|But {032}a step over the moor from Waich Water, across by Twin-Law
Cairns and down by the Harecleuch Hill we come to the head-waters of the
most considerable of Whitadder's tributaries--Blackadder, "vulgarly
so pronounced," says the old Statistical Account. Its real name is
"Blackwater," according to that authority, because it rises out of peaty
swamps that impart to its waters a look of sullen gloom. I am unable to
say what now may be its reputation as a trout stream, but long years ago
it abounded with "a particular species of trout, much larger than the
common burn trout, and remarkably fat." The Statistical Account mentions
a notable peculiarity of Blackadder, on the accuracy of which one would
be inclined to throw doubt. It says that though every other stream in
the country which eventually mingles its waters with Tweed, swarms with
salmon in the season, yet into Blackwater they do not go; or if they
enter at all, it is found that they die before they can ascend many
miles. The swampy source of the stream "is commonly ascribed as the
reason why the fish cannot frequent the river," says the Account.
Drainage, one would be inclined to think, has long ago removed that
fatal nature from the water, if it ever existed. Trout throve on it,
at all events, red-fleshed beauties, "similar," says the clerical
{033}writer of the Statistical Account of the Parish of Fogo--a man and
a fisher, surely--"to those of Eden Water, which joins Tweed three miles
below Kelso. The Eden rises also in a marshy district, which may be
the cause of this similarity of the fish." But most Border streams take
their rise in more or less marshy districts, though they may not flow
direct from a swamp.
Was it in the Eden that Thomson, author of "The Seasons," learned to
fish? Or was it in Jed? He was born at Ednam,--Edenham,--a village on
the Eden, and he may have loved to revisit it in later years, and to
catch the lusty speckled trout for which the stream has always been
famous. Probably, however, he learned to throw a fly on Jed, for he
passed his boyhood at Southdean--to which parish his father had been
transferred as Minister long ere the son was fit to wield a rod--and he
himself got his early education at Jedburgh. In Jed or in Eden, then,
and perhaps in Teviot and Ale--he was much at Ancrum--he learned the
art; and not unskilled in it indeed must he have been. Where in all
literature can one find a description of trout-fishing so perfect as the
following?
"Just in the dubious point, where with the pool
Is mix'd the trembling stream, or where it boils
Around the stone, or from the hollow'd bank
Reverted plays in undulating flow,
There throw, nice judging, the delusive fly;
And, as you lead it round in artful curve,
With eye attentive mark the springing game.
Strait as above the surface of the flood
They wanton rise, or, urged by hunger, leap,
There fix, with gentle twitch, the barbed hook;
Some lightly tossing to the grassy bank
And to the shelving shore slow dragging some
With various hand proportion'd to their force.
If yet too young, and easily deceived,
A worthless prey scarce bends your pliant rod,
Him, piteous of his youth, and the short space
He has enjoy'd the vital light of heaven,
Soft disengage, and back into the stream {034}
The speckled captive throw; but, should you lure
From his dark haunt, beneath the tangled roots
Of pendent trees, the monarch of the brook,
Behoves you then to ply your finest art.
Long time he, following cautious, scans the fly,
And oft attempts to seize it, but as oft
The dimpled water speaks his jealous fear.
At last, while haply o'er the shaded sun
Passes a cloud, he desperate takes the death
With sullen plunge: at once he darts along,
Deep struck, and runs out all the lengthen'd line,
Then seeks the farthest ooze, the sheltering weed,
The cavern'd bank, his old secure abode,
And (lies aloft, and flounces round the pool,
Indignant of the guile. With yielding hand
That feels him still, yet to his furious course
Gives way, you, now retiring, following how,
Across the stream, exhaust his idle rage,
Till floating broad upon his breathless side,
And to his fate abandon'd, to the shore
You gaily drag your unresisting prize."
Many a long day of Spring and Summer must the man who could paint so
perfect a picture have passed, rod in hand and creel on back, by the
hurrying streams and quiet pools of some Border Water, many a time have
listened to the summer breeze whispering in the leafy banks, and heard,
as in a dream, the low murmur of Jed or Ale. And what sport must they
have had in the old days when Thomson fished--and even in the days when
Stoddart fished--when farmers were ignorant, or careless, of the science
of drainage, and rivers ran for days, nay, for weeks after rain, clear
and brown, dimpled with rising trout. What sport indeed of all kinds
must there have been here in the south of Scotland in very ancient days
when the country was mostly forest or swamp, and wild animals, now long
extinct, roamed free over hill and dale. It has been mentioned a page or
two back how the lady of Gamelshiel Tower was killed by a wolf. Here, at
the bead waters of Blackadder--as the crow flies not a dozen miles from
Gamel{035}shiel--we are in the midst of a district once infested
by wolves. Westruther, through which parish Blackadder runs, was
originally "Wolfstruther," the "swamp of the wolves." And all over the
surrounding country, place names speak of the beasts of the field. An
MS. account of Berwickshire tells how Westruther was "a place of old
which had great woods, with wild beasts, fra quhilk the dwellings and
hills were designed, as Wolfstruther, Raecleuch, Hindside, Hartlaw and
Harelaw."
"There's hart and hynd, and dae and rae,
And of a' wilde hestis grete plentie,"
as we read in the "Sang of the Outlaw Murray.
The last-mentioned name, Harelaw, calls up visions of another chase
than that of the hare. Sir Thomas Dick Lauder in his "Scottish Rivers,"
(written sometime about 1848), mentions that one of the most curious
facts connected with Harelaw Moor was that a man, who, Sir Thomas says,
died "not long ago," recollected having seen Sir John Cope and his
dragoons in full flight across it from the battle of Prestonpans,
breathlessly demanding from all the country people they met information
as to the shortest road to Coldstream.
"Says the Berwickers unto Sir John,
'O what's become o' all your men?'
'In faith,' says he, 'I dinna ken;
I left them a' this morning.'"
He must have been a very aged man, but if "not long ago" meant any time,
as late, say, as the Twenties of last century, no doubt it would
be possible that as a boy of eight or ten, he might have seen the
panic-stricken dragoons spurring over the moor. Such a sight would
remain vivid in the memory of even a very old man. Childhood's incidents
outlive all others.
Above Harelaw Moor, on a feeder of the Blackadder, is Wedderlie,
formerly an old Border keep of the usual pattern, but towards the close
of the seventeenth century embodied with a fine building in the Scottish
style of that day. It is {036}said to have belonged originally to that
family, the Edgars, the graves of two members of which are commemorated
by the Twin-Law Cairns. The family name lives still in that of the
neighbouring Edgar-burn, near to which streamlet is Gibb's Cross, said
to be the scene of a martyrdom for sake of the Reformed Faith; and
hard by is Evelaw Tower--a house apparently without a history--still in
tolerable preservation. At Wedderlie, of old time, says Sir Thomas Dick
Lauder, there stood a very ancient chapel, of which some traces of a
vault remain, or remained at a recent date. Local tradition had it that
at time of the Reformation the monks hid in this vault all their church
plate and other precious possessions, meaning at the first convenient
opportunity to remove them to a place of greater safety. The convenient
opportunity, it was thought in more modern times, had never come, for in
a cave hard by the vault there was one day discovered a great
quantity of coins--all of which, by the way, speedily and mysteriously
disappeared. It is said, however, that they were not of dates that
could in any degree connect this _cache_ with the Reformation, and it
is suggested in Sir Thomas's book that they were concealed there by the
inhabitants of Wedderlie during the Religious wars of the seventeenth
century. Those "in the know" may all have been killed, of course; the
secret of the hiding place was not likely to be within the ken of more
than one or two.
