
returning from a career in India, was seen walking sadly on Peebles
Bridge. "I'm a leear," he said, "an unco leear. In India I telled them
a' that Tweed at Peebles was wider than the Ganges!" And he had believed
it.
However, Berwick _was_ the Scottish Alexandria, and paid into the
coffers of the last of her "Kings of Peace," Alexander III, an almost
incredible amount of customs dues. After three peaceful reigns, Scotland
was a wealthy country, and Berwick was her chief emporium. But then came
the death of the {005}Maid of Norway, the usurpation by Edward I, the
endless wars for Independence: and Berwick became one of the cockpits
of the long strife, while Scotland, like St. Francis, was the mate of
Poverty.
While Edward was in France, his "toom tabard," King John, (Balliol)
renounced his allegiance. Edward came home and, in the last days of
March 1296, crossed Tweed and beleaguered Berwick, in which were many
trading merchants of Flanders. The townsfolk burned several of his
ships, and sang songs of which the meaning was coarse, and the language,
though libellous, was rather obscure. Edward was not cruel, as a rule,
but, irritated by the check, the insults, and the reported murder by the
Scots of English merchants, he gave orders for a charge. The ditch
and stockade were carried, and a general massacre followed, of which
horrible tales are told by a late rhyming chronicler. Hemingburgh, on
the English side, says that the women were to some extent protected.
The Scots avenged themselves in the same fashion at Corbridge, that old
Roman station, but the glory and wealth of Berwick were gone, the place
retaining only its military importance. To Berwick Edward II fled after
Bannockburn, as rapidly as Sir John Cope sought the same refuge after
Prestonpans.
Berwick is, for historically minded tourists, (not a large proportion
of the whole), a place of many memories. In July, 1318, Bruce took
the castle after a long blockade; an English attempt to recover it was
defeated mainly through the skill of Crab, a Flemish military engineer.
Guns were not yet in use: "crakkis of war," (guns) were first heard in
Scotland, near Berwick, in 1327. In 1333, after a terrible defeat of the
Scots on the slopes of Halidon Hill, a short distance north of Berwick,
the place surrendered to Edward III, and became the chief magazine of
the English in their Scottish wars.
By 1461, the Scots recovered it, but in 1481, the nobles of James III
mutinied at Lauder bridge, hanged his favourites, and made no attempt
to drive Crook-backed Richard from his {006}siege of Berwick. Since then
the town has been in English hands, and was to them, for Scottish wars,
a Calais or a Gibraltar. The present bridge of fifteen arches, the most
beautiful surviving relic here of old days, was built under James VI and
I.
[Illustration: 0026]
They say that the centre of the railway station covers the site of the
hall of the castle of Edward I, in which that prince righteously awarded
the crown of Scotland to John Balliol. The town long used the castle as
a quarry, then came the railway, and destroyed all but a few low walls,
mere hummocks, and the Bell Tower.
Naturally the ancient churches perished after the Blessed Reformation:
indeed the castle was used as a quarry for a new church of the period of
the Civil War.
Immediately above Berwick, and for some distance, Tweed flows between
flat banks, diffusely and tamely: the pools are locally styled "dubs,"
and deserve the title. The anti-Scottish satirist, Churchill, says,
{007}
"Waft me, some Muse, to Tweed's inspiring stream
Where, slowly winding, the dull waters creep
And seem themselves to own the power of sleep."
"In fact," replies a patriotic Scot, "'the glittering and resolute
streams of Tweed,' as an old Cromwellian trooper and angler, Richard
Franck, styles them, are only dull and sleepy in the dubs where England
provides their flat southern bank."
Not flat, however, are the banks on either side of Whitadder, Tweed's
first tributary, which joins that river two or three miles above
Berwick. From its source in the Lammermuirs, almost to its mouth, a
distance of between thirty and forty miles, the Whitadder is quite
an ideal trouting stream, "sore fished" indeed, and below Chirnside,
injured, one fears, by discharge from Paper Mills there, yet full of
rippling streams and boulder-strewn pools that make one itch to throw a
fly over them. But most of the water is open to the public, and on days
when local angling competitions are held it is no uncommon sight to see
three, or maybe four, competitors racing for one stream or pool, the
second splashing in and whipping the water in front of the first,
regardless of unwritten sporting law; a real case of "deil tak the
hindmost."
"Free-fishing" no doubt, from some points of view, is a thing to be
desired, but to him who can remember old times, when the anglers he met
in the course of a day's fishing might easily be counted on the fingers
of one hand, the change now is sad. Yet men, they say, do still in the
open stretches of Whitadder catch "a pretty dish" now and again. They
must be very early birds, one would suppose--and perhaps they fish with
the lure that the early bird is known to pick up.
On both sides of Whitadder are to be seen places of much interest.
First, Edrington Castle, on the left bank a few miles from the river's
mouth, once a place of great strength, now crushed by the doom that has
wrecked so many of the old strongholds in this part of the country--it
was for ages used as {008}a convenient quarry. Then, on the right bank,
higher up, on an eminence overhanging the stream, stands Hutton Hall, a
picturesque old keep of the fifteenth century, with additions of later
date. The original tower was probably built by the Lord Home, who
obtained the lands in 1467 by his marriage with the daughter of George
Ker of Samuelton. Nearly opposite Hutton, about a mile away, are the
ruins of an old castle at Edington. It is remarkable the number of names
in this district, all beginning with "Ed":--Edrington, Edington, Ednam,
Eden, Edrom, Edinshall, all probably taking their origin from Edwin,
king of Northumbria, 626-633. Or does the derivation go still further
back, to Odin?
