|Coming{071} now to Kelso,--with Melrose the most pleasing of the towns
on Tweed,--we pass the meeting of the waters of Tweed and its largest
affluent, Teviot. Kelso has a fine airy square, good streets, and an air
of quiet gentility, neighboured as it is by Floors, the palatial seat
of the Duke of Roxburghe, and by the trees of Springwood Park, the
residence of Sir George Douglas.
We are now in the region of the clan of Ker of Cessford, from which the
ducal family descends: while the Lothian branch descends from the Kers
of Fernihurst. The name, Ker, is said to mean "left handed," and like
the left handed men of the tribe of Benjamin, the Kers were a turbulent
and grasping-clan, often at deadly feud with their neighbours and
rivals, the Scotts of Buccleugh. These, with the Douglases, for long
predominant, were the clans that held the Marches, and freely raided the
English Borderers, while they fought like fiends among themselves.
It is in the early sixteenth century that the chiefs of the two branches
of Ker, or Kerr, and of the Scotts, become more and more prominent in
history, both as warriors and politicians. From these Houses the Wardens
of the Border were often chosen, and were not to be trusted to keep
order; being more disposed to use sword and axe. Within a century the
chiefs {072}throve to Earl's estate, and finally "warstled up the brae"
to Dukedoms.
[Illustration: 0092]
Meanwhile the Douglases, for long the most powerful House in Scotland,
the rivals of the Crown, were crushed by James II, and of the Douglases,
Sir George, of Springwood Park, is descended from the House of Cavers,
(on Teviot, below Hawick), scions sprung from Archibald, natural son of
the Earl of Douglas who fell at Otterburne (1388) and is immortal in the
ballad. The whole land is full of scenes made famous by the adventures
of these ancient clans; they may be tracked by blood from Hermitage
Castle to the dowie dens of Yarrow and the Peel Tower on the Douglas
burn.
Sir Herbert Maxwell, in "The Story of the Tweed" (p. 139) not
unnaturally laments the "sadly suburban" name of Springwood Park,
standing where it ought not, in place of the {073}ancient name of
Maxwell, originally "Maccus whele," "the pool of Maccus," on Tweed.
[Illustration: 0093]
Maccus was a descendant of the primeval Maccus, who, before the Norman
Conquest, signed himself, or was described, as Maccus Archipirata, "the
leading pirate." To a later Maccus David I gave the salmon fishing at
Kelso; the pool, called "Maccus whele" became Maxwell, and the lairds
"de Maxwell." The Maxwells moved to the western Border to Caerlaverock
and into Galloway; and of all {074}this history only the name, "Max
wheel," of a salmon cast below the pretty bridge of Kelso, is left.
The name Kelso is of Cymric origin: _calch myadd._ "Chalk hill." To be
sure, as the man said of the derivation of _jour_ from _dies_, the name
is _diablement change en route_. The ruins of Kelso Abbey are the chief
local remains of the Ages of faith. When David I, not yet king, brought
French Bénédictines to Scotland, he settled them in Ettrick Forest. Here
they raised the schele chirche--the Monastery, on a steep hill above
Ettrick (now Selkirk), and here they "felt the breeze down Ettrick
break" with its chill showers, and wept as they remembered pleasant
Picardy; the climate of Selkirk being peculiarly bitter. David, when
king, moved his Benedictines to the far more comfortable region of
Kelso, or "Calkow," where they began to build in 1128. The style of
their church is late Norman, and the tower was used in war as a keep in
the fierce wars of Henry VIII. The place was gutted and the town
burned by Dacre, in 1523; and suffered again from Norfolk, in 1542, and
Hertford in 1545. Henry VIII chivalrously destroyed this part of the
border from the cottage to the castles of the Kers and the pleasant
holy places of the Church, during the childhood of his kinswoman, Mary
Stuart, Queen of Scots. His aim was always to annex Scotland; and, of
course, to introduce the Gospel. In 1545, after overcoming the garrison
of the church tower, Hertford's men wrecked the whole place, leaving
little more than we see to day; though that little is much compared with
what the Reformers have left of St. Andrews and Lindores.
Kelso saw more than enough of very ugly fighting in those days; not
even her monks stood aloof when blows fell fast and their cloisters were
threatened. In 1545, twelve monks and ninety laymen gallantly held the
Abbey against the English, and when at length Hertford's guns created
a practicable breach, they retreated to the church tower. Hill Burton
says, in his History of Scotland, that then "the assault was given to
the Spaniards, but, when they rushed in, they found the place Kelso
Abbey. {075}cleared.