These finds of coins of all dates are by no means rare in the Scottish
border counties. One would fain know something of those who hid them,
and of the events which were passing at the time when they were buried.
Were they the spoil of some reiver, ravished from a roof-tree blackened
and left desolate south from Cheviot and Tweed; spoil for convenience
sake thus put away by one to whom the chance of a more convenient season
to recover it was ended by a bloody death? Or were they, sometimes,
store, of coins hastily secreted by quiet country folk fleeing in terror
from the violence of English {037}soldiery--men such as they who came
north with Hertford in 1544, whose orders were to put man, woman, and
child to fire and the sword, without exception, if any resistance should
be met with? What wonder if the harmless country people then left all,
and fled for their lives and the honour of their women! For what so easy
as to find excuse to carry out such orders? A child ill treated, a
woman outraged; and a man--husband, father, lover--mad with horror and
impotent rage, "resisting!"
Coins, in greater or less number, are continually turning up in all
sorts of unlikely spots. Sometimes in a marshy field (where one would
least expect buried treasure), the spade of an Irish drainer has been
known to throw out Elizabethan crowns. How did _they_ get there? Perhaps
it might have been when the horse of some rider, bogged and struggling
to get clear, in its violent efforts burst the fastenings of a saddle
bag or wallet, or unseated its rider, emptying whatever may have been
the equivalent of a trousers' pocket in days when men wore mail. Some
of these Elizabethan coins, perhaps, found their resting place in 1570,
when the English under the Earl of Sussex harried and burnt the border,
in "Tyvydale bernyng on bothe hands at the lest two myle, levyng neyther
castell, towne, nor tower unbrent, tyll we came to Jedworth." And so on,
across by Hawick and Branxholm, up by Oxnain Water and Kale and Bowmont,
and round about Kelso, burning and destroying homes, and hanging
prisoners. "Thus," says Lord Hunsdon in a letter to Sir W. Cecil, "Thus
hathe hyr Majesty had as honorable a revenge of the recevars of hyr
rebels, and of all such as have byn common spoylars of hyr pepoll, and
burners of her cuntrey, as ever any of hyr predecessors had." They were
not weakly addicted to half measures in those days, whichever side was
"top dog."
"And so we pray to God to send youre Majestie a longe and prosperowse
raigne, and all youre enemyes to feare youe as moch as the Scottish
Borderers feare youe at this present," {038}ended Lords Sussex and
Hunsdon in a despatch written by them to the Queen from "Barwick" on
23rd April, 1570.
The lost Pay-chest of Montrose's army at Philiphaugh has given rise to
many a story of treasure hunted for or recovered. Sir Walter Scott
tells how on the day of the battle the Earl of Traquair and one of his
followers, a blacksmith, carrying with them a large sum of money, the
pay of the troops, were on their way across the hills to join Montrose
at Selkirk. When as far away as Minchmuir, they heard the sound of heavy
firing, to which Lord Traquair attached little importance, believing
it to be merely Montrose exercising his men, but which, from the long
continued and irregular nature of the firing, the blacksmith made
certain was an engagement. By the time they reached Broadmeadows, there
was no question as to whose conjecture was the correct one. By ones and
twos, like the first heavy drops, forerunners of a deluge to follow from
some ink-black cloud, came men flying for their lies, on horses pushed
beyond the utmost limits of their speed; then more fugitives, and more,
and hard on their heels, Leslie's troopers thundering. Lord Traquair
and the blacksmith turned and fled with the throng. But the money was in
Lord Traquair's saddle-bags, and the weight was great; he was like to be
captured, for his horse thus handicapped could not face the hill and
the heavy ground. Whether the blacksmith offered to sacrifice himself to
save his master, or the master ordered the servant to dismount, one does
not know, but the outcome was that Lord Traquair fled over the moor on
the blacksmith's comparatively fresh horse, and the blacksmith, on a
spent animal, was left to make the best of his way with the silver.
Leaving the press of fugitives, he fled up Yarrow at the top speed of
his tired horse, but finding himself closely pursued, to save himself
and to lighten the animal's load, he flung away the bags of money. He
said afterwards that he threw them into a well or pond near Tinnis, a
little above Hangingshaw, and many a well and many a pond has since been
vainly dragged for the lost treasure. No man {039}has yet recovered it.
Probably that blacksmith knew a thing or two, and he was not likely
to give away the show. Whether or no, however, it is certain that many
silver coins having dates of about the time of the battle were in Sir
Walter's day ploughed up on the river haughs of Tinnis. And at a much
later date, a quantity of coins and some silver plate were unearthed
nearer Philiphaugh, on the actual scene of the fight. These coins were
claimed by the Exchequer. A dozen wine bottles, also, of old pattern,
were found buried here, but what had been the liquor contained in them
it was not possible to say; the bouquet had entirely perished, and even
the colour.
There is a pool in Yarrow, near Harehead, into which tradition says that
Montrose flung his treasure chest, telling the Devil to keep it till
he should return to claim it. Up to the present the Foul Fiend has
not released his care, for when--as is said,--the pool was run dry, or
nearly dry, a good many years ago, only a Lochabar-axe was found in it.
A somewhat more probable story of the chest is that the bearer, as he
hurried past, flung it into a cottage, near Foulshiels, and then rode
for his life. Some of Leslie's men got it there, and looted it.
Whose is the portrait that is contained in the little locket which was
found, years ago, on the field of Philiphaugh? On the one side is the
representation of a heart pierced by darts, and the motto "I dye for
Loyalty"; on the other, a long straight sword is engraved. Inside is a
portrait, and opposite the portrait, the words "I mourne for Monarchie."
Sometimes coins have been found, too, as at Blackcastle Rings, on
Blackadder, at its junction with the Faungrist Burn. Here, on the
northern bank of the river, is what must once have been a strongly
fortified camp; opposite, on the southern side, and running along the
river's bank for fully half a mile, after which it branches to the
south, is a well marked line of entrenchment. Eighty years ago, or
thereabouts, an old silver chain was unearthed in the camp; and in the
{040}trench, a little distance away, when turf was being removed, they
came upon quite a number of gold and silver coins of the reign of Edward
III. It was somewhere in this neighbourhood, (though probably nearer
Duns,) that Lord Percy the English Warden, at the head of seven thousand
men, lay encamped in the year 1372, when (as is mentioned by Redpath),
his host was dispersed, or at least was said to have been compelled to
retire across the Tweed, on foot and without their baggage, owing to
a simple stratagem of the Scots. To scare away from their poor little
crops the deer and wild cattle that were wont when night fell to ravage
the ill-cultivated patches, the country folk of that district were
accustomed to sound at frequent intervals a primitive kind of drum. To
the ends of long poles were fixed what may best be termed huge rattles,
made of dried skins tightly stretched over semi-circular ribs of wood.
