|Two{090} or three miles up Teviot from the junction of Oxnam Water,
we come to Jed, a beautiful stream, on whose banks dreams the pleasant
county town where, close on ninety years ago, they cried that cry of
which they do not now like to think--"Burke Sir Walter!"
In all the Border there stands no place more picturesquely situated than
Jedburgh, nor in historical interest can any surpass it. And though its
ancient castle, and the six strong towers that once defended the town,
have long since vanished, there remain still the noble ruins of its
magnificent abbey, and other relics of the past, less noticeable but
hardly less interesting; whilst the surrounding countryside brims over
with the beauty of river, wood, and hill.
History gives no very definite information as to the date at which first
took place the building of a castle at Jedburgh, but it appears certain
that as early as the year 950 a.d. there existed in these parts some
great stronghold, if, at least, "Judan-byrig"--where, when he had
suppressed an insurrection in Northumbria, King Edred of England
confined the rebel Archbishop of York--may be identified with
"Jedburgh." Probably, however, there was in this neighbourhood a castle
of sorts long prior to the date above mentioned, for both "Gedde-wrdes,"
or "Jedworths," the old and the new, were known {091}settlements before
the expiry of the earlier half of the ninth century, and in those
turbulent days no community was rash enough to plant itself in hamlet
or town except under the protecting shield of castle or strong place of
arms.
[Illustration: 0111]
In any case, before the end of the eleventh century, there certainly
existed at Jedburgh a castle of formidable strength, which at frequent
intervals continued to be used by the Scottish kings as a royal
residence. Here, in 1165, died Malcolm the Maiden. From Jedvvorth was
issued many a Charter by Malcolm's predecessor, David I, by William the
Lion, by Alexander II. Here, too, the queen of Alexander III bore him
a son in the year 1264; and here at a masque held after Alexander's
second marriage in 1285, appeared and vanished the grizzly skeleton that
danced a moment before the king, threading its ghastly way through the
ranks of dismayed guests; frightened women shrank screaming from its
path, men brave to face known dangers yet fell back from this horror,
hurriedly crossing themselves. An evil omen, they said, a presage
of misfortune or of death to the highest in the land. And surely the
portent was borne out, for less than six months saw Scotland mourning
the violent death of her King.
Like its not distant neighbour, the more famed castle of Roxburgh,
Jedburgh castle as time went on became a stronghold continually changing
hands; to-day garrisoned by Scots, to-morrow held by English, taken and
retaken again and again, too strong and of importance too great to be
anything but a continuous bone of contention between the two nations,
yet more often, and for longer periods, in English than in Scottish
keeping. When in the summer of the year 1316, King Robert the Bruce
went to Ireland, Sir James Douglas was one of the wardens left by him
in charge of the Scottish Kingdom. Jedburgh Castle, probably with
a garrison far from strong, was then in English keeping. Douglas
established himself at Lintalee, little more than a mile up the river
from Jedburgh, where, by throwing across the neck of a promontory
between the river and a precipitous glen, fortifications which even now
are not quite destroyed, he converted a post of great natural strength
into a position almost unassailable. Here, or in the immediate
neighbourhood, in 1317 he inflicted two severe defeats on separate
bodies of English troops, detachments from a larger army under the
Earl of Arundel. As the outcome of these victories, Jedburgh Castle was
probably regained by the Scots, for the English monks in Jedburgh Abbey
were expelled by their Scottish brethren in February, 1318, a step they
would scarcely have dared to attempt had an English garrison still been
in the castle. In 1320 town and castle were bestowed by the Bruce on
Sir James Douglas, and five years later the grant was confirmed, with
further additions of land. But in 1334 Edward Baliol, who two years
earlier had assumed the Crown of Scotland, handed over to King Edward
III, to remain for ever in the possession of England, amongst other
places, the town, castle, and forest of Jedworth. These Edward now
bestowed on Henry Percy, thus providing ground for a very pretty quarrel
between the Douglases and {093}Percies. From now onward, practically for
seventy-five years, Jedburgh Castle remained in English hands.
Ultimately, its fate was as that of a land wilfully devastated by its
own people to hamper the march of an invading army. If the Scots could
not permanently hold it, neither, they resolved, should it any more
harbour those vermin of England. Accordingly, when in 1409 the men of
Teviotdale, fierce progenitors of the more modern reiving Border Elliots
and Scotts, wiping out the English garrison, retook the castle, they at
once set about its final destruction. Burnt, so far as it would burn,
cast down bit by bit to its very foundations, with strenuous toil riven
asunder stone from stone, ere their work was ended little part of its
massive walls remained to speak of former glories. Walter Bower, Abbot
of Inchcolm, who was a young man at the time of its destruction writes
in the "Scotichronicon" that: "Because the masonry was exceedingly
holding and solid, not without great toil was it broken down and
demolished."