[Illustration: 0095]
The nimble garrison had run to the strong square tower of the church,
and there again they held out. Night came before they could be dislodged
from this their last citadel, {076}so the besiegers had to leave the
assault till the morning, setting a good watch all night about the
house, which was not so well kept but that a dozen of the Scots in the
darkness of the night escaped by ropes out at back windows and corners,
with no little danger of their lives.
[Illustration: 0096]
When the day came, and the steeple eftsoons assaulted, it was
immediately won, and as many Scots slain as were within." So may Kelso
Abbey be said to have been finally wrecked; though, fifteen years later,
the Reformers did their own little bit of work in the same line.
The Abbey buildings, however, or part of them, continued to be used long
after this date; from 1649 to 1771 the transept, roughly ceiled over,
served as the parish church, but it was given up in the year last
mentioned owing to a portion of the roof falling in whilst service was
being held. The kirk "skailed" that day in something under record
time; Thomas the Rhymer's prediction that "the kirk should fall at the
fullest" was in the people's mind, and they stood not much upon the
order of their going.
Kelso was the most southern point reached by Montrose in {077}his
efforts to join hands w ith Charles the First after his year of
victories. The Border chiefs who had promised aid all deserted him; the
Gordons and Colkitto had left him, and he marched north to the junction
of Ettrick and Tweed and the fatal day of Philiphaugh.
[Illustration: 0097]
In 1745, Kelso for two days saw Prince Charlie, in his feint against
General Wade; from Kelso he turned to Carlisle, his actual, and by no
fault of his, hopeless line of invasion of England. The Prince's own
strategy, as he wrote to his father, was "to have a stroke for't," as
near the Border and as promptly as possible He therefore wished to cross
the Tweed near Kelso, and beat up the quarters of the senile Marshal
Wade at Newcastle. If he discussed Wade to the same tune as he had
settled Cope, English Jacobites might join him. Holding Newcastle, he
could thereby admit French reinforcements, while, if defeated, he was
near the sea, and had a better route of retreat than if he were defeated
going by Carlisle and the western route, in the heart of England. His
council of chiefs, unhappily, forced him to take the western route.
Halting at Kelso, he sent the best of the Border {078}cavaliers, Henry
Ker of Graden, to make a feint on Wade; he rode as far as Wooler, near
Flodden. Next day the Prince marched up Teviot, and up Jed, to Jedburgh,
with the flower of the fighting clans; then up Rule water, another of
the tributaries of Tweed, to Haggiehaugh on the Liddell, and so into
England near Carlisle. Of old he would have picked up the Kers, Elliots,
and Scotts; Haggiehaugh, where he slept, is Larriston, the home of the
Elliot chief, "the Lion of Liddes-dale." But the tartans waved and the
bagpipes shrilled in vain, and the Blue Bonnets did not go over the
Border. One of the writers of this book possesses the armchair in which
the Prince rested at Haggiehaugh.
It was at Kelso, one remembers, that Sir Walter Scott first met James
Ballantyne, with whose fortunes his own were afterwards to become so
inextricably blended. Scott was then but a growing boy f his health
had been giving trouble, and he was sent by his father to stay for
six months with an aunt "who resided in a small house, situated very
pleasantly in a large garden to the eastward of the churchyard of Kelso,
which extended down to the Tweed." During the time of Scott's stay,
Ballantyne and he were class-mates under Mr. Lancelot Whale, master of
the Kelso Grammar School. The acquaint ance then formed was never quite
broken off, and all the world knows the story of its outcome.
We now follow Prince Charles into
"Pleasant Teviotdale, a land
Made blithe with plough and harrow,"
a rich, well-wooded grassy land, cultivated of old under the
Benedictines of Kelso.
Little more than a mile from that town, by the road leading to St.
Boswells up Tweed's southern bank, on a wooded ridge overhanging Teviot
and separated from Tweed by but a narrow flat haugh, stands all that
is left of Roxburgh Castle,--a few isolated portions of massive wall
defended on the north and, {079}east sides by a ditch.
[Illustration: 0099]
At the west end a very deep cutting divides this ridge from the high
ground farther to the west.