Inside each skin were put a few round pebbles. Obviously, when shaken
vigorously, these rattles would give out a noise quite terrifying to
any four footed animal, especially when heard in the stillness of night.
Accordingly, one pitchy night, in the hour before dawn when sleep lay
heavy on the invading force, a certain number of the Scots, bearing with
them those unwarlike instruments, stole quietly through the tangled
growth to the heights on either side of the English camp.
Then broke out a din truly infernal. Picketed horses, mad with terror,
strained back on their head-ropes, and breaking loose, stampeded through
the camp, trampling over the recumbent forms of men wearied and even yet
but halt-awake, many of the younger among them more than ready to share
the panic of their horses. If the tale be not exaggerated, daylight
showed an army deprived of its transport animals, its horsemen compelled
to foot it, their steeds the prey of the wily Scots; a baggageless force
compelled to fall back in disorder across Tweed.
In this part of Berwickshire you may still faintly trace here and there
the outline of a ditch and earthen rampart called {041}Herrits Dyke,
which, local tradition says, once ran from Berwick inland to near
Legerwood on Leader Water,--a work not dis-similar to the Catrail,
(which cuts across something like fifty miles of the Border, from Peel
Fell in the Cheviots to Torwoodlee on Gala), but without the double wall
of Catrail. There are various sections of defensive works of this nature
in the Border--if they were defensive, for instance, on the hill less
than half a mile from the old castle of Holydean, near St. Boswells,
in Roxburghshire, there is a particularly well-marked ditch and double
rampart running for some distance across the moor. It can scarcely be a
continuation of Herrits Dyke, for its construction is different, and its
course must run almost at a right angle to Herrits, which is, indeed,
many miles away from Holydean. This ditch points almost directly towards
Torwoodlee, but it is out of the accepted Catrail track, unless the
latter, instead of stopping at Torwoodlee, (as one has been taught),
turned sharply and swept down the vale-of Gala, and once more crossed
Tweed. It is curious, if these works are defensive, that no ancient
weapons have ever been found in or near them.
Down the water a few miles from Blackcastle Rings stands the little town
of Greenlaw, a settlement which dates from very early times, but not on
its present site. Originally the village stood about a mile and a half
to the south east, on the isolated green "law" or hill from which it
takes its name. The history of the present town goes no farther back
than the end of the seventeenth century, a date about contemporaneous
with that of its Market Cross, which stands now on the west side of the
place. This cross is said to have been erected by Sir Patrick Home of
Polwarth (afterwards created Earl of March-mont) in the year 1696.
In 1829 it was pulled down, to make room for something else--in the
maddening fashion that possessed our ancestors of the period--and, in
the usual manner, it was chucked aside as "auld world trash." In 1881,
however, the cross, or at least the greater part of it, minus the
top, which {042}originally bore a lion rampant, was discovered in the
basement of the old church tower, and was then re-erected where it now
stands.
Still farther down the river is the Roman camp at Chesters. But even as
long ago as 1798, the writer of the Statistical Account of the Parish of
Fogo complained that the old camp was "very much defaced," and that the
stones had mostly been "removed to make room for the plough." The rage
for agricultural improvement was in 1798 but in extreme infancy; and as
no Society for the preservation of ancient monuments came into existence
for many a long year afterwards, and interest in such things was
confined to the very few, it is safe to infer that not a great deal of
this camp now exists.
From Chesters to Marchmont is but a step. Marchmont House dates from
about 1754, and was built by the third Earl of Marchmont, near the site
of Redbraes, the residence of his grandfather, that Sir Patrick Home of
Polwarth who erected the cross in Greenlaw. The village and church of
Polwarth are at no great distance. The original church was consecrated
in the tenth century, and was restored in 1378, from which date it stood
till 1703, when Sir Patrick Home (then Earl of Marchmont) rebuilt it. In
the family vault of this church, Sir Patrick lay in hiding for several
weeks in 1684, when the search for him was hot and discovery would have
cost him his head. The secret of his whereabouts was known to three
persons--to his wife, his daughter Grisell (whose name as Lady Grisell
Baillie, lives still in the affectionate remembrance of the Scottish
Border), and to Jamie Winter, a faithful retainer. Grisell Home, then a
girl of eighteen, during all the time of his concealment contrived,
with very great risk and difficulty, to convey food to her father in
his gruesome lodging. Each night, she slipped stealthily from the house,
and--sorest trial of all to the nerves of an imaginative Scot,--made her
cautious way in the darkness across the "bogle"-haunted churchyard to
her father's lair. Many a shift were she and her {043}mother put to
in order to get food sufficient for their prisoner without rousing
suspicion among the servants, and more than once the situation was all
but given away by the innocent hut embarrassing comments of young and
irresponsible members of the family. Sometimes the servants cannot have
been present at meals, one would think; or else they smelt a rat, and
were discreetly blind. One day at dinner, Grisell had with careful
cunning succeeded in smuggling an entire sheep's head off the dish on to
her own lap, thence presently to be borne surreptitiously from the room,
when her young brother, with the maddening candour and persistency of
childhood, called the company's attention to his sister's prodigious
appetite, which not only enabled her to gobble up in next to no time
so much good meat, but even rendered her able to make the very bones
vanish.
But the scent at length began to grow hot; they had nearly run the fox
to his earth. Suspicion hovered over the neighbourhood of the church,
and no longer could the vault be deemed even a moderately safe hiding
place. A new den was necessary; and a new den was found, one perhaps
even more cramped than the old quarters, if a trifle less insanitary. A
large deal box was made by the faithful Jamie Winter, and was secretly
conveyed into a cellar at Redbraes, of which Lady Home kept the key. But
to get the "muckle kist" snugly into its resting place, it was necessary
to scrape away the earthen floor of the cellar under the flooring
hoards, so that the box might be entirely hidden when the boards were
re-laid. This work could not be done with pick and shovel, lest the
noise should betray what was going on. Grisell, therefore, and Jamie
Winter literally with their own hands carried out the arduous job;
the earth was _scraped_ away, and poor Grisell Home's nails had almost
entirely disappeared ere the work wyas finished and the hiding
place made ready for her father. It was scarcely an ideal place of
concealment; water oozed in so quickly that one night when Sir Patrick
was about {044}to descend into his narrow lodging, it was found that
the bedding on which he was used to lie was afloat. And, with its other
drawbacks, it had not even the advantage, as a hiding place, of being
above suspicion. Had it not been, indeed, for the presence of mind of
a kinsman and namesake, Home of Halyburton, a party of dragoons had
certainly captured Sir Patrick one day. But Halyburton's liquor was
good, and after their thirty mile march from Edinburgh, the temptation
to wet their whistle could not be resisted. It did not take long, but it
was long enough; a groom on a fast, powerful horse slipped away over
the moor to Redbraes, bearing with him no word of writing, but a
letter addressed to Lady Home, of which the contents were nothing but a
feather,--a hint sufficiently well understood. Ere the dragoons arrived
at Redbraes, Sir Patrick was clear away and well on the road to the
coast and Holland, and safety.