Higher up, we come to Allanton and the junction of Whitadder with
its tributary, Blackadder. Near this lies Allanbank, haunt for many
generations of that apparition so famous in Scotland, "Pearlin Jean."
Jean, or rather Jeanne, it is said, was a beautiful young French lady,
in Paris or elsewhere loved and left by a wicked Baronet of Allanbank,
Sir Robert Stuart. The tale is some hundreds of years old, but "Pearlin
Jean" and her pathetic story still retain their hold on the imagination
of Border folk. The legend goes that when the false lover, after a
violent scene, deserted his bride that should have been, the poor lady
accidentally met her death, but not before she had vowed that she would
"be in Scotland before him." And sure enough, the first thing that
greeted the horrified gaze of the baronet as he crossed the threshold
of his home, bringing another bride than her he had loved and left, wras
the dim form of Jeanne, all decked, as had ever been her wont, in the
rich lace that she loved, and from which the apparition derived the name
of Pearlin Jean, "pearlin" being the Scottish term for lace. Tradition
says nothing as to the end of the false lover, but the ghost was still
known--so say the country people--to have haunted the house until it was
pulled down sometime early in last century. Sir Thomas Dick Lauder
in his "Scottish Rivers" tells how {009}an old woman then anxiously
enquired: "Where will Pearlin Jean gang noo when the house is
dismolished?"
That is the tale of "Pearlin Jean" as it is generally told. There is
another story, however, less known but much more probable.
When the reckless extravagance of succeeding generations ended as it
always must end; when cards and dire and the facile aid of wine and
women had sent bit after bit of the broad lands of an old family into
alien keeping, and not tardily the day had come when the last acre
slipped through heedless fingers, and even the household furniture--all
that remained to the last Baronet of Allanbank--was brought to the
hammer, there was one room in the old house into which, ere the
gloaming fell, the country folk peered with awe greater even than their
curiosity. It was a room in which for near on two generations the dust
had been left to lie undisturbed on table and chair and mantel-shelf,
a room whose little diamond shaped window panes the storms of more than
fifty winters had dimmed, and on whose hearth still lay the ashes of
a fire quenched half a century back. Here it was that Pearlin Jean had
passed those few not unhappy months of her life, while yet a false lover
was not openly untrue to her. But into this chamber, since Jean quilted
it for the last time no servant would venture by day or by night,
unaccompanied, lest in it might be seen the wraith of that unfortunate
and much wronged lady.
It is a story common enough, unhappily, that of Jeanne. She was
the daughter of a Flemish Jew, very beautiful, very young, very
light-hearted and loving, and unsuspecting of evil, of a disposition
invincibly generous and self-sacrificing. In an evil hour the Fates
threw across her path Sir Robert Stuart of Allanbank, then visiting the
Hague during his travels on the Continent. Sir Robert was a man now no
longer in his first youth, self-indulgent, callous of the feelings and
rights of others where they ran athwart his own wants or desires, one
{010}to whom the seamy side of life had long been as an open book. His
crop of wild oats, indeed, was ere now of rankest growth, and already on
the face of the sower were lines that told of the toil of sowing. But he
was a handsome man, with a fluent, honeyed tongue, and it did not take
him long to steal the heart from one who, like the poor little Jeanne,
suspected no evil.
To the Merse and to Allanbank there came word that the land was
returning to his home. The house was to be put in order, great
preparations to be made. No doubt, folk thought, all pointed to a
wedding in the near future; the wild young baronet was about to settle
down at last--and not before it was time, if what folk said regarding
his last visit to Allanbank might be trusted. But the local newsmongers
were wrong, in this instance at least of the home-coming and what might
be expected to follow. When Sir Robert's great coach lumbered up to the
door of Allanbank, there stepped down, not the baronet alone, but a
very beautiful young woman, a vision all in lace and ribbons, whom
the wondering servants were instructed to regard in future as their
mistress. And though neighbours--with a few male exceptions--of course
kept severely aloof, steadily ignoring the scandalous household of
Allanbank, yet after a time, in spite of the fact that no plain gold
band graced the third finger of Jeanne's left hand, servants, and
the country folk generally, came to have a great liking, and even an
affection, for the kindly little foreign lass with the merry grey eyes
and the sunny hair, and the quaintly tripping tongue. And for a time
Jeanne was happy, singing gaily enough from morning to night some one or
other of her numberless sweet old French _chansons._ She had the man she
adored; what mattered neighbours? And so the summer slid by.
But before the autumn there came a change. The merry lass was no longer
so merry, songs came less often from her lips, tears that she could not
hide more and more often {011}brimmed over from her eyes; and day by day
her lover seemed to become more short in the temper and less considerate
of her feelings, more inclined to be absent from home. In a word, he was
bored, and he was not the man to conceal it. Then when April was come,
and the touch of Spring flushed every bare twig in copse or wooded bank
down by the pools where trout lay feeding, when thrush and blackbird,
perched high on topmost hough, poured out their hearts in a glory of
song that rose and fell on the still evening air, a little daughter lay
in Jeanne's arms, and happiness again for a brief space was hers. But
not for long. The ardour born anew in her man's self-engrossed heart
soon died down. To him now it seemed merely that a squalling infant had
been added to his already almost insufferable burden of a peevish woman.