Ditch and cutting apparently were in former times flooded with water run
in from Teviot, for even as late as the end of the eighteenth century
remains of a weir or dam could still be {080}seen stretching across the
river. No trace of it now remains. Those who razed the castle took care
that the dam should be broken beyond repair, and countless winter floods
have long since swept away the little that may have been left. Close to
the castle probably stood the once important town of Roxburgh, with its
streets and churches, its convent and schools, and its Mint, where many
of our Scottish coins were struck. Where are those streets and churches
now? Not a trace of them is to be found. The houses were of wood, no
doubt, and easily demolished, but the churches, the convent, and the
Mint, one would expect to have been of build substantial enough to leave
some indication of where they had stood. Roxburgh, more than any other
Border town, experienced the horrors of war. Her castle was one of four
great Scottish strongholds--Edinburgh, Stirling, Berwick, Roxburgh--and
it mattered little whether it were temporarily held by England or
by Scotland, on the inhabit ants of the town fell the brunt of those
horrors. Castle and town were continually being besieged, continually
changing hands, sometimes by stratagem--as when on Shrove Tuesday, 1314,
the Good Sir James Douglas, with sixty men, surprised the garrison and
took the castle from the English;--sometimes by siege and assault, as
when James II was killed by the bursting of "the Lion," one of
his own clumsy pieces of ordnance, a gun similar to that ancient weapon,
"Mons Meg," which is still to be seen in Edinburgh Castle. To the
Queen of James II was due the complete destruction of Roxburgh as a
stronghold. The castle had been for something like a hundred years
continuously in England's hands,--a rankling sore in Scotland's body.
The knife must be used unflinchingly. Under her orders, therefore, when
the castle was captured after James's death, the place was thrown down
and made entirely untenable; and probably at this time also the dam
across Teviot was cut, thus permanently emptying fosse and ditch.
Roxburgh ceased then almost entirely to be a place of {081}strength,
and time and decay have wiped her out; no man may-say where stood any
portion of a town which, in point of population, was once the fourth
most important burgh in Scotland. Of the last siege, and the death
of James, the historian Pitscottie writes: "The King commanded the
souldeouris and men of weir to assault the castell, but the Inglischemen
défendit so walieiantlie within, the seige appeirlt so to indure langer
nor was beleiffit, quhairthrow the King déterminât to compell them
that was within the house be lang tairrie to rander and gif it ower."
Reinforcements at this time arrived, "which maid the King so blyth
that he commanded to chairge all the gunnis to gif the castell ane
new wollie. But quhill this prince, mair curieous nor becam him or the
majestie of ane King, did stand neir hand by the gunneris quhan the
artaillyerie was dischargeand, his thie bane was doung in twa with ane
piece of ane misframit gun that brak in the schutting, be the quhilk he
was strickin to the grund and dieit haistilie thereof, quhilk grettumlie
discuragit all his nobill gentlemen and freindis that war stand aboot
him." Near at hand on the farther bank of Tweed stands, or until lately
stood, an old thorn tree which is said to mark the spot where the King
fell.
The ancient Roxburgh has utterly disappeared;
"Fallen are thy lowers, and where the palace stood
In gloomy grandeur waves yon hanging wood;
Crushed are thy halls, save where the peasant sees
One moss-clad ruin rise between the trees."
But there lingers yet one relic of the days when her Markets and Trysts
were famed throughout the country. St. James's Fair, which w-as held
at Roxburgh as long ago as the days of King David I, is still kept each
August in the pleasant haugh by the ruins of the castle, between Teviot
and Tweed. There, on a little eminence, the Town Clerk of Jedburgh each
year reads this Proclamation: "OYEZ, OYEZ, OYEZ." {082}Whereas the Fair
of St. James is to be held this ----th day of August 19----, and is to
continue for the space of eight days from and after this proclamation.
Therefore, in name and authority of Our Sovereign King George V, by the
Grace of God of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, King,
Defender of the Faith, and in name and authority of the Honourable the
Provost and Bailies of the Royal Borough of Jedburgh, and in name and
authority of a High and Potent Prince the Duke of Roxburgh, and his
Bailie of Kelso, I make due and lawful proclamation that no person or
persons shall presume to trouble or molest the present Fair, or offer
any injury one to another, or break the King's peace,--Prohibiting all
old Feuds and new Feuds, or the doing of anything to disquiet the said
Fair, under the highest pains of law. As also--that no person or persons
make any private bargains prejudicial to the customs and Proprietors
of said Fair,--Certifying those who contravene any part of said customs
that they will be prosecuted and fined according to law. "GOD SAVE THE
KING."