As we travel down Blackadder towards its junction with the Whitadder,
about equidistant between the two rivers we come to the only town of
any importance in the district--Duns, or Dunse as it used, not very
appropriately, to be spelled from 1740 to 1882, in which latter year the
ancient spelling was revived. The original hamlet or settlement stood on
the Dun or Law which adjoins the present town. But Hertford wiped that
pretty well out of existence in 1545, as he wiped out many another
stronghold and township in the south of Scotland. What was left of the
place soon fell into utter decay and ruin, and a new settlement on the
present site, then guarded On three sides by a more or less impassable
swamp, sprung up in 1588. Duns is one of several places which claim
the honour of having been the birthplace of the learned Duns Scotus
(1265-1338), but even though she be unable quite to substantiate this
claim, her record of worthy sons is no short one. And was not that
woman, famed in the seventeenth century, she who was possessed of an
evil spirit which caused her, an illiterate person, to talk fluently in
the Latin tongue, a {045}native of Duns! The Privy Council Record, under
date 13th July, 1630, contains an order for bringing before it Margaret
Lumsden, "the possessed woman in Duns," along with her father-in-law and
her brother, that order might be taken in the case, "as the importance
and nature of such a great cause requires." A fast for her benefit was
even proposed by sundry clergymen; interest in her case was acute and
widespread. Twenty-nine years later, an account of the circumstances
was written by the Earl of Lauderdale, and was published in Baxter's
"Certainty of the World of Spirits." Lord Lauderdale was a schoolboy in
1630, but he was accustomed to hear the case very fully discussed by his
father and the minister of Duns, the latter of whom, at least, firmly
believed that the woman was possessed by an evil spirit. The Earl wrote
as follows to Baxter: "I will not trouble you with many circumstances;
one only I shall tell you, which I think will evince a real possession.
The report being spread in the country, a knight of the name of Forbes,
who lived in the north of Scotland, being come to Edinburgh, meeting
there with a minister of the north, and both of them desirous to see
the woman, the northern minister invited the knight to my father's house
(which was within ten or twelve miles of the woman), whither they came,
and next morning went to see the woman. They found her a poor ignorant
creature, and seeing nothing extraordinary, the minister says in Latin
to the knight: '_Nondum audivimus spiritum loquentem_.' Presently
a voice comes out of the woman's mouth: '_Andis loquentem, audis
loquentem_.' This put the minister into some amazement (which I think
made him not mind his own Latin); he took off his hat, and said:
'_Misereatur Deus peccatoris!_' The voice presently out of the woman's
mouth said: '_Dic peccatricis, dic peccatricis_'; whereupon both of
them came out of the house fully satisfied, took horse immediately,
and returned to my father's house at Thirlestane Castle, in Lauderdale,
where they related this passage. This I do exactly remember. Many more
particulars {046}might be got in that part of the country; but this
Latin criticism, in a most illiterate ignorant woman, where there was
no pretence to dispossessing, is enough, I think." It was, of course,
an infallible sign of demoniac possession that the victim, mostly an
illiterate person, should break out into Latin or Greek, Hebrew or what
not. That was how the devil usually betrayed himself; he could by no
means control his weakness for talking--generally very badly--in foreign
tongues.
[Illustration: 0066]
The wonders of Duns in the seventeenth century by no means ceased,
however, with this demon-possessed Margaret Lumsden. In 1639, when
Leslie camped on Duns Law with the Covenanting army and its superfluity
of ministers, there occurred a remarkable land-slide which the excited
imaginations of those witnessing its effects could not fail to interpret
as an assured sign that Providence meant to fight on their side. A bank
on the slope of the hill near to the camp slid down,--it had
probably become water-logged as the result of heavy rain.--disclosing
"innumerable stones, round, for the most part, in shape, and perfectly
spherical,... like ball of all sizes, from a pistol to fixed pieces,
such as sakers or robenets, or battering pieces upwards." Men looked on
them with awe, and bore {047}about with them specimens in their pockets,
gravely showing them to excited throngs. "Nor wanted there a few who
interpreted this stone magazine at Duns Hill as a miracle, as if God had
sent this by ane hid providence for the use of the Covenanters."
[Illustration: 0067]
We return now to Tweed, where on a steep slope stand the mighty ruins of
Norham Castle, guarding the ford; we all know the scene, castle and ford
in the gloaming, from Turner's beautiful plate in _Liber Studiorum_.
Bishop Flambard of Durham built the castle to bridle the wild Scots, in
1121; some twenty years later it was taken, under David; but the eastern
side shows the remains of the warlike prelate's work. "The {048}Norman
Keep still frowns across the Merse," and few of the castles of the age
of chivalry display more of their ancient strength than Norham. Yet it
yielded promptly to James IV. in the first week of the campaign which
closed in the terrible defeat of Flodden Edge. In this castle, in the
Lent of 1200, William the Lion kept his fast on fourteen kinds of fish,
including salmon; he certainly "spelled his fasts with an e." While
Berwick yielded to the Scots in the dark days of Edward II., good Sir
Thomas de Grey, of that ancient Northumbrian house, held Norham
stoutly, with pretty circumstances of chivalry, as his son tells in
_Scalacronica_.
Over against Norham is Ladykirk, with its ancient church, dedicated,
tradition says, by James IV. to the Virgin Mary, in gratitude for his
narrow escape from death here when fording the swollen Tweed. A field to
the east of the village shows some, remains of military works, ramparts
for guns probably, from which to fire on Norham. In a line between this
spot and the castle there was found in the river a stone cannon-ball,
fifty-seven inches in girth, probably one fired from "Mons Meg" when she
was here in 1497.
Following the light bank of Tweed we reach Carham burn, where Malcolm
II. won Lothian in battle; from Carham to the sea the right bank is
English. The next important tributary on the English side, as we ascend
the stream is Till, formed by Bowmont and Breamish Waters, which rise in
the "Cheeviots," as the Scots pronounce the name.
"T weed says to Til'
'What gars ye rin sae still?'
Says Till to Tweed,
'Though ye run wi' speed,
And I rin slaw,
Whaur ye droon ae man,
I droon tw'a.'"
The ominous rhyme sounds with the slow lap of the green-grey waters of
Till among her alders, and appears to hint at {049}the burden of the
ruinous fight of Flodden.
[Illustration: 0069]
On August 22nd, James IV., "a fey man," kept his plighted word to
France, which Henry VIII. was invading, and led the whole force of
Highlands and Lowlands across the Border. He made his quarters at Ford
Castle, where he did not, as legend says, dally with Lady Heron, still
less did his young son, the Archbishop of St. Andrews, fleet the
time carelessly with her daughter. {050}James cleared his position by
capturing Wark (now scarcely visible in ruin), Chillingham, and Eital
castles.
[Illustration: 0070]
Surrey with the English levies, including the Stanleys, sent a challenge
from Alnwick. On September 3rd, the Scots are said to have wrecked Ford
Castle, now a substantial and comfortable home, still containing the
king's rooms. James crossed the Till by a bridge at Ford, as the tourist
also does, if he wishes to see the field of the famous battle. We climb
to the crest of Flodden Edge; look south to the wooded hills beyond the
Till, and northwards note three declivities like steps in a gigantic
staircase.