More and more, Jeanne was left to her own society and to the not
inadequate solace of her little child. Then "business" took Stuart to
Edinburgh. Months passed, and he did not return; nor did Jeanne once
hear of him. But there came at last for her a day black and terrible,
when the very foundations of her little world crumbled and became as
the dust that drives before the wind. From Edinburgh came a mounted
messenger, bearing a letter, written by his man of business, which told
the unhappy girl that Sir Robert Stuart was about to be married to
one in his own rank of life; that due provision should be made for the
child, and sufficient allowance settled on herself, provided that she
returned to her own country and refrained from causing further scandal
or trouble. She made no outcry, poor lass; none witnessed her bitter
grief that night. But in the morning, she and the child were gone, and
on her untouched bed lay the lace and the jewels she once had liked to
wear because in early days it had pleased her to hear the man she loved
say that she looked well in them.
Time went by, and Stuart, unheeding of public opinion, brought his
bride to Allanbank. Of Jeanne he had had {012}no word; she had
disappeared--opportunely enough, he thought. Probably she had long ago
gone back to her own land, and by this time the countryside had perhaps
found some other nine days' wonder to cackle over. So he returned,
driving up to the house in great state--as once before he had driven up.
Surely an ill-omened home-coming, this, for the new bride! As the
horses dashed up the avenue, past little groups of gaping country people
uncertain whether to cheer or to keep silence, suddenly there darted
from a clump of shrubbery the flying figure of a woman carrying in
her arms a little child, and ere the postilions could pull up, or any
bystander stop her, she was down among the feet of the plunging horses,
and an iron heel had trodden out the life of the woman. It was the
trampled body of that Jeanne whom he had lightly loved for a time and
then tossed aside when weary of his toy, that met the horrified gaze
of the white-lipped, silent man who got hurriedly down from inside that
coach, leaving his terrified bride to shrink unheeded in her corner.
And perhaps now he would have given much to undo the past and to make
atonement for the wrong he had done. At least, he may have thought,
there was the child to look after; and his heart--what there was of
it--went out with some show of tenderness towards the helpless infant.
But here was the beginning of strife, for Jeanne's baby did by no means
appeal to the new-made bride. Nor was that lady best pleased to find
in her withdrawing room a fine portrait in oils of her unlawful
predecessor.
And so there was little peace in that house; and as little comfort as
peace, for it came to pass that no servant would remain there. From the
day of her death Pearlin Jean "walked", they said, and none dared enter
the room which once she had called her own. That, of all places, was
where she was most certain to be seen. For one day, when the master
entered the room alone, they that were near heard his {013}voice
pleading, and when he came out it was with a face drawn and grey, and
his eyes, they said, gazed into vacancy like those of one that sees not.
So the place got ever an increasingly bad name, and the ghost of the
poor unhappy Jeanne could get no rest, but went to and fro continually.
And long after that day had arrived when her betrayer, too, slept with
his fathers, the notoriety of the affair waxed so great that seven
learned ministers, tradition says, united vainly in efforts to lay the
unquiet spirit of Pearlin Jean. So long as the old house stood, there,
they will tell you, might her ghost be seen, pathetically constant to
the place of her sorrow. And there may not be wanting, even now, those
who put faith in the possibility of her slender figure being seen as it
glides through the trees where the old house of Allanbank once stood.
Some miles above Allanton, on the left bank of Whitadder, stands
Blanerne, home of a very ancient Scottish family. And farther back from
the river are the crumbling fragments of Billie Castle--"Bylie," in
twelfth century charters,--and of Bunkle, or, more properly, Bonkyll,
Castle. All these have met the fate assigned to them by the old local
rhyming prophecy:
"Bunkle, Billie, and Blanerne,
Three castles Strang as aim,
Built whan Davy was a bairn;
They'll a' gang doun
Wi' Scotland's crown,
And ilka ane sail be a cairn."
A cairn each has been, without doubt, or rather a quarry, from which
material for neighbouring farm buildings has been ruthlessly torn.
Of Blanerne, I believe the Keep still exists, as well as some other
remains, to tell of what has been; but Billie Castle is now little more
than a green mound at foot of which runs a more or less swampy burn,
with here and there a fragment of massive wall still standing; whilst
Bunkle is a mere rubble of loose stones. AH these were destroyed in
Hertford's {014}raid in 1544, when so much of the Border was "birnd and
owaiertrown."
[Illustration: 0034]
More ruthless than Hertford's, however, was the work at Bunkle of our
own people in 1820. They pulled down an eleventh century church in order
to build the present edifice. Only a fragment of the original building
remains, but many of its carved stones may be seen in the walls of the
existing {015}church. Possibly the old structure was in a bad state of
repair. One does not know for certain; but at date of its demolition the
building appears to have been entire.
[Illustration: 8035]
Our ancestors of a hundred years ago were not to be "lippened to" where
ecclesiastical remains were concerned. They had what amounted to a
passion for pulling down anything that was old, and where they did not
pull down, they generally covered with hideous plaster any inside wall
or ornamental work, which to them perhaps might savour of "papistry."
Parish ministers, even late in the eighteenth and early in the
nineteenth centuries, appear to have taken no interest in those
beautiful Norman remains, numerous fragments of which even now exist in
Berwickshire; of all those ministers who compiled the old Statistical
Account of this county, but one or two make any mention of such things.