In these degenerate days, the Fair lasts but one day in place of eight,
and Feuds, new or old, are unknown. But not so very long ago the rivalry
at this Fair of the neighbouring towns of Kelso and Jedburgh was very
bitter. Roxburgh had ceased to be, indeed, but the Fair survived, and it
chanced that the Provost and Bailies of Jedburgh--like Roxburgh, a Royal
burgh,--having under some old charter acquired a right to "proclaim"
the Fair and collect the market dues, duly came in state each August in
order to exercise this privilege at the ancient stance. Now, Kelso
in the course of time became a larger and more important town than
Jedburgh; it is, moreover, in close proximity to the ground on which the
Fair is held, whereas Jedburgh was no better than a foreign land, miles
removed--ten, at least,--from Roxburgh. Hence Kelso resented what it
considered to be an outrage on the part of her officious neighbour. What
was Jedburgh that she should oust them from those market tolls and dues!
A beggarly interloper, no less! The outcome of such a frame of mind was
generally what might be expected amongst men whose forebears for many
{083}hundreds of years had been fierce fighters. As the procession of
Jedburgh magistrates, all in their robes and escorted by a compact
body of townsmen, advanced towards the place of proclamation, taunts of
"Pride and Poverty!"--"Pride and Poverty!" were hurled at their ears
by the irritated men of Kelso. "Doo Tairts an' Herrin' Pies!" fiercely
retorted Jedburgh's inhabitants. It is difficult now-a-days to see where
came in the sting of the original taunt, or the appositeness of the
"Countercheck Quarrelsome." But in those old days they were amply
sufficient. Some man, more hasty, or less sober, than his neighbour
would follow up the taunt by a push or a blow, and St. James's Fair
was speedily as lively a spot as now could be any Fair even in Ireland.
Kelso and Jedburgh were "busy at each other"; and sometimes one
prevailed, sometimes the other. An attempt that Kelso once made to hold
the Fair on its own side of the river was utterly defeated; Jedburgh
marched across the bridge and made things so warm that the experiment of
shifting the venue of St. James's Fair has never been repeated.
No doubt, when Roxburgh ceased to be a Royal Burgh, its rights naturally
devolved on Jedburgh, the only other Royal Burgh in the country. But
Jedburgh tradition tells of a time when the English, taking advantage of
heavy floods which prevented Kelso men from crossing the river, raided
the Fair and carried off rich plunder. Then Jedburgh, coming to the
rescue, smote the English and recaptured the booty, and for their
gallant conduct were awarded those privileges which they still exercise.
The Kelso taunt of "Pride and Poverty" may possibly have originated from
a custom to which the economical burgesses of Jedburgh seem to have been
addicted. In a letter written in 1790, Sir Walter Scott mentions that
when he himself visited the Fair in that year, he found that, there
not being in possession of the men of Jedburgh enough riding boots to
accommodate all the riders in the procession, the magistrates had ruled
that only the outside men of each rank should wear boots, or, rather
{084}each a boot on his _outer_ leg. Thus, as the men rode in threes,
one pair of boots would be sufficient to maintain the dignity of each
rank,--a device worthy of Caleb Balderstone himself. It is easy enough
to assign an origin to "Pride and Poverty," but the local custom which
gave occasion for the bitter taunt of "Doo tairts and Herrin' Pies" is
baffling. There are many such taunts in the Border, hurled by town at
rival town. "Selkirk craws," is the reproach flung at that burgh by its
neighbour, Galashiels; and
"Galashiels Herons, lockit in a box,
Daurna show their faces, for Selkirk gamecocks,"
is, or was, the jibe that stung Gala lads to fury.
Before quitting the subject of Roxburgh, it may be of interest to
mention that in the churchyard of the present village of that name there
is a gravestone to the memory of the original of Edie Ochiltree, the
bluegown of Sir Walter's _Antiquary_. Andrew Gemmels was his name. He
died in 1793 at Roxburgh Newtown, a farm on the banks of Tweed a few mi
es from Roxburgh, at the great age of one hundred and six.
The first tributary received by Teviot on the right bank is the Kale
Water, running through the parish of Linton, which was in King David's
time an appanage of Kelso Abbey. The church has been restored, but the
walls are, like those of Kelso, Norman work, and in the porch is an
enigmatic piece of sculptors' work; apparently somebody is fighting a
dragon--Sir Herbert Maxwell suggests St. George, but St. Michael was
the more orthodox dragon slayer. About the object grew an aetiological
myth; a Somerville of old times
"Slew the Worm of Worrnes glen
And wan all Lintoun parochine."