The Scots were well provisioned, and should easily have held the
hill-crest against Surrey's way-worn and half-starved mutinous men.
[Illustration: 0071]
They pitched their camp on the wide level of Wooler haugh, six miles to
the right of Flodden; and on this plain Surrey challenged James to
meet him, "a fair field and no favour." For once chivalry gave place to
common sense in James's mind: "he would take and keep his ground at his
own pleasure." But he neglected his scouting, though he had hundreds of
Border riders under Home, who should never have lost touch of Surrey.
That wily "auld decrepit carl in a chariot" as Pitscottie calls him,
disappeared; James probably thought that he was retiring to
Berwick. Really, he was throwing himself, unseen, on James's line
of communication with the north: he camped at Barmoor wood, and then
recrossed Till by Twizel bridge. Scott, in _Marmion_ and elsewhere,
blames the king for failing to see this manouvre and discuss Surrey
before his men could deploy after crossing by Twizel bridge and at
Millford. But Twizel bridge you cannot see from Flodden Edge; Sir Walter
had forgotten the lie of the ground. Unseen, the English crossed and
formed, advancing from the north towards the second of the three great
steps in the declivity, called Branxton hill. In the early evening,
_Angli se ostentant_, the English come into view. In {072}place of
holding his ground, which he is said to have entrenched, James yielded
to his impetuous temper, fired his camp, and his men throwing off their
boots, for the ground was wet and slippery, rushed down to the Branxton
plateau.
[Illustration: 0072]
"The haggis, Cott pless her, could charge down a hill," like Dundee's
men at Killiecrankie, but the expected impetus must have been lost
before James's Highlanders under Lennox and Argyll, his right wing,
could come to sword-strokes. James's right, in addition to the clans,
had a force led by d'Aussi and Both well, with whom may have been the
ancestors of John Knox, as the Reformer told the wild Earl, Queen
Mary's lover. The main body, the centre, under the flower of Scottish
_noblesse_, were with the king; who "always fought before he had given
his orders," says Ayala, the ambassador of Spain. His left was led by
Crawford and Errol; his extreme left by Huntly with the gay Gordons; and
Home with his Border spears, mounted men. {053}The English front appears
to have been "refused" so that Edward Howard was nearest to Home, and,
slanting back wards to the right of James, were the forces of Edmund
Howard, the Admiral, the Constable, Dacre, Surrey with the rear, and the
large body of Cheshire and Lancashire, led by Stanley.
[Illustration: 0073]
The Admiral sent a galloper to bring Surrey forward; and Home and Huntly
charged Edward Howard, while Dacre's Tyneside men ran, as he advanced to
support Howard. The Borderers, fond of raiding each other, could
never be trusted to fight each other in serious war; they were much
intermarried. Brian Tunstal fell, Dacre stopped Huntly; Home's men
vanished like ghosts, no man knew whither; for they appeared on the
field next morning. Probably they were plundering, but "Down wi' the
Earl o' Home," says the old song of the Souters of Selkirk. In the
centre of the vanguard the Admiral and the Percys clashed with Crawford
and Errol. Both leaders fell, and James threw the weight of his centre
against Surrey. To slay that general with his own hand was the king's
idea of the duty of a leader. But the English guns {054}mowed down his
ranks, and the Scots could not work their French artillery. The king
pressed in with Herries and Maxwell at his side; the ranks of England
reeled, but the Admiral and Dacre charged James's men in flank. "Stanley
broke Lennox and Argyll" on the king's right; the noble leaders fell,
and the nimble Highlanders rapidly made a strategic movement in the
direction of safety. Stanley did not pursue them, but fell on James's
right, which now had the enemy on each flank and in front.
"The stubborn spearmen still made good
Their dark impenetrable wood"
under a rain of arrows, against the charging knights, and the terrible
bill strokes of the English infantry.
The king was not content to remain within the hedge of spears. Running
out in advance, he fought his way to "within a lance's length" of
Surrey, so Surrey wrote; his body was pierced with arrows, his left arm
was half severed by a bill-stroke, his neck was gashed, and he fell.
James was not a king to let his followers turn his bridle-rein; he
fought on foot, like a Paladin, and died with honour. His nobles
advanced; the spears defended the dead, and the bodies of thirteen of
his peers and of two Bishops who, like Archbishop Turpin at Roncesvaux,
died in harness, lay round him. An episcopal ring with a great sapphire,
found at Flodden, is in the Gold Room at the British Museum.
Such was the great sorrow of Scotland; there is perhaps not a family of
gentle blood in the Lowlands which did not leave a corpse on Branxton
slope, where
"Groom fought like noble, Squire like Knight,
As fearlessly and well."
As matter of plain history, this honourable defeat was to my country
what, as matter of legend, the rear-guard action of Roncesvaux has
been to France. It was too late in literary times for an epic like the
_Chanson de Roland_; the burden of {055}the song was left for the author
of Marmiott. But Flodden, till my own boyhood, left its mark on Scottish
memories. When any national trouble befell us, people said, "There has
been nothing like it since Flodden."
[Illustration: 0075]
My friend the late Lord Napier and Ettrick told me that when his father
took him to Flodden in his boyhood, tears stood n the eyes of the
senior.
This is the difference between us of the north, and you of the south.
Along the Border line, my heart, so to speak, bleeds at Halidon and
Homildon hills, where our men made a {056}frontal attack, out-flanked
on either hand by lines of English archers, and left heaps as high as
a lance's length, of corpses on corpses, (as at Dupplin); but an
Englishman passes Bannock burn "more than usual calm," and no more
rejoices on the scene of the victories ol his ancestors, than he is
conscious of their defeats. Pinkie is nothing to him, and a bitter
regret to us! Dunbar to him means nothing; to us it means the lost
chance which should have been a certainty, of annihilating Cromwell's
force. Our preachers ruined our opportunity, bidding Leslie go down,
in accordance with some Biblical text, from his safe and commanding
position, after they had purged our army of the Royalist swords.
Surrey "had his bellyful" at Flodden. In Edinburgh
"The old men girt on their old swords,
And went to man the wall,"
which was hastily erected. But the English general had enough, and
withdrew southwards. I visited Flodden Edge on my return from the west
of Ireland, where I found the living belief in Fairies. I picked up a
trifle of the faith at Flodden. The guide, a most intelligent elderly
man, named Reidpath, told me this yarn: "A woman came to my brother," (I
knew that he meant a woman of the Faery), "and told him to dig in such
a place. He would find a stone, below it a stone pillar; and another
stone, and beneath it a treasure. My brother and my father dug, found
the stone, and the pillar, and the stone below--but no treasure!"
Probably you will not find even this last trace of the fairy belief on
the Border, but, from notes of my grandfather, it was not quite dead in
his day.
Here we leave Till to those who choose to fish it up towards the
Cheviots, and move up the right bank of Tweed towards its junction with
Teviot.
Before reaching that point, however, there are one or two places to
notice on both sides of the river--Coldstream, for {057}example, where
Leet water enters Tweed; Eden water, a few miles higher up; and, on the
English side, Wark Castle.