Perched above the town on a commanding eminence that on one side
sloped steeply to the river, and on the other to a deep glen or ravine,
defended also, doubtless, on the side farthest from the burgh by a deep
fosse, the castle must once have been of great strength--how strong as
regards position may best be judged from the bird's-eye view of it to
be gained if one climbs at the back of Jedburgh the exceedingly steep
direct road that runs to Lariton village. From this point, too, one sees
to advantage the venerable Abbey nestling among the surrounding houses,
and can best appreciate the wisdom of the old monks, who chose for their
abode a site so pleasant. A valley smiling in the mellow sunshine; a
place to which one may drop down from the heights above where bellows
and raves a north westerly gale, to find peace and quiet, undisturbed
by any blustering wind; a valley rich in the fruits of the earth, and
wandering through it a trout stream more beautiful than almost any of
the many beautiful Border "Waters," a stream {094}that once was, and now
should be, full of lusty yellow trout rising under the leafy elms in the
long, warm, summer evenings. An ideal water for trout in Jed, and many
a pretty dish must those old monks have taken from it, by fair means or
foul; pity that woollen-mills below, and netting, and the indiscriminate
slaughter of fingerlings, above the town, should have so greatly damaged
it as a sporting stream.
Possibly upper Jed is not now quite so bad as it was a few years ago,
but what of the lower part of that beautiful river? The same may be said
of it that may be said of Teviot immediately below Hawick, or of Gala,
and, alas! of Tweed, below Galashiels. The waters are poisoned by dyes
and by sewage, rendered foul by sewage fungus, reeking with all manner
of uncleanness, an offence to nostril and to eye. Five and thirty years
ago Ruskin wrote: "After seeing the stream of the Teviot as black as
ink, a putrid carcase of a sheep lying in the dry channel of the Jed,
under Jedburgh Abbey, the entire strength of the summer stream being
taken away to supply a single mill, I know finally what value the
British mind sets on the beauties of nature." What, indeed, are the
'beauties of nature' that they should interfere with the glories of
commerce! Truly we are a Commercial Nation. Here is the condition of
things that Ruskin found in the Borderland in the mid-seventies of last
century, as described by him in a lecture delivered at Oxford in 1877.
"Two years ago," he said, "I went, for the first time since early
youth to see Scott's country by the shores of Yarrow, Teviot, and Gala
Waters." Then to his hearers he read aloud from "Marmion" that picture
of the Border country which is familiar to everyone:
" Oft in my mind surh thoughts awake,
By lone St. Mary's silent lake;
Thou know'st it well,--nor fen, nor sedge,
Pollute the clear lake's crystal edge;
Abrupt and sheer, the mountains sink
At once upon the level brink; {095}
And just a trace of silver sand
Marks where the water meets the land.
Far in the mirror, bright and blue,
Each hill's huge outline you may view;
Shaggy with heath, but lonely bare,
Nor tree, nor bush, nor brake is there,
Save where, of land, yon slender line
Bears thwart the lake the scatter'd pine.
Yet even this nakedness has power,
And aids the feeling of the hour:
Nor thicket, dell, nor copse you spy,
Where living thing conceal'd might lie;
Nor point, retiring, hides a dell,
Where swain, or woodman lone, might dwell;
There's nothing left to fancy's guess,
You see that all is loneliness:
And silence aids--though the steep hills
Send to the lake a thousand rills;
In summer tide, so soft they weep,
The sound but lulls the ear asleep;
Your horse's hoof-tread sounds too rude,
So stilly is the solitude.
Nought living meets the eye or ear,
But well I ween the dead are near;
For though, in feudal strife, a foe
Hath laid Our Lady's chapel low,
Yet still, beneath the hallow'd soil,
The peasant rests him from his toil,
And, dying, bids his bones be laid,
Where erst his simple fathers pray'd."
"What I saw myself, in that fair country," continued Ruskin, "of which
the sight remains with me, I will next tell you. I saw the Teviot
oozing, not flowing, between its wooded banks, a mere sluggish
injection, among the poisonous pools of scum-covered ink. And in front
of Jedburgh Abbey, where the foaming river used to dash round the sweet
ruins as if the rod of Moses had freshly cleft the rock for it, bare
and foul nakedness of its bed, the whole stream carried to work in
the mills, the dry stones and crags of it festering unseemly in the
{096}evening sun, and the carcase of a sheep, brought down in the last
flood, lying there in the midst of the children at their play, literal
and ghastly symbol, in the sweetest pastoral country in the world, of
the lost sheep of the house of Israel."