One fears, indeed, that to some of those reverend gentlemen, or to
others like them of later date, we are indebted for the destruction of
priceless relics of the past. At Duns, for instance, as late as 1874 the
original chancel of an old Norman church was pulled down by order of
the incumbent, "to improve the church-yard." Then, as already mentioned,
there is Bunkle, an instance of very early Norman work, pulled down in
1820. At Chirnside, the tower of its Norman church was sacrificed in
1750. though great part of the old church walls remain; in the south
side is a Norman doorway six feet ten inches in height to the lintel
and two feet ten and three-quarter inches wide. Of Edrom church, a
very beautiful Norman doorway, said to be "the finest of its style in
Scotland," has been preserved, entirely owing, apparently, to {016}the
fact that it had been made the entrance to a burial vault. At Legerwood,
near Earlstoun, where stands the chancel of a Norman church, the arch is
still entire but is defaced with plaster. Berwickshire, however, is not
the only part of the Border where such things have been done.
[Illustration: 0036]
Higher up Tweed, at Stobo in Peeblesshire, there is an interesting
old church of Norman structure, with sixteenth and seventeenth century
alterations; roof and interior fittings are modern, and the building
is still used as the Parish Church. Sixteenth and seventeenth century
alterations have now at least age to commend them, but it is difficult
to see what plea can be advanced for some of those of comparatively
recent date. According to "Ecclesiastical Architecture of Scotland," the
most serious injury inflicted on the building was the entire destruction
of the Norman chancel arch, in order to insert a modern pointed one, at
the restoration of the church in 1868.
Over in Teviotdale, too, the same passion for altering, or for sweeping
away relics of old times, ran its course. In 1762, the Town Council of
Hawick gave orders for the destruction of the Town's Cross. So Popish a
thing as a Cross could not be {017}tolerated by those worthy and "unco"
pious persons. The treasurer's accounts of the time show that tenpence
per day was paid to two men for the work of taking down the Cross, and
the carved stones seem to have been sold afterwards for eleven shillings
and sixpence. No doubt the worthy bailies congratulated themselves on
having not only rid the town of an emblem of Popery, but on having made
quite a handsome monetary profit over the transaction.
But to return to Whitadder. In his "Scottish Rivers," Sir Thomas Dick
Lauder writes of Billy Castle as the scene of a grisly tale connected
with the Homes. He tells how, to the best of his reckoning about a
century prior to the date at which he wrote, an old lady of that family
resided here in a somewhat friendless condition, but with a considerable
household of servants, chief of whom was a butler who had been in
her service for many years, and in whose integrity she had entire
confidence. This old lady, it seems, was in the habit of personally
collecting rents from her tenants, and as there were then no country
banks in which to deposit the money, it was her custom to count it in
presence of the butler, prior to locking the guineas away in a strong
cupboard in her bedroom. The door of this room was secured by an
ingenious arrangement, whereby a heavy brass bolt, or cylinder, was
allowed to fall by its own weight into an opening made exactly to fit
it. To an eye in the head of the cylinder was attached a cord which
worked through a pulley fastened to the ceiling, and thence by a series
of running blocks passed to the bedside. Thus the old lady, without
troubling to get out of bed, could bolt or unbolt her door at will, and
so long as the cylinder was down, no one could possibly enter the room.
Now, the butler had for years witnessed this counting and stowing away
of the rent monies, and temptation had never yet assailed him. He might,
indeed, plume himself on his honesty, and say with Verges: "I thank God
I am as honest as any man living that is an old {018}man and no honester
than I." But alas! there came a night when the guineas chinked too
seductively, and the devil whispered in the butler's ear. Perhaps some
small financial embarrassment of his own was troubling the man. Anyhow,
it came to his mind that if he could quietly fill up the hole into which
the bolt of his mistress's bedroom door dropped, he might help himself
to as much money as he needed. The time of year was the cherry season.
What so easy as to fill up the bolt hole with cherry stones? The "geans"
grew thick in Scotland, and they were black ripe now. "At midnight,"
says Sir Thomas, "he stole into his mistress's chamber, cut her throat
from ear to ear, broke open her cabinet, and possessed himself of her
money; and although he might have walked down stairs and out at the door
without exciting either alarm or suspicion, he opened the window and let
himself down nearly two stories high, broke his leg, and lay thus among
the shrubbery till morning, without ever attempting to crawl away. He
was seized, tried, condemned, and executed."
It is grisly enough, but hardly so grisly as the real story of what
happened. The scene of the murder, however, was not Billy Castle--which,
indeed, had then been dismantled and in ruins for two hundred years--but
Linthill House, a fine old mansion standing on a "brae" overhanging
Eye-water, five or six miles from Billy. Linthill is now inhabited by
families of work-people, but it is still in good preservation, and
at date of Sir Thomas Dick Lauder's story (1752), must have been a
very-fine specimen of the old Scottish château.
The old lady's room was entered as Sir Thomas describes, but the butler
did not immediately cut her throat. She was awakened by the sound of the
stealthy rifling of the cupboard, or strong iron-bound box, in which her
valuables were kept, and with that pluck which is characteristic of the
old-time Scottish lady, she jumped up to grapple with the robber. Then
he cut her throat, and leaving her for dead on the bed, {019}proceeded
with his rifling. A slight noise, nowever, disturbed him, and, looking
round, a terrifying sight met his gaze; the woman whom he had believed
to be dead was on her feet, blindly groping her bloody way along the
wall to the bell. Before he could seize her and complete his work, she
had pulled the rope with all the strength left to her, and had alarmed
the other servants. Thus the murderer had no opportunity to leave by way
of the stairs. He jumped from the window--no great feat for an active
man with his wits about him. But the butler was flurried; perhaps, also,
he was stout, as is not uncommon with pampered servants. In any case,
he missed his footing, came down badly, and broke his leg. He did not,
however, lie where he fell, inert and helpless. With painful, effort
the man dragged himself to a field near by, where, amongst sweet-scented
flowering beans, he lay concealed for some days. On the fourth day, as
he lay groaning beside a tiny spring of water which still flows near the
middle of the field, he chanced to be seen by some children, who gave
information. The wretched man was taken, tried, and executed--the last
instance in Scotland of a criminal being hung in chains. The blood of a
murdered person, they say, refuses to be washed clean from any wood-work
into which it may have soaked--witness that ghastly dark patch that
disfigures a floor in Holyrood. Here at Linthill at least there is no
doubt of the fact that those marks remain; in spite of very visible
attempts to remove the stains from the wood-work by planing them out,
the prints of the poor lady's bloody hands still cling to the oak
wainscoting of the gloomy old room where the deed was committed. About
house and grounds there hangs now an air of dejection and decay, though
Eye ripples cheerily just beyond the garden foot and the surrounding
landscape is bright with pleasant woods and smiling fields.