[Illustration: 0077]
Regarding the Leet, in order to find oneself filled with envy and with
longing unutterable, it is only necessary to read Stoddart's account of
the fishing to be had in his day in that curious little stream. "Of
all streams that I am acquainted with," says Stoddart, "the Leet, which
discharges itself into the Tweed above Coldstream, was wont, considering
its size, to contain the largest trout. During the summer season it is
a mere ditch, in many places not above four or five span in width, and,
where broadest, still capable of being leapt across. The run of water
is, comparatively speaking, insignificant, not exceeding on the average
a cubic foot. This, however, as it proceeds, is every now and then
expanded over a considerable surface, and forms a pool of some depth;
in fact, the whole stream, from head to foot, pursuing, as it does,
a winding course for upwards of twelve miles, is a continued chain of
{058}pools, fringed, during the summer, on both sides, with rushes and
water-flags, and choked up in many parts with pickerel weed and other
aquatic plants. The channel of Leet contains shell marl, and its banks,
being hollowed out beneath, afford, independent of occasional vines and
tree roots, excellent shelter for trout. Not many years ago the whole
course of it was infested with pike, but the visit of some otters,
irrespective of the angler's art, has completely cleared them out,
and thus allowed the trout, which were formerly scarce, to become more
numerous. On the first occasion of my fishing Leet, which happened to
be early in April 1841, before the sedge and rushes had assumed the
ascendency, I captured, with the fly, twenty-six trout, weighing in
all upwards of twenty-nine pounds. Of these, five at least were
two-pounders, and there were few, if any, small-sized fish." On another
occasion, in June 1846, Stoddart caught in the same water, in four
hours, three dozen and five fish, the biggest of which weighed 3
lbs., and a dozen of the others 1 lb. apiece. This stream, in its
characteristics so unlike the usual Scottish burn, is not open to the
public, but it may be assumed that no such fishing is now obtainable
there, any more than it is to be got elsewhere in Scotland. Once they
establish themselves and make unchecked headway, pike are very hard
to extirpate; it is not in every stream that one finds otters so
accommodating, and so careful of the interests of anglers, as they
appear to have been in Leet in Stoddart's day.
Coldstream, where Leet joins Tweed, was of old chiefly known for its
ford, the first of any consequence above Berwick. It was here that the
invading army of Edward the First crossed the river into Scotland
in 1296; here, indeed, it was that most armies, English or Scottish,
plunged into country hostile to them once they had quitted their own
bank of the river; it was here that all Scottish travellers, from
royalty to peasant, must halt when southward bound, and await the
falling of the waters should Tweed chance to be in flood. Consequently,
at {059}a very early date a settlement sprang up, and in it many an
historical personage has temporarily sojourned. Sir Thomas Dick Lauder
says that as late as his own day an old thatched two storied building
in the village was pointed out as the house in which "many persons of
distinction, including kings and queens of Scotland, are enumerated by
tradition as having resided.... occasionally several days at a time,"
waiting till the river was fordable. It was not till 1766, when Smeaton
completed his fine bridge, that any other crossing of the stream than by
the ford was possible. In pre-Reformation times, there was in Coldstream
a rich Priory of Cistercian Nuns, not a stone of which, however, now
remains. But in its little burial ground, between the river and what
used to be the garden of the Priory, in 1834 there was dug up a great
quantity of human bones, and a stone coffin. The bones were supposed
to be probably those of various Scottish persons of rank who fell but
a short five or six miles away on the fatal field of Flodden. Tradition
tells that the Abbess of that day, anxious to give Christian burial to
her slain countrymen, caused the bodies of many Scots of rank and birth
to be borne from the field of battle to the Priory, and there laid them
to rest in consecrated ground.
Till about 1865 there stood in the village another interesting old
house, and on the building which now occupies its site may be read the
following inscription: "Headquarters of the Coldstream Guards, 1659;
rebuilt, 1865." Here it was that General Monk formed that famous
regiment, than which there is but one in the British army whose history
goes further back, none which in achievements can surpass it. In one
of his works on England at the period of the Restoration of Charles the
Second, M. Guizot, the French historian, records that Monk "spent about
three weeks at Coldstream, which was a favourable spot for the purpose,
as the Tweed was there fordable; but he seems to have found it a dismal
place to quarter in. On his first arrival, he could get no provisions
for his own {060}dinner, and was obliged to content himself with a quid
of tobacco. His chaplains, less easily satisfied, roamed about till they
obtained a meal at the house of the Earl of Home, near by." This place,
to which the fine instinct of those preachers guided them, was no doubt
The Hirsel, which is at no great distance from Coldstream.
[Illustration: 0080]
There is yet another thing for which this little town was famed in
former days. In the time of our grandsires, and indeed, down to as late
a date as 1856, when clandestine weddings were prohibited by Act of
Parliament, it was a common sight to see a post-chaise come racing
over Coldstream Bridge, or, in days before a bridge existed, splashing
through the water from the English side, bearing in it some fond couple
(like Mr. Alfred Jingle and the Spinster Aunt), flying on love's wings
from stony-hearted parent or guardian. Coldstream was almost as famous
a place for run-away marriages as was Gretna Green itself. At the former
place, the ceremony was usually performed in the toll-house at the
Scottish end of the bridge, where "priests" were always in readiness
to tie up the run-away {061}couples, and to issue to them thereafter a
Certificate of Marriage, such as the following, which is a copy of one
issued in 1836: "This is to certify that John Chambers, Husbandman, from
the Broomhouse, in the Parish of Chatton, with Mary Walker from Kelso,
in the Parish of Kelso, in Roxboroughshire, was married by me this Day.
As witness to my hand, William Alexander, Coldstream, 15th Dec., 1836.
Witnesses' names: Miss Dalgleish, Miss Archer."
But though for convenience' sake, and probably for speed of dispatch,
the toll-house was chiefly patronised, those who had command of money
and were not unduly pressed for time could arrange to have their
nuptials celebrated in less public fashion than would probably be the
case at the bridge-end. It is I believe an undoubted fact that in 1819
Lord Brougham was married in the chief inn of the village.
Those irregular marriages were in the eighteenth century a great source
of trouble and annoyance to the Kirk Session of Kelso. A good many of
them at one time were celebrated by a certain Mr. Blair, whom the Privy
Council had ejected from the incumbency of Coldstream in 1689 because
he had refused to pray for the King and Queen, (William and Mary),
and would neither read the proclamation of the Estates nor observe
the national thanksgiving. Mr. Blair, however, after the loss of his
incumbency continued to live in the village, and, it was alleged,
was, in the matter of these marriages sometimes over accommodating and
good-natured regarding dates; in his certificates he did not always
rigidly adhere to the true day of month or year in cases where it might
be represented to him that a fictitious date would be less compromising
to the contracting parties. Mr. Blair was "sharply rebukit" by the
Session. The reverend gentleman was not in Coldstream later than 1728,
and he died at Preston, in Northumberland, in 1736, {062}at the age of
eighty-five. The following is the epitaph composed on him:
"Here lies the Reverend Thomas Blair,
A man of worth and merit,
Who preached for fifty years and mair,
According to the spirit.
He preached off book to shun offence,
And what was still more rare,
He never spoke one word of sense--
So preached Tammy Blair."