That is how these once fair scenes struck the outraged eye of one who
was a sincere lover of our beautiful Border land. What might he say of
these rivers now that five and thirty years have passed? Compared to
Teviot, ink is a fluid that may claim to be _splendidior vitro_, and Jed
below the town is in little better case.
However, to return to Jedburgh. Of the old castle no trace now remains;
but early in the nineteenth century a small portion of one wall yet
stood, some outline of foundations yet met the eye. Probably the fosse
was filled up when the buildings were razed--it was a convenient place
to shoot rubbish; indeed, when about 1820 the site was being cut down
preparatory to the erection of a new "castle" (until recent years used
as a County Prison), charred oaken beams and blackened stones were
unearthed, relics certainly of the ancient building. A few coins have
also been found, and at various dates an iron lock, a key of curious
design, a rusty dagger, arrowheads, and portions of a gold chain.
Jedburgh, deprived of her castle, was yet a strong place; but if her
townsmen and the fierce men of Teviotdale imagined that by harrying and
destroying the nest that so long had sheltered them, the English birds
of prey would be permanently-scattered down the wind, they made a vast
mistake. No more than a year had passed ere the English returned under
Sir Robert Umphraville and burned the town about their ears; and in 1416
the same commander repeated the performance of six years earlier.
Again and again as the years rolled on were fire and sword the fate
of Jedworth. The town, with its flanking towers, was strong, strong in
natural position, and, owing to the manner of building of its houses,
difficult of access except by one or other of its four ports; but it
had no walls or {097}defending fosse, and however brave its men, however
skilled in the use of arms, their numbers were generally too meagre to
cope with the formidable bands the English could bring against
them. Time and again the place was sacked, and on each occasion her
magnificent Abbey suffered grievously at the hands of the stormers.
Founded about the year 1118, the ancient Abbey occupies the site of a
building more ancient still by probably two or three hundred years, a
church built in the ninth century by Ecgred, Bishop of Lindisfarne,
who died A.D. 845. Osbert was the first Abbot of Jedburgh (1152-1174);
previous to his day the establishment ranked merely as a Priory. In the
troublous times between 1297 and 1300, the Abbey suffered much. Sacked
and partially destroyed, the lead stripped from its roof, the conventual
buildings to such an extent gutted that the brethren, fleeing, were
forced to seek refuge for a time in Abbeys and Monasteries south of
the Border, it can have been but the massiveness of its walls that then
preserved it from total destruction.
But compared to the treatment later meted out to Abbey and town by the
Earl of Surrey, all former chastenings were as a comparatively mild
scourging with whips; Surrey chastised with scorpions. In this matter,
his little finger was thicker than the loins of those who had preceded
him. In 1523, an English force--compared to the meagre number of
defenders, a vast army--marched on the town. All that human power
could do in defence of hearth and home was done that day by the men of
Jedworth. When, since history began, has it ever been recorded of them
that they shrank from battle?
"And how can man die better
Than facing fearful odds,"
summed up their creed, then and ever. There were of them, now, but two
thousand at the most, opposed to an army many times their number one man
as against four, or perhaps even {095}as one to five. Yet so stubborn
was their resistance, so fiercely they fought, that at the last it was
only by the aid of fire that this wasps' nest was laid waste. Driven
back at length by superior numbers, forced to retire to the towers and
to the Abbey, the attack could be pushed home no farther till Surrey
gave orders to set fire to the town. Even then, Jedworth held out
till far in the night, when the entire place was little more than a
smouldering heap of embers. "I assure your Grace," wrote the Earl to his
King, "I fownd the Scottis at this tyme the boldest men and the hottest
that ever I sawe any nation, and all the journey upon all parts of
the armye kepte us with soo contynual skyrmish that I never sawe the
like."... "Could 40,000 such men be assembled," he says in the same
letter, "it would bee a dreadful enterprise to withstand them." If
valour alone could have won the day, to the men of Jedburgh had now been
the victory. They fought like fiends incarnate. The Devil himself, in
truth, must have been amongst them, for, says Surrey farther: "I dare
not write the wonders that my Lord Dacre and all hys company doo
saye they sawe that nyght six tyms of sperits and fereful syghts. And
universally all their company saye playnly the devyl was that nyght
among theym six tyms."