Surely if ever ghost walked, it should be here at Linthill; that
midnight bell should clang, a window be thrown open, the thud be heard
of a heavy body falling on the ground. {020}But it is not mistress or
man that haunts that house. It is of other things they tell who have
been there; of an upper chamber, to which nightly comes the shuffling
tramp of men bearing from a vehicle which is heard to drive up to
the house door, a heavy weight, which they deposit on the floor. More
shuffling, a room door quietly closed, the sound of retreating steps,
then silence. "Hout!" say the womenfolk of those who now inhabit part of
the old house, "it'll no be naething." But they look behind them with a
glance not too assured, and the voice that says t is "naething" is not
over-steady in tone.
A little higher up the river than Blanerne we come to Broomhouse, where
also once stood a castle. In a field on this estate is a spot, still
called "Bawtie's Grave," where the body of Sir Anthony Darcy--"Le Sieur
de la Beauté"--Warden of the Marches in 1517, is said to lie buried.
Darcy, or de la Bastie (or de la Beauté), as he was generally
called, was a Frenchman, a man possessed of great personal beauty
and attraction; but the fact that he had been appointed Warden of the
Marches and Captain of Dunbar Castle in room of Lord Home, who had been
treacherously put to death in Edinburgh, rendered him very obnoxious
to the inhabitants of that part of Berwickshire in which the Homes
held sway. It was through Darcy that Lord Home and his brother had been
decoyed to Edinburgh, said the kin and supporters of the Home family.
Vengeance must be taken.
Nor was time wasted over it. An occasion soon arose when Darcy in his
capacity of Warden had to visit Langton Tower, (no great distance from
Duns), in order to settle some family feud of the Cockburns, relatives
by marriage of the Homes. Here, outside the tower, Sir David Home, with
a party of horsemen, came up, and speedily picked a quarrel with the
Sieur. Swords were out in a minute, and Home's band was too strong for
Darcy and his men. Several of the French attendants of the Sieur fell,
and as the rest of his party were mostly Borderers, and therefore not
very eager to fight for him, the Warden found himself {021}compelled to
ride for it. He headed in the direction of Dunbar. But the ground over
which he had to gallop was swampy, and de la Beauté's heavy horse
sank fetlock deep at every stride, finally "bogging" in a morass some
distance to the east of Duns. Darcy is said to have continued his flight
on foot, but the chase did not last long; Home and his followers bore
down upon him--a well-mounted "little foot-page," they say, the first
man up.
"The leddies o' France may wail and mourn,
May wail and mourn fu' sair,
For the Bonny Bawtie's lang broun lucks
They'll never see waving mair."
They were on him at once; his head was fiercely hewn off, carried in
triumph to Home Castle, and there fastened to the end of a spear on the
battlements, to gaze blind-eyed over the wide Merse, the land he had
tried to govern. Pitscottie says that Sir David Home of Wedderburn cut
off Darcy's long flow ing locks, and plaiting them into a wreath, knit
them as a trophy to his saddle bow.
Perhaps the Sieur in the end got no more than his deserts, or at least
no more than he may frequently have dealt out to others. He came of a
stock famed in France for cruelty and oppression; and the peasants round
Allevard, in the Savoie,--where stand the fragments of what was once
his ancestral home--still tell of that dreadful night when Messire Satan
himself wras seen to take his stand on the loftiest battlement of the
castle. And they relate how then the walls rocked and swayed and
with hideous crash toppled to the ground. Perhaps it was this very
catastrophe which sent the "Bonny Bawtie" to Scotland.
A cairn once marked the spot where the Sieur's body found a resting
place. But, unfortunately, such a ready-made quarry of stones attracted
the notice of a person who contracted to repair the district roads.
It is many years ago now, and there was no {022}one to say him nay. He
carted away the interesting land-mark and broke up the cairn into road
metal.
Home Castle still dominates this part of the Border, but no longer is it
the building of "Bawtie's" day. That was pulled down in the time of
the Protector, by Cromwell's soldiers under Colonel Fenwick. Thomas
Cockburn, Governor in 1650 when Fenwick summoned the castle to
surrender, was valiant only on paper; a few rounds from the English guns
caused his valour to ooze from his fingers' ends, and sent up the white
flag. That was the end of the old castle. Fenwick dismantled it and
pulled down the walls; the present building, imposing as it seems,
standing grim and erect on its rocky height, is but a dummy fortress,
built in the early eighteenth century on the old foundations, from the
old material, by the Earl of Marchmont. The original building dated
from the thirteenth century, and a stormy life it had, like many Border
strongholds alternately in Scottish and in English hands. In 1547, after
a gallant defence by the widow of the fourth Lord Home, it was taken by
the English under Somerset; two years later it was recaptured by that
lady's son, the fifth Lord Home.