The dragon-slaying story is found in most parts of the world, from Troy
to Dairy in the Glenkens. Here the Worm twisted himself round the Mote,
or tumulus (apparently the basis of an old fort), and was killed by the
local blacksmith. {085}In 1522-1533, Linton tower was among the scores
of such Border Keeps which the English destroyed. They could hold
their own against a Border raid; not in face of a regular English army.
Roxburghshire was not so deeply tainted by Covenanting principles as
Galloway, Lanarkshire, and the south-west, Ayrshire and Renfrewshire.
Covenanters needed wild hills and wild wastes. They are said to have
held coil venticles in a deep glen of Kale; but, as a rule, they knew
enough to preach in places of wide outlook, where they could detect the
approach of parties of dragoons. In the bed of a burn they would be at
great disadvantage.
A tower more interesting than that of Linton, namely Ormistoun, fell
when Linton fell; but it must have been rebuilt, for here, in Mary
Stuart's day, dwelt the Black Laird of Ormistoun, James, with Hob, his
brother, two of Bothwell's most cruel and desperate "Lambs." The Black
Laird was with Bothwell, Hay of Talla (on upper Tweed), and one of
Bothwell's own clan, Hepburn of Bowton, when they placed the powder
under Darnley's chamber in Kirk o'-Field (February 9-10, 1567), and so,
in the feeling words of Bothwell, "sent him fleeing through the air."
After doing another deed as treacherous as this murder, the Black Laird
was taken, tried, and hanged in 1573. Bothwell was Warden of the Border,
which he ruled from Hermitage Castle on the Liddel water, and all these
loose Border lairds rode and slew at his bidding. They had probably, in
that twilight of faith, no religion in particular; Catholicism lingered
in the shape of oaths, Calvinism was not yet well settled in these
regions. But, probably in prison, the Black Laird "got religion." He
professed to be of the Elect, and confident of his salvation, while he
drew a dark enough picture of life among lairds of his quality. On the
day of his hanging he said, "With God I hope this night to sup....
Of all men on the earth I have been one of the proudest and most
high-minded, and most filthy of my body. But specially, I have shed
innocent blood {086}of one Michael Hunter with my own hands. Alas,
therefore, because the said Michael, having me lying on my back, having
a pitchfork in his hand, might have slain me if he pleased, but did it
not, which of all things grieves me most in conscience. Within these
seven years I never saw two good men, nor one good deed, but all kinds
of wickedness."
This wretch, once on his feet, must have butchered some poor hind
who had spared him. In reading Pitcairn's _Criminal Trials_, and the
Register of Privy Council for the period of the Reformation, we find
private war, murder, and rapine to have been almost weekly occurrences,
from the Upper Tweed to the Esk. The new Gospel Light made the darkness
visible, and we see robberies and vendettas among the dwellers in the
peel towers, of which the empty shells stand beside every burn in the
pleasant lands then clouded with smoke from blazing barn and tower and
cottage. The later Ormistouns had "particularly deadly feud" with the
Kers of Cessford; the Kers annexed their lands, and the last Ormistoun
was a public hangman; the ancestral Orm was a flourishing and pious
gentleman of the twelfth century, a benefactor of the early monks of
Melrose. Meanwhile, the castle of Cessford, the ancestral hold of that
line, is not far from a place called Morbattle in the Black Laird's day,
and now, more pleasantly, Morebattle. The name has no connection either
with festivity or feud, and "More" is not the Celtic _mor_, "great."
"More" is "mere," a lake, and "botl" is Anglo-Saxon, "a dwelling."
Cessford Castle had the name to be only second to Bothwell's castle of
Dunbar, and Logan of Restalrig's eyrie on a jutting rock above the sea,
Fastcastle. In the great English raid of 1523, "Dand Ker," Sir Andrew,
the head of the clan, rather feebly surrendered the place, which was
secure in walls fourteen feet thick.
An interesting find was made at Cessford in 1858. Whilst excavating, a
few yards from the north wall of the castle, a workman unearthed a very
fine old sword, and a dagger, both in fair preservation. The dagger
measured about twenty-six inches, and bore on its blade the Scottish
Thistle, surmounted by a crown. The sword was basket hilted, richly
carved and embossed in silver. It measured forty inches in length; on
one side of the blade was the Scottish Crown; on the other, the date
1511.