Thus was Jedburgh wiped out, "soo surely brent that no garnysons nor
none others shal bee lodged there unto the tyme it bee newe buylded."
And to rebuild equal to what it had been, would surely be no light
undertaking, for, says Surrey, "the towne was much better than I went
(weened) it had been, for there was twoo tymys moo houses therein than
in Berwicke, and well buylded, with many honest and faire houses therein
sufficiente to have lodged a thousand horsemen in garnyson, and six good
towres therein, which towne and towres be clenely destroyed, brent, and
throwen downe." The slaughter of Jedworth's defenders no doubt must also
have been great. But that the inhabitants were not indiscriminately put
to the sword is evidenced by the fact that some time during {099}the
night, wlien Lord Dacre's picketed horses--terrified no doubt by the
same Scottish devil that had troubled the hearts of the storniers in the
town--suddenly stampeding, galloped wildly through Surrey's camp, over
two hundred of them, bursting in amongst the still burning houses, were
caught and carried off by the Scottish women who still clung to the
place--"keening," probably, over their devastated hearths. In all,
before this stampede ended, Surrey lost upwards of eight hundred horses;
for when the maddened beasts came thundering through his camp, the
English soldiers, imagining that they were being attacked by a fresh
army of Scots, loosed off into the mob flights of arrows, and fired
into the terrified animals with musketry. It is scarcely the method
best suited to calm a maddened mob of horses; little wonder that many in
their helpless terror plunged over the great "scaurs," or cliffs, that
near the town overhang Jedwater, and were dashed to pieces.
In his letter of 27th September, to Henry VIII, Surrey thus describes
the incident: "And he [Lord Dacre] being with me at souper, about viij
a clok, the horses of his company brak lowse, and sodenly ran out of his
feld, in such nombre, that it caused a marvellous alarome in our field;
and our standing watche being set, the horses cam ronnyng along the
campe, at whome were shot above one hundred shief of arrowes, and dyvers
gonnys, thinking they had been Scotes that wold have saulted the camp;
fynally, the horses w'ere so madde that they ran like wilde dere into
the feld, above xv c at the leest, in dyvers companys; and in one place
above felle downe a gret rok, and slew theymself, and above it ran
into the towne being on fire, and by the women taken, and carried awaye
right evill brent, and many were taken agayne. But, fynally, by that
I can esteme by the nombre of theym that I sawe goe on foote the next
daye, I think there is lost above viij c horses, and all with foly
for lak of not lying within the campe." {100}So, for a time, Jedburgh
perished. But the recuperative power of settlements in those days was
great--like the eels, they were used to the process of skinning--and
in no long time a rejuvenated township sprang from the ashes of the
old burgh. When Surrey gave orders that the towers should be "throwen
downe," possibly his commands were not obeyed to the letter. In a
district where a plentiful supply of stone is not lack ing, doubtless
these defending towers would be massive buildings constructed of
that material, run together--as was the custom in those days--with a
semi-liquid mortar, or kind of cement, which, when it hardened, bound
the entire mass into a solid block that clung stone to stone with
extraordinary tenacity. Probably the towers may not have been so
"clenely destroyed" as he supposed them to be. In any case, in twenty
years' time the place was again formidable, its men as prone as had been
their fathers to shout the old battle-cry of "Jethart's here," and fly
at the throat of their hereditary foe.
Nor was the hereditary foe in any way reluctant to afford them
opportunity. In 1544 Lord Evers stormed and captured the town; and again
the roar and crackle of flaming houses smote on the ears of Jedburgh's
women. According to an Englishman's account of "The late Expedition
in Scotland made by the King's Highness' Army under the Conduct of the
Right Honourable the Earl of Hertford, the year of owr Lord God 1544,"
an account "Sent to the Right Honourable Lord Russell, Lord Privy Seal;
from the King's Army there, by a Friend of his," the men of Jedburgh
on this occasion did not behave with their wonted valour. But if this
writer is to be trusted, nowhere during Hertford's entire campaign of
1544 did the Scots make a stand. It was a sort of triumphal English
progress; everywhere the Scots fled almost without striking a blow,
everywhere they were cut down. Only occasionally, and almost as it were
by accident, was an Englishman hurt, whilst the slaughter among the
Scots was prodigious. They "used for their defence their light feet,
and fled in so much haste that divers {101}English horses were tired in
their pursuit: but overtaken there was a great number, whereof many were
slain, partly by the fierceness of the Englishmen, partly by the guilty
cowardice of the Scots.... And yet in this skirmish, not one Englishman
taken, neither slain: thanks be to God." Everywhere it is the
same story--a pleasant picnic for Hertford and his men; death and
destruction, and panic flight for the Scots. Men, women, and children,
it was all the same apparently in that campaign, if one may judge by
incidents such as this at Dunbar: "And by reason that we took them
in the mornynge, who, having wautched all nyghte for our comynge and
perceyvynge our Army to dislodge and depart, thoughte themselves safe of
us, were newly gone to their beds; and in theyr fyrste slepes closed
in with fyre, men, women, and children were suffocated and burnt.... In
these victories," comments this pious and humane scribe, "who is to
bee moste highest lauded but God?" But war is a rough game, and such
happenings were the natural outcome at that time of Henry's orders anent
the giving of quarter, and to the "putting man, woman and child to fire
and sword, without exception, when any resistance shall be made against
you."