"Too old at forty," is the cry raised in these days--presumably by those
who have not yet attained to that patriarchal age--but when a state of
war was the chronic condition of the Border-land, men of vastly greater
age than forty were not seldom able to show the way to warriors young
enough to be their grandsons. At this taking of Home Castle in the
closing days of December 1548, it was a man over sixty, one of the name
of Home, who was the first to mount the wall. The attack was made at
night, on the side where the castle was both naturally and artificially
strongest, and where consequently least vigilant guard might probably be
kept. As Home, ahead of his comrades, began to slide his body cautiously
over the parapet, the suspicions of a sentry pacing at some little
distance were roused, and he challenged and {023}turned out the guard.
This man had not actually _seen_ anything, the night was too dark for
that, but he had, as it were, _smelt_ danger, with that strange extra
sense that sometimes in such circumstances raises man more nearly to the
level of his superior in certain things--the wild animal. However,
in this case the sentry got no credit, but only ridicule, from his
comrades, for examination showed that there was no cause whatever for
his having brought the guard out into the cold, looking for mares' nests
over the ramparts. Home and his party had dropped hurriedly back, and
during the time that the Englishmen were glancing carelessly over the
wall, they lay securely hidden close at its base. As soon, however,
as the English soldiers had returned to the snug warmth of their
guard-room, and the mortified sentry was once more pacing up and down,
Home was again the first of the Scots to clamber up and to fall upon
the astonished Englishman, whom this time he slew, a fate which overtook
most of the castle's garrison. "Treachery helped the assailants,"
said the English. "Home Castle was taken by night, and treason, by the
Scots," is the entry in King Edward's Journal.
Again, in 1569, it was battered by the heavy siege guns of the Earl of
Sussex and once more for a time was held by-England; finally in 1650
came its last experience of war. It was at Home Castle that Mary of
Gueldres, Queen of James II of Scotland, lay whilst her husband besieged
Roxburgh in 1460. One hundred and six years later, Mary Queen of Scots
was there on her way to Craigmillar from Jedburgh.
In days when the bale-fire's red glare on the sky by night, or its heavy
column of smoke by day, was the only means of warning the country of
coming invasion from the south, Home Castle, with its wide outlook, was
the ideal centre of a system of beacon signals on the Scottish border.
The position was matchless for such purpose; nothing could escape
the watchful eyes of those perched on the lofty battlements of
this "Sentinel of the Merse," no flaming signal from the fords over
{024}Tweed fail to be seen. In an instant, at need, fires would be
flashing their messages over all the land, warning not only the whole
Border, but Dunbar, Haddington, Edinburgh, and even the distant shores
of life. "A baile is warnyng of ther cumyng quhat power whatever thai
be of. Twa bailes togedder at anis thai cumyng in deide. Four balis,
ilk ane besyde uther and all at anys as four candills, sal be suthfast
knawlege that thai ar of gret power and menys." So ran part of the
instructions issued in the fifteenth century. But almost in our own
day--at least in the days of the grandfathers of some now living--Home
Castle flashed its warning and set half Scotland flying to arms. Britain
then lived under the lively apprehension of a French invasion. With
an immense army, fully equipped, Napoleon lay at Boulogne waiting a
favourable opportunity to embark. Little wonder, therefore, that men
were uneasy in their minds, and that ere they turned in to bed of a
night country folk cast anxious glances towards some commanding "Law" or
Fell, where they knew that a beacon lay ready to be fired by those who
kept watch. In the dull blackness of the night of 31st January, 1804,
the long-looked-for summons came. All over the Border, on hill after
hill where of old those dreaded warnings had been wont to flash, a tiny
spark was seen, then a long tongue of flame leaping skyward. The French
were coming in earnest at last!
Just as ready as it had been in the fiercest days of Border warfare
was now the response to the sudden call to arms. Over a country almost
roadless, rural members of the various Yeomanry corps galloped through
the mirk night, reckless of everything save only that each might reach
his assembly point in time to fall in with his comrades. Scarce a man
failed to report himself as ready for service--in all the Border I
believe there were but two or three. And though it turned out that the
alarm fires had been lit through an error of judgment on the part of
one of the watchers, there is no doubt that to the bulk of the men
who turned out so full of courage and enthusiasm that night, the
{025}feeling at first, if mixed with relief, was one of disappointment
that they had had no chance of trying a fall with "Boney" and his
veterans. The man who was the first to fire his beacon on that 31st
of January was a watcher at Home Castle. Peering anxiously through the
gloom, he imagined that he saw a light flare up in the direction
of Berwick. It was in reality only a fire lit by Northumbrian
charcoal-burners that he saw, and its locality was many points to the
south of Berwick, but as the blaze sprang higher, and the flames
waxed, the excited watcher lost his head, and, forgetting to verify the
position, feverishly set a light to his own beacon and sent the summons
to arms flying over the Border. Had it not chanced that the watcher by
the beacon on St. Abb's Head was a man of cool temperament, all Scotland
had been buzzing that night like a hornets' nest. This man, however,
reasoned with himself that news of an invasion, if it came at all, must
necessarily come from a coastal, and not from an inland station, and
therefore he very wisely did not repeat the signal.