In examining Scottish Border records of those times, nothing strikes one
more than the power of the Kirk Sessions; it is indeed hard to imagine a
country more priest ridden than Scotland in the eighteenth century. The
"Sabbath" was then as easy to break as a hedge-sparrow's egg, and there
were a thousand--to modern eyes not very heinous--ways of breaking it.
What in the way of punishment may have been meted out to the unfortunate
who fell asleep under the infliction of a long, dull, prosy sermon in a
stuffy, ill-ventilated church on a warm summer's day, one hardly cares
to conjecture, so rigidly enforced was the duty of listening to sermons;
whilst to be abroad "in time of sermon" was sin so heinous that Elders
were, so to speak, specially retained to prowl around and nose out
offenders. Walking on the Sabbath day--"vaguing," they called it,--was
looked on with horror, and called for stern reprimand. In 1710, it was
observed that sundry persons in Kelso were "guiltie of profaning the
Sabbath by walking abroad in the fields after sermons," and the Session
called on the parish minister to "give them a general reproof out of the
pulpit the next Loird's Day, and to dehort them from so doing in time
coming, with certification that the Session will take strict notice of
any one guiltie of it." For less than "vaguing," however, a man might be
brought before the Session. In 1710, Alexander Graemslaw of Maxwellheugh
was "dilated for bringing in cabbage to his house the last Lord's Day
between sermons," {063}and was "cited to the next Session." ("Dilate" is
probably less painful than it sounds). He was only "rebuked" about the
cabbages: but then they fell on him and demanded an explanation of his
not having been at church. Altogether they made things unpleasantly warm
for Alexander. In 1708, Alexander Handiside and his son, and a woman
named Jean Ker were had up for "walking to and fro on the Sabbath."
At first they "compeared not" on being cited, but on a second citation
Handiside "compeared," and vainly advanced the plea that his walking to
and fro was occasioned by the fact that he had been attending a child
who had broken a leg or an arm. He "was exhorted to be a better observer
of the Sabbath." A Scot, apparently, might not upon the Scottish Sabbath
draw from a pit his ox or his ass which had fallen in. This same year,
"those who searched the town" discovered two small boys "playing on
the Sabbath day in time of sermon." The Session dealt sternly with the
hardened ruffians. Amongst other cases that one reads of there is that
of Katherine Thomson. One's sympathies rather go with Katherine, who
when reproved by a sleuth-hound Elder for "sitting idly at her door in
time of sermon," abused her reprover. But the Session made it warm for
a woman who thus not only, as they said, "profaned the Sabbath," but was
guilty of "indescreet carriage to the Elder." One trembles to think how
easy it was to slip into sin in those days.
But over and above this Juggernaut power of the Session, there was
another weapon much used by eighteenth century ministers, whereby they
kept a heavy hand on the bowed backs of their congregations. It was
their habit, where the conduct, real or fancied, of any member of
their flock offended them, to speak _at_ the culprit during service
on Sundays, and to speak at him in no uncertain voice. The practice is
probably now dead, even in remote country parishes, but fifty years ago
it was still a favourite weapon in the hands of old-fashioned
ministers, and in the eighteenth century it seems to have been in almost
{064}universal use. The Reverend Mr. Ramsay, minister of Kelso from 1707
till his death in 1749, was a dexterous and unsparing wielder of this
ecclesiastical flail. It chanced once that there "sat under" him--as we
say in Scotland--a Highlander, a man who had deserted from the ranks of
the rebel army in the '15, and had afterwards managed to get appointed
to a post in the Excise at Kelso. This man's seat in church was in the
front pew of the gallery, immediately facing Mr. Ramsay, and his every
movement, therefore, was likely to catch the minister's eye. Now, the
exciseman had a habit which greatly annoyed Mr. Ramsay. As soon as
the sermon commenced, the Highlander produced a pencil, with which he
proceeded to make marks on a slip of paper. He may, perhaps, have been
making calculations not unconnected with his duties as exciseman,--a
scandalous proceeding when he should have been all ears for the Word as
expounded by the minister; or, again, on the other hand he may really
have been devoutly attentive to the sermon, and engaged in making notes
on it,--a thing perhaps not over and above likely in an ex-Highland
rebel. In any case he annoyed Mr. Ramsay, and one day the irritation
became acute. Pausing in his discourse in order to give emphasis to his
words, and looking straight at the exciseman, he cried: "My brethren, I
tell ye, except ye be born again, it is as impossible for you to enter
the Kingdom of Heaven as it is for a Hielander no to be a thief! Man wi'
the keel-o-vine," he thundered, "do ye hear _that?_" (For the benefit of
non-Scottish readers it may be necessary to explain that a "keel-o-vine"
is a pencil).
A few miles above Coldstream, after a course of about four and twenty
miles, the beautiful little Eden Water joins Tweed. Its capabilities as
a trout stream are spoken of elsewhere in this volume, and the little
river is now mentioned only to record a tragedy of unusual nature which
occurred in it in the earlier half of the nineteenth century. Two young
ladies, sisters of the then proprietor of Newton Don, a beautiful estate
on the right bank of Eden, had come from Edinburgh to {065}pass the
summer and autumn at their brother's house. With them was a friend, a
Miss Ramsay. It chanced that one afternoon these three young ladies were
walking along the banks of the river, on the side opposite to Newton
Don. They had strolled farther than at starting had been their
intention, and time had slipped past unnoticed, and while they still
had some distance to go on their return way, they were surprised by the
sound of the house bell ringing for dinner. Now, a little below the spot
where they then were, it was possible to cross the river by stepping
stones, an easy, and to every appearance a perfectly safe way by which
anybody beyond the age of childhood might gain the other side, without
much risk even of wetting a shoe. The three girls, accordingly, started
to go over by these stones. The water was low and clear, the weather
fine; there had been no thunderstorm that might have been capable of
bringing down from the hills a sudden spate; the crossing could have
been made a million times in such circumstances without peril greater
than is to be met with in stepping across a moorland drain. Yet now the
one thing happened that made it dangerous.
At some little distance up stream there stood a mill, the water power
of which was so arranged, that if the sluice of the mill should for any
reason be suddenly closed, that body of water which normally flowed down
the mill dam after turning the wheel, was discharged into the river some
way above the stepping stones. In the narrow channel of the Eden at this
point, this sudden influx of water was quite sufficient to raise the
stream's level to a height most dangerous to anyone who at the time
might be in the act of crossing by these stones. Unhappily, at the exact
moment when the three poor girls were stepping cautiously and with
none too certain foot from stone to stone, and had reached to about
mid-channel, the miller, ignorant of their situation and unable from
where he stood to command a view to any distance down stream, closed his
sluice. Down Eden's bed surged a wave crested like some inrushing sea
that sweeps far up a shingly beach. In an instant the three girls,
{066}afraid to make a dash for the safety of the hank, were swept off
the stones where they clung, and were carried shrieking down the swollen
stream. One, Miss Ramsay, buoyed to a certain extent by the nature of
her dress, floated until she was able to grasp the overhanging branch of
a tree, and she succeeded in getting out. The other two, rolled over
and over, buffeted by the sudden turmoil of waters, were swept away and
drowned. No one was near to give help; none even heard their cries.