Here, at Jedburgh, "upon the approachment of the men to their entries,
the Scots fled from their ordnance, leaving them unshot, into the woods
thereabout, with all other people in the same town." Thereafter, having
caught and slain something over one hundred and sixty Scots, with "the
loss of six English men only," Abbey, and Grey Friars, the town, and
"divers hostel and fortified houses" were sacked and given to the
flames, "the goods of the same toune being first spoyled, which laded,
at their departing, five hundred horses." Again, in his notice of the
capture of Skraysburgh, "the greatest towne in all Teviotdale," we are
told that "it is a marvellous truth.... not one Englishman was either
hurt or wounded." A craven band, those Scots, it would appear, fallen
strangely from the level at which Surrey had found them so few years
before--{102} "the boldest men and the hottest that ever I sawe
any nation"; far sunk, too, beneath the level of their immediate
descendants, the men who turned the day in the fight of the Redeswire in
1575. And yet one remembers to have heard of a certain fight about this
period, in the near neighbourhood of Jedburgh, at a place called
Ancrum Moor, when Angus, Arran, and Scott of Buccleuch, with a force
numerically very inferior, turned the tables on the "auld enemy" to a
lusty tune. It may all be quite accurate, of course, this story told to
Lord Russell, but it smacks somewhat of a tale told by one who himself
was not a very bold fighting man. The warrior whose place is ever the
forefront of the battle is not the man who belittles his enemies, nor is
he usually one who regards with complacency the sufferings of helpless
women and children. Accurate, or not, however, Hertford seems to have
had a partiality for harrying this district and slaying its hapless
people, for he returned the following year with a larger following--a
mongrel gang, in which Turks and Russians were almost the only European
nations unrepresented--and completed his work of destruction so far as
it lay in his power. He could not utterly destroy the glorious Abbey,
but the Brethren were scattered, never to return, and so far as it could
be done, the building that for four hundred years had sheltered them was
wrecked. Mute now the solemn chants that had been wont to echo through
its dim lit aisles, gone for ever the day of matins and vespers; in
Jedburgh the sway of the Church was over. Black with the smoke of
sacrilegious fires, stained by the flames that had licked its desecrated
walls, still a rudely fitted fragment of the great Abbey for a little
time continued to be used by worshippers; for the rest, the building
would appear to have been regarded chiefly as an excellent and useful
outlook or watch tower.
It was the followers of the Reformed Faith that next held public worship
there. Did no one of the old-time Abbots who lie asleep within its
ancient walls turn in his grave, one wonders, {103}when in 1793 the
south aisle was pulled down, and "a wall built between the pillars to
make the church more comfort able"?
[Illustration: 0123]
They had no room in their compositions for any sentiment of reverence,
little use for such a thing as respect for historical buildings, those
eighteenth century Scottish ancestors of ours. Our old foes of England
at least had the excuse that what they did was done in the heat
of conflict; it was left to our own people in cold blood to lay
sacrilegious hands on a glorious relic of the past; like monkeys to
deface and tear to pieces something the beauty and value of which they
had not wit to recognise. All that could be done, however, to atone
for past misdeeds was done in 1875 by the Marquess of Lothian. The
"comfortable church" of 1793 has {104}been removed, and what remains of
the Abbey is reverently cared for. Safe now from further desecration,
"The shadows of the convent towers
Slant down the snowy sward;"
and in the peace of long-drawn summer twilights only the distant cries
of children, the scream of swift or song of thrush, may now set the
echoes flying through those ruined aisles. The Presbyterian Manse that
once stood in the Abbey grounds--itself no doubt, like other houses
in the town, built wholly or in part of stone quarried from the Abbey
ruins--has long since been removed, and little now remains which
may break the tranquil sadness that broods over these relics of past
grandeur.