The spirit shown on the occasion of this false alarm, and the
promptitude with which yeomanry and volunteers turned out, are things of
which Borderers are justly proud. Many of the yeomanry rode from forty
to fifty miles that night in order to be in time; and even greater
distances were covered. Sir Walter Scott himself was in Cumberland when
word of the firing of the beacons came to him, but within twenty-four
hours he and his horse had reached Dalkeith, where his regiment was
assembled, a distance of one hundred miles from his starting point. In
one or two instances, where members of a corps chanced to be from home,
in Edinburgh on private business, mother or wife sent off with the troop
when it marched, the horse, uniform, and arms of husband or son, so that
nothing might prevent them from joining their regiment at Dalkeith. The
substance of the message then sent to her son by the widowed mother of
the writer's grandfather, will be found in Sir Walter's Notes to _The
Antiquary_. If in our day {026}like cause should unhappily arise, if the
dread shadow of invasion should ever again fall on our land, no doubt
the response would be as eager as it was in 1804; the same spirit is
there that burned in our forefathers. But of what value now-a-days
are half-trained men if they come to be pitted against the disciplined
troops of a Continental Power? Of no more avail than that herd of
wild bulls that the Spaniards in 1670 tried to drive down on Morgan's
Buccaneers at Panama.
Many a tale is still told of the events of that stirring night of 31st
January, 1804. One of the Selkirk volunteers, a man named Chisholm, had
been married that day; but there was no hesitation on his part. "Weel,
Peggy, my woman," he said in parting with his day-old bride, "if I'm
killed, ye'll hear tell o't. And if I'm no killed, I'll come back as
sune as I can." A particularly "canny" Scot was another volunteer, whose
mother anxiously demanded ere he marched if he had any money with him
in case of need. "Na, na!" he said, "they may kill me if they like, but
they'll get nae siller off _me_."
A few cases of the white feather there were, of course; in so large a
body of undisciplined men there could hardly fail to be some who had no
stomach for the fight, but instances of cowardice were surprisingly few.
One or two there were who hid under beds; and one youth, as he joined
the ranks, was heard to blubber, "Oh, mother, mother, I wish I'd been
born a woman." But of those who should have mustered at Kelso, only two
out of' five hundred failed to answer to their names, and possibly they
may have had legitimate cause for their absence. Many of the members of
foot regiments were long distances away when the alarm was given. Of the
Duns volunteers, for instance, two members were fifteen miles distant
when the beacons blazed up. Yet they made all speed into the town, got
their arms and accoutrements, marched all through the night, and fell in
alongside their comrades at Haddington next forenoon. Many--all the men
of Lessudden, for example--marched without uniforms. An{027}unpleasant
experience had been theirs had they fallen, in civilian dress, into the
hands of the enemy.
To return to Whitadder.--Some miles above Broomhouse we come to Cockburn
Law, a conical hill of about 1100 feet in height, round three sides of
which the river bends sharply. On the northern slope of the hill is the
site, and what little remains to be traced, of Edinshall, a circular
tower dating probably from the seventh century. According to the oid
Statistical Account of the Parish, the walls of this tower,--Edwin's
Hall,--measured in diameter 85 feet 10 inches, and in thickness 15
feet 10 inches, enclosing in their depths many cells or chambers. Their
height must once have been very considerable, for even at date of the
Statistical Account--the end of the eighteenth century--they stood about
eight feet high, and were surrounded on all sides by a scattered mass of
fallen stones. The ground around shows traces of having been fortified,
but the tower itself probably was never a place of strength. The stones
of which the building was constructed were large, and close fitting, but
not bound together with mortar, which indeed was not in use in Scotland
so early as the date of the building of Edinshall,--hence the tower was
a quarry too convenient to be respected by agriculturists of a hundred
years ago. Most of the material of the ancient build ing has been taken
to construct drains, or to build "dry stane dykes." The "rude hand of
ignorance" has indeed been heavy on the antiquities of Scotland.
Where the stream bends sharply to the left as one fishes up those
glorious pools and boulder-strewn rapids, there stands a cottage not far
removed from Edinshall, which on the Ordnance Survey maps bears the very
un-Scottish name of Elba. It has, however, not even a remote connection
with the place of exile of an Emperor. The learned would have us believe
that the name is derived from the Gaelic "Eil," a hill, and "both,"
a dwelling. It may be so; but it seems much more likely that "Elba" is
merely the Ordnance Survey people's spelling of the {028}word "elbow,"
as it is pronounced in Scotland; the river here makes an extremely sharp
bend, or elbow. Near Elba is an old copper mine which was worked to
advantage by an English company midway in the eighteenth century.
Abandoned after a time, it was reopened in 1825, but was soon again
closed. Copper was not there in sufficient quantity to pay; probably
it had been worked out before. Four or five miles from here we come
to Abbey St. Bathans, a name which conjures up visions of peaceful old
ruins nestling among whispering elms by clear and swift flowing waters.
There is now, however, little of interest to be found. St. Bathans was
originally a convent of Cistercian Nuns, with the title of a Priory, and
was founded towards the end of the twelfth century by Ada, daughter of
William the Lion. As late as 1833, the then recently written Statistical
Account of the Parish says that the north and east walls of the church
"still bear marks of antiquity," and that in the north wall is "an
arched door which communicated with the residence of the Nuns"; but,
says the Account, this door "is now built up."
"Adjoining the church, and between it: and the Whitadder, remains of
the Priory were visible a few years ago." Where are they now? Built into
some wall or farm building, no doubt, or broken up, perhaps, to repair
roads or field drains. And where is the font, with its leaden pipe,
that stood "in the wall near the altar"? Perhaps--if it still exists,
unbroken,--it may now be used as a trough for feeding pigs, as has been
the fate of many another such vessel. It is hard to forgive the dull,
brutish ignorance that wilfully wrecked so much of the beauty and
interest that the past bequeathed to us.