On the southern bank of Tweed, a mile or two up the river from
Coldstream and Cornhill, stands all that is left of Wark Castle, a place
once of formidable strength, and greatly famed in Border history. Except
a few green mounds, and portions of massive wall, there remains now but
little to speak of its former greatness, or to remind one of the mighty
feats that were performed here during its countless sieges and bloody
fights. But the old Northumbrian saying still tells its tale with grim
simplicity:
"Auld Wark upon the Tweed
Has been mony a man's dead."
Regarding this couplet, the following comment is made in the _Denham
Tracts_: "Mark's history, from the twelfth down to at least the
sixteenth century, is perhaps without a parallel for surprises,
assaults, sieges, blockades, surrenders, evacuations, burnings,
restorations, slaughters. These quickly recurring events transformed the
mount on which the castle stood into a Golgotha, and gave a too truthful
origin to the couplet which still occurs on the Borders of the once
rival kingdoms." The castle was erected during the reign of King Henry
I., by Walter d'Espec, somewhere about the year 1130; and before it had
been many years in existence, in 1135, David I. of Scotland captured it.
From that time onwards, at least down to 1570, when Sussex spent a night
within its walls on his way to harry Teviotdale, there is not one item
of that formidable list of "surprises, assaults, sieges, blockades,
surrenders, {067}evacuations, burnings, restorations, slaughters," that
has not been amply borne out by its history, many of them again
and again. David took it in 1135, but restored it to England in the
following year. Twice afterwards, the same monarch vainly attempted to
take it by storm, but finally, after the fall of Norham, he reduced
it by means of a long blockade. After this it remained in Scottish
possession till 1157, when England again seized, and at great expense
rebuilt, the castle. In 1216 it was destroyed by fire; in 1318, reduced
by King Robert the Bruce; in 1385, taken by storm by the Scots. Then in
1419, William Halliburton of Fast Castle surprised the English and took
the castle, putting all the garrison to the sword. But the same fate was
dealt out to the Scots themselves a few months later; Sir Robert Ogle
and his men gained access to the building by way of a sewer from the
kitchen, which opened on the bank of Tweed. Creeping up this unsavoury
passage, they in their turn surprised and slew the Scotsmen. Again in
1460, after the widow of James II. had dismantled Roxburgh and razed it
almost to the foundations, the Scots forded Tweed and retook Wark. But
they did not hold it long. More valuable now to the English than ever
it had been before, owing to the loss of Roxburgh, it was partially
repaired by them, only, however, to be again pulled down by the Scots
before the battle of Flodden; after which Surrey for the last time
restored and strengthened it. After the accession of James VI to the
throne of England, Wark, like other Border strongholds, began to fall
into decay; the need for them was gone. Buchanan, the historian, has
left a description of Wark as it was in 1523, when he was with the
Scottish army at Coldstream, which then besieged it. "In the innermost
area," he says, "was a tower of great strength and height; this was
encircled by two walls, the outer including the larger space, into which
the inhabitants of the country used to fly with their cattle, corn, and
flocks in time of war; the inner of much smaller extent, but fortified
more strongly by ditches and {068}towers. It had a strong garrison,
good store of artillery and ammunition, and other things necessary for
defence."
On this occasion the Scottish commander sent against the castle a picked
force of Scottish and French troops, supported by heavy siege artillery,
all under the command of Ker of Fernihurst. "The French," says Sir
Walter Scott, "carried the outer enclosure at the first assault, but
were dislodged by the garrison setting fire to the corn and straw laid
up in it. The besiegers soon recovered their ground, and by their
cannon effected a breach in the inner wall. The French with great
intrepidity mounted the breach, sustaining great loss from the shot
of that part of the garrison who possessed the keep; and being warmly
received by the forces that defended the inner vallum, were obliged to
retire after great slaughter. The attack was to have been renewed on the
succeeding day, but a fall of rain in the night, which swelled the Tweed
and threatened to cut off the retreat of the assailants to the main
army, and the approach of the Earl of Surrey, who before lay at Alnwick
with a large force, obliged the Duke [of Albany] to relinquish his
design and return into Scotland."
Wark, it is said, once belonged to the Earl of Salisbury, and the tale
is told how, in the time of King David Bruce, a gallant deed was done
by Sir William Montague, Lord Salisbury's governor of the castle. King
David, returning from a successful foray into England, passed close to
Wark, making for the ford over Tweed at Coldstream, and his rear-guard,
heavily laden with plunder, was seen from the castle walls by
Montague's garrison. The rear was straggling. Such an opportunity was
not to be wasted. The Governor, with forty mounted men, made a sudden
dash, slew a great number of the Scots, cut off one hundred and sixty
horses laden with booty, and brought them safely into the castle. David
instantly assaulted the place, but without success; and he thereupon
determined to take it by siege. There was but one way whereby the place
might be saved; a message must be conveyed to King Edward III., {069}who
was then on his way north with a great army. The risk was great; failure
meant death, and the castle was closely invested. Sir William himself
took the risk. In a night dark and windy, with rain falling in torrents,
the Governor dashed out on a swift horse and cut his way through the
Scottish lines before almost the alarm had been raised; and so rapidly
did Edward advance on hearing of the plight of the garrison, that the
rear of the Scottish force was barely over the ford before the English
van had reached the southern bank of Tweed. It is of this occasion
that the more or less mythical tale of King Edward and the Countess of
Salisbury's Garter is told. In the great Hall of Wark Castle the story
finds a dubious resting place.
The countless war-like events that have taken place in and around Wark
give to the place an interest which is perhaps hardly appreciated by the
majority of us, and that interest is largely added to when one thinks
of the many characters noted in history who from time to time sojourned
within its walls. King Stephen lay here with a large army in 1137; Henry
III remained in the castle for some time with his queen in 1255; in
1296 Edward I paid it a visit: Edward II mustered here his army in
1314 before his crushing defeat at Bannockburn, and, as already stated,
Edward III, after he had driven off the Scottish marauding force, was
entertained here for a time by the Countess of Salisbury.
Wark, one thinks, would be an ideal place in which to conduct
excavations,--though, indeed, a little in that line has already been
undertaken. In the volume for 1863-68 of the "Proceedings of the
Berwickshire Naturalists' Club," it is recorded that a good many years
ago Mr. Richard Hodgson had traced a wide sewer to the north of the
castle, opening on to the river bank. This sewer is said to be so wide
that it might easily have been used for the passage of men or material.
Probably it was by this bidden way that Sir Robert Ogle in 1419 forced
his way into the interior. But if the opening was so wide, {070}how
came it to be undefended? Was there a traitor inside who kept guard that
night, a Northumbrian perhaps, masquerading as a Scot, whose burr did
not betray him? In the course of his investigations Mr. Hodgson came
also on a "long flight of stone steps leading from the keep to the outer
court, with a portcullis about half way." Quantities of cannon balls
have also been found, but there must surely be unlimited scope for the
discovery of such like treasure trove in the fields surrounding the
castle, and down by the ford where so many armies of both nations have
crossed Tweed. They did not always make a leisurely and altogether
unmolested passage.