A few hundred yards from the Abbey, down a back street, there stands a
picturesque old house, robbed now of some of its picturesqueness by the
substitution of tiles for the old thatched roof that once was there. It
is the house where, in a room in the second story whose window overlooks
a pleasant garden and the once crystal Jed, Mary, Queen of Scots lay
many days, sick unto death,--a house surely that should now be owned and
cared for by the Burgh. Local tradition (for what it may be worth) has
it that the Queen lodged first in the house which is now the Spread
Eagle Hotel, but that a fire breaking out there, she was hastily removed
to that which now goes by the name of "Queen Mary's House." It stands in
what must in her day have been a beautiful garden, sloping to the river.
Hoary, moss-grown apple trees still blossom there and bear fruit. "With
its screen of dull trees in front," says Dr. Robert Chambers, "the house
has a somewhat lugubrious appearance, as if conscious of connection with
the most melancholy tale that ever occupied the page of history." In
those long past days, however, its appearance must have been far from
lugubrious; and indeed even now, on a pleasant sunny evening of late
spring when thick-clustered {105}apple and pear blossom drape the
boughs, and thrushes sing, and Jed ripples musically beneath the worn
arches of that fine
[Illustration: 0125]
{106}old bridge near at hand, (across which they say that the stones for
building the Abbey were brought these many centuries agone), it is more
of peace than of melancholy that the place speaks.
Yet there is sadness too, when one thinks of the--at least on _this_
occasion--sorely maligned woman who lay there in grievous suffering in
the darkening days of that October of 1566. "Would that I had died at
Jedworth," she sighed in later years. She had been spared much, the
Fates had been less unkind, if death had then been her part. And
not least, she might have been spared the malignant slanders of the
historian Buchanan, who, at any rate in this matter, showed himself a
master of the art of suppressing the true and suggesting the false.
When, according to Buchanan, news was brought to Mary at Borthwick
Castle of the wounding of Bothwell by "a poor thief, that was himself
ready to die,"--how, one wonders, would the famous "Little Jock Elliot"
have relished that description of himself?--"she flingeth away in
haste like a mad woman, by great journeys in post, in the sharp time of
winter." As a matter of fact, when the news of Bothwell's mishap reached
the Queen, she was already on her way to Jedburgh, to hold there a
Circuit Court; and the time, of course, was not winter, but early
October, not unusually one of the pleasantest times of the whole year in
the south of Scotland.
Arrived at Jedburgh, says Buchanan, "though she heard sure news of his
life, yet her affection, impatient of delay, could not temper herself,
but needs she must bewray her outrageous lust, and in an inconvenient
time of the year, despising all discommodities of the way and weather,
and all danger of thieves, she betook herself headlong to her journey,
with such a company as no man of any honest degree would have adventured
his life and his goods among them." Buchanan's estimate of the Queen's
escort on this occasion is not flattering to the Earl of Moray, (the
"Good Regent," Mary's half-brother,) the Earl ol Huntly, (Bothwell's
brother-in-law,) {107}and Mr. Secretary Lethington, who formed part of
that escort. These, one would suppose, were scarcely the men most likely
to have been selected to accompany her had it been "outrageous lust"
that prompted her journey. And as to this "headlong" dash to the side of
the wounded Bothwell, of which Buchanan makes so much, they would call
now by an ugly name such statements as his if they chanced to be made
on oath. Buchanan must have known very well that the Queen transacted
business for a week in Jedburgh before she set out to visit her wounded
Warden of the Marches,--a visit which, after all, was official, and
which under any circumstances it had been ungracious in her to refrain
from making. There was no justification for speaking of her visit as
"headlong," there is no warrant for such words as "hot haste," and "rode
madly," which have been employed by other writers in speaking of her
journey. If she made "hot haste" there, (at the end of a week devoted to
business,) she made equally hot haste back again that same day. When one
has to ride fifty or sixty miles across trackless hills and boggy moors
in the course of a day in mid-October, when the sun is above the horizon
little more than ten hours, there is not much time for loitering by the
way; the minutes are brief in which one may pause to admire the view.