It is not easy to say who was the saint from whom Abbey St. Bathans
inherited its name. Probably it was Bothan, Prior of Old Mailros in the
seventh century, a holy man of great fame in the Border. There is a
well or spring not far distant from the church of St. Bathans, whose
miraculous powers of healing all sickness or disease were doubtless
derived {029}from the good Father. These powers have now long decayed,
but as late as 1833--possibly even later--some curious beliefs regarding
the well were held in the neighbourhood, and its waters, it was well
known, would "neither fog nor freeze" in the coldest weather.
Shortly after leaving Abbey St. Bathans, as we gradually near the
Lammermuirs, the land on both sides of Whitadder begins more to partake
of the hill-farm variety, where grouse and blackgame swarm thick on
the stooked corn in late autumn. From the south side, a little above
Ellemford, there enters a considerable stream, the water of Dye, said to
be of good repute as regards its trout. One of these high, round backed
hills here is probably the scene of some great battle of old times.
"Manslaughter Law" is the satisfying name of the hill. There is a
tumulus still remaining on the north side of it, and near at hand
weapons have been dug up, says the Statistical Account. One wonders what
their fate may have been. They, at any rate, would surely be preserved?
It is by no means so sure. One sword, at least, that was found many
years ago on the west side of Manslaughter Law, met with the fate one
might expect from the kind of people who used to quarry into beautiful
old abbeys in order to get material to build a pig-stye. It was taken
to the village smithy, and there "improved" out of existence--made into
horseshoes perhaps, or a "grape for howkin' tatties." Had it been a
helmet that was then unearthed, no doubt a use would have been found for
it such as that which the Elizabethan poet sadly suggests for the helmet
of the worn out old man-at-arms:
"His helmet now shall make a hive for bees."
Eastward from the spot where this sword was found is a barrow which,
says the Statistical Account, "probably covers more arms"; and on a hill
by Waich Water, a tributary of the Dye, are the Twin-Law Cairns,
which are supposed to mark the resting place of twin brothers who fell
here,--perhaps in pre-historic {030}times. Tradition says that these two
were commanders of rival armies, Scottish and Saxon, and that, neither
at the time being aware of their relationship, they undertook to fight
it out, as champions of the rival hosts. When both lay dead, some old
man, who had known the brothers in their childhood, gazing on them, with
grief discovered the relationship of the slain men; and to commemorate
the tragedy, the soldiers of both hosts formed lines from Waich Water
to the hill's summit, and passed up stones wherewith they built these
cairns.
At Byrecleuch Ridge, towards the head of Dye Water, is another enormous
and very remarkable cairn called the Mutiny Stones. This great mass
of piled up stone measures two hundred and forty feet in length; where
broadest, seventy-five feet; and its greatest height is eighteen feet.
What does it commemorate? A great fight, say some, that took place in
1402 between the Earl of Dunbar and Hepburn of Hailes, in which the
latter was killed. A prehistoric place of sepulture, hazards Sir Herbert
Maxwell. But it was not here that Hepburn fell; that was elsewhere in
the Merse. And they were little likely in the fifteenth century to
have taken such titanic pains to hand his memory down to posterity. The
prehistoric place of sepulture sounds the more probable theory. But
why "Mutiny Stones"? There must surely be some local tradition more
satisfying than that of the Hepburn-Dunbar fight.
The upper part of Whitadder must once have been well fitted to check
hostile raids from the south whose object was to strike the fat Lothians
through the passes over the Lammermuirs. In the few miles of wild hill
country that sweep from its source on Clint's Dod down to its junction
with Dye Water, there formerly stood no fewer than six castles, Chambers
tells us,--John's Cleuch, Gamelshiel, (the lady of which was killed by a
wolf as she walked near her home one evening in the gloaming) Penshiel,
Redpath, Harehead, and Cranshaws. Except in the case of Cranshaws, there
are now {031}few traces left standing of these strongholds. Cranshaws,
a building of the sixteenth century, is in good preservation; of
Gamelshiel there remains a bit of wall, of Penshiel a fragment of
vaulting; of the others no stone. Cranshaws of old, it is said, was long
the haunt of one of those Brownies, or familiar spirits, that were wont
in the good old days of our forefathers mysterious ly to do by night,
when the household slept, all manner of domestic or farm work for those
who humoured them and treated them well in the matter of food, or other
indulgence affected by their kind. There was nothing a Brownie would not
do for the family he favoured, provided that he was kept in good humour;
otherwise, or if he were laughed at or his work lightly spoken of, it
were better for that family that it had never been born; their sleep was
disturbed o' nights, malevolent ill-luck dogged them by day, until he
was propitiated. But leave out for him each night a jug of milk and
a barley bannock,--they were not luxurious in their tastes, those
Brownies,--and at dawn you would find
".... how the drudging goblin sweat
To earn his cream bowl duly set;
When in one night, ere glimpse of morn,
His shadow'y flail hath threshed the corn
That ten day-lab'rers could not end;
Then lies him down, the Lubber-fiend,
And stretched out all the chimney's length,
Basks at the tire his hairy strength;
And crop-full out of doors he flings
Ere the first cock his matin rings."
They tell that this particular Brownie at Cranshaws, being offended at
some reflection made on his work, the following night took up an entire
crop that he had thrashed, curried it to the Raven Craig, two miles down
the river, and threw it over the cliff. Belief in the Brownie died hard
in the Border I am not sure that in remote "up the water" districts he
did not survive almost till the advent of motor cars and bicycles.