It was a Ker of Cessford, tradition tells, who in 1622 tried to carry
off the goods and gear of Hobbie Hall of Haughhead, father of the famous
Covenanter, Henry Hall. Hobbie, apparently, was quite able to take care
of himself, as is testified by a large stone which stands on a knoll
amid trees, near Kale water, on which is carved:
Here Hoby Hall boldly maintained his right
'Gainst reef plain force armed w. lawless might
For twenty pleughs harnessed in all their gear
Could not this valiant noble heart make fear
But w. his sword he cut the formost soam
In two: hence drove both pleughs and pleughmen home."
1622.
The stone was repaired and restored in 1854 by Lady John Scott.
Higher up than Kale comes Oxnam (locally, Ousenam) Water, which joins
Teviot hard by Crailing. Once a nice trout stream, there is not left at
this day much to tempt the angler whose dreams are of giant fish, though
doubtless many a "basket" can be caught of fingerlings. In none of the
Border streams, unhappily, is any restriction made as regards the size
of the fish that may be taken. Everything goes into the creel of the
fisher with worm in "drummly" waters, and of the holiday sportsman;
moved by no compunctions, trammelled by no absurd qualms,--to them a
fish is a fish; and as the latter, at least, probably never even sees
a big trout, he attaches vast importance to the capture of a "Triton of
the minnows." The writer, who had one day fished a Border river with all
the little skill at his command, and had succeeded neither with dry fly
nor with wet in capturing anything worthy to be kept, once came upon
a sportsman of this holiday breed, rigged out with all the latest
appliances which should inevitably lure the wiliest of trout from
his native element. He "had had a splendid day," he said, in reply to
enquiries. "What had he got them with? Oh-h, Fly." but what fly, he
would not say. It was just "fly."
"Might he see the basket?" the baffled enquirer asked Proudly the lid
was thrown back, and the contents displayed--a basket half filled with
parr, and with trout, not one of which could have been six inches in
length. Thus are the streams depleted.
It is a pleasant valley, that of the Oxnam. Across it runs the old
Roman Road,--in days not very remote a favourite camping place of
gipsies,--and up the valley to the south lies that noble sweep of blue
hills, the Cheviots, smiling and friendly enough in summer, but dour and
forbidding when the north east blast of winter strikes their blurred and
gloomy faces.
Did those "muggers" and "tinklers," who of old frequented the Roman
Road that runs south over Teviot and Jed and Oxnam, and away over the
Cheviots down into Rede valley past Bremenium (High Rochester), did they
ever come upon buried treasure or hoarded coins, one wonders. It is not
many years since a well-known Professor, as he sat resting one day by
the side of the old Road a little farther south than Oxnam valley,
idly pushed his walking stick into a rabbit hole close to where he was
seated. A few scrapes with the point of the stick, and something chinked
and fell; then another, and another. But this buried treasure consisted
only of copper coins, a vast number, none very rare; and no farther
search revealed anything of value. Yet there must be plenty along
that route, if one could but chance upon the proper spots. And surely,
wherever there befell one of those countless fights or skirmishes that
were for ever taking place in these Border hills, both in the days of
the Romans and since, there must lie buried weapons. At Bloodylaws,
up Oxnam, for instance. The {89}name is suggestive; but what occurred
there, one cannot say--though there is the vague tradition of a mighty
battle that left Oxnam for three days running red with blood. The
country people, if you enquire from them the name of that hill,
pronounce it with bated breath;--"Bluidylaws," they say in lowered
voice. But I doubt that their tone is less the effect of old unhappy
tradition telling how some great slaughter took place here, than the
fact that "bluidy" is a word banned by the polite. This "three days red
with blood," too, is an expression curiously common in the account given
by country folk of any battle of which they may have local tradition.
You will rind it used in connection with at least half a dozen other
places in the Border-land besides Bloodylaws; and in the ballad of "The
Lads of Wamphray" there occurs the line: "When the Biddes-burn ran three
days blood." Wamphray is in Annandale, and the fight alluded to was
between the Johnstons and the Crichtons in 1593. But the affair was a
mere skirmish; "three days blood" is but a figure of speech in this and
probably in most other instances. Still, on a spur of Bloodylaws there
exists a well-defined circular camp, and there may be foundation for the
local tradition of some grim slaughter.