Suppose that she left Jedburgh soon after sunrise, (that is to say, at
that time of year in Scotland, a few minutes before 7 o'clock) going,
as she certainly must have done, across Swinnie Moor into Rule Water,
thence across Earlside Moor and over the Slitrig some miles above
Hawick, then up and between the hills whose broad backs divide Slitrig
from Allan Water, up by the Priesthaugh Burn and over the summit between
Cauldcleuch Head and Greatmoor Hill, thence by the Braidlee Burn into
Hermitage Water, and so, skirting the Deer Park, on to the Castle,--she
would do well, in those days when draining of swamp lands was a thing
unknown, and the way, therefore, not easy to pick, if she did the
outward journey in{108} anything under five hours. Hawick local
tradition claims that the Queen on her way to Hermitage visited that
town, and rested for a time in what is now known as the Tower Hotel;
and, as corroborative evidence, a room in that inn is said to be known
as "Queen Mary's Room." It may be that she did pay a flying visit to
Hawick, but the chances are against her having made such a detour. It
would have considerably added to the length of her journey, and there
can have been small time to spare for resting.
In mid-October the sun sets a few minutes after 5 o'clock. Therefore,
in returning, the Queen and her escort must have made a reasonably early
start; for to find oneself, either on horseback or afoot, among peat
bogs and broken, swampy ground after dark is a thing not to be courted.
As it was, Mary and her horse were bogged in what has ever since been
called the Queen's Mire, where years ago was found a lady's spur of
ancient design--perhaps hers. The day had turned out wet and windy,--it
is a way that October days have, after fine weather with a touch
of frost,--and the Queen and her escort were soaked to the skin,
bedraggled, and splashed to the eyes with black peaty mud from the
squelching ground through which their horses had been floundering.
Even in these days, when the Border hills are thoroughly drained,
you cannot ride everywhere across them in "hot haste" without having
frequently to draw rein. What must they have been like in the sixteenth
century, when, in addition to the rough, broken surface, and the steep
braes, every hillock was a soaking mossy sponge, every hollow a possibly
treacherous bog, when spots such as the "Queen's Mire" were on every
hand, and every burn brimmed over with the clear brown water that the
heart of the ardent trout fisher now vainly pants after? Going
and coming, between Jedburgh and Hermitage, a party in Mary's day,
travelling as she travelled, could not well have done the journey
in less that nine hours. Truly it does not leave much time for the
dalliance suggested by Buchanan,--{109}more especially as the Privy
Seal Register of that date testifies that the Queen transacted a not
inconsiderable amount of public business whilst at the castle. But, poor
lady, she could do no right in the eyes of certain of her subjects.
She was a Catholic; and that was sufficient; even her very tolerance of
other people's religion was an offence, a trap set for the unwary. Every
suggestion of evil with regard to her conduct was eagerly seized on and
greedily swallowed by her enemies and ill-wishers. It is so fatally easy
to take away character. Especially, for some reason, in the case of
one high in rank are certain people prone to believe evil, strangely
gratified if they may be the first to unfold to a neighbour some new
scandal against their betters. Away to the winds with Christian charity!
All is fish that comes to _their_ net; to them every scandalous tale
is true, and needs no enquiry, provided only it be told against one of
exalted station.
Queen Mary rode that day in the wind and the wet a matter of fifty or
sixty miles. She was used to long rides, no doubt,--there was indeed no
other means for her to get about the country,--and she was never one who
shrank from rough weather. But wet clothes, if worn for too long a time,
have a way of finding out any weak spot there may chance to be in one's
frame, and the exposure and the wetting dealt hardly this time with the
Queen. She was never physically strong, and of late a world of anxiety,
worry, and sorrow, caused by the conduct of her husband, had drained
the strength she possessed. Moreover, ever since her confinement three
months earlier, she had been subject to more or less severe attacks of
illness, accompanied by much pain. In her normal condition, probably the
fatigue and exposure might have affected her not at all; now, it brought
on a serious malady. By the morning of the 17th--the day following her
long ride--she was in a high fever, and in great pain. As the disease
progressed, she was seized with violent paroxysms, vomiting blood; and
day by day her condition gave rise to ever more grave fear. She herself,
believing that {110}her end was at hand, took leave of the Earl of
Moray and of other noblemen, expressing at the same time great anxiety
regarding the affairs of the kingdom and the guardianship of her infant
son after her death. But never throughout the illness did her courage
falter. Lack of courage, at least, is a thing of which not even her
bitterest enemies can accuse Mary Stuart.
On the evening of the ninth day of this severe illness, after a
particularly acute attack of convulsions, the Queen sank, and her whole
body became cold and rigid. "Every one present, especially her domestic
servants, thought that she was dead, and they opened the windows. The
Earl of Moray began to lay hands on the most precious articles, such
as her silver plate and jewels. The mourning dresses were ordered, and
arrangements were made for the funeral." * John Leslie, Bishop of Ross,
writing from Jedburgh at the time, says that on the Friday "her Majesty
became deid and all her memberis cauld, her Eene closit, Mouth fast, and
Feit and Armis stiff and cauld."
* MS. in British Museum, by Claude Nau, Secretary to Queen
Mary, 1575-1587.
Buchanan's account is that, after leaving Hermitage, "she returneth
again to Jedworth, and with most earnest care and diligence provideth
and prepareth all things to remove Bothwel thither. When he was once
brought thither, their company and familiar haunt together was such as
was smally agreeing with both their honours. There, whether it were
by their nightly and daily travels, dishonourable to themselves and
infamous among the people, or by some secret providence of God, the
Queen fell into such a sore and dangerous sickness that scarcely there
remained any hope of her life." It would be hard to conceive anything
more poisonous than this, or anything less in accord with the facts.
Buchanan's zeal outran his love of the truth; with both hands he flung
mud at the Queen. In his eyes, any story against her was worthy of
credence--or at least he wished it to appear so. As a matter of
{111}fact, before Bothwell reached Jedburgh the Queen had been
dangerously ill, and incapable of making any preparation to receive him
had she wished to do so, for close on ten days, and the day after his
coming she lay for several hours unconscious, and as one dead. Writing
on 24th October to the Archbishop of Glasgow, M. Le Groc, the French
Ambassador, can only say that he hopes "in five or six days the Queen
will be able to sign" a dispatch; but on the following day her illness
again took an unfavourable turn.
She left Jedburgh within fifteen days of the date of M. Le Croc's
letter, not an excessive time in which to recover from an illness which
admittedly had brought her to the point of death, and which must have
left her in a condition of extreme weakness. Yet, according to Buchanan,
this time of convalescence was devoted to "their old pastime again,
and that so openly, as they seemed to fear nothing more than lest their
wickedness should be unknown." His conscience must have been of an
elastic nature, if, having any knowledge of the facts, he could so
write; and if he had no knowledge of the farts, one wonders how it is
possible that a man of his position and ability should commit himself to
statements so foul and uncharitable.
But at any cost, and by any means, he wanted to make out his case; and
he knew his audience.
Buchanan's bias against the unfortunate Queen was very great. It even
caused him to lend himself here to the task of bolstering up the case of
that petulant, contemptible creature, Darnley. In view of the latter's
known degrading habits and evil practices, as well as of his general
conduct towards the Queen, the following sentence from the historian's
waitings is almost grotesque: "When the King heard thereof," [Mary's
illness] "he hasted in post to Jedburgh to visit the Queen, to comfort
her in her weakness by all the gentle services that he could, to declare
his affection and hearty desire to do her pleasure." Of course Darnley
did nothing of the sort. When he did come, (twelve days after her
illness began,) he came {112}most reluctantly and tardily from his
"halkand and huntand" in the west country. He "has had time enough if
he had been willing; this is a fault which I cannot excuse," wrote M. Le
Croc on the 24th October.
According to Buchanan, Darnley, when he did reach Jedburgh, found no one
ready to receive him, or "to do him any reverence at all"; the Queen, he
says, had "practised with" the Countess of Moray to feign sickness and
keep her bed, as an excuse for not receiving him. "Being thus denied
all duties of civil kindness, the next day with great grief of heart
he returned to his old solitary corner." A pathetic story, if it were
wholly true; a heart-stirring picture, that of the "solitary corner."
But all the King's horses and all the King's men could not have set
Darnley back again in the place he had forfeited in the esteem of the
Nobles, and in the esteem of the country at large. If the nobles were
not pleased to welcome him, if he was forsaken of all friends, whose
fault was that but Darnley's? "The haughty spirit of Darnley, nursed up
in flattery, and accustomed to command, could not bear the contempt into
which he had now fallen, and the state of insignificance to which he saw
himself reduced." * Darnley was an undisciplined cub. It was the sulky
petulance of a spoilt child, that delayed his visit to Jedburgh; it was
the offended dignity of an unlicked schoolboy that took him out of it
again so hurriedly. The Queen's sufferings were as nought, weighed in
the scale against a petty dignity offended by the lack of "reverence"
with which he was received in Jedburgh. Truly, Queen Mary at her
marriage had "placed her love on a very unworthy object, who requited it
with ingratitude and treated her with neglect, with violence, and with
brutality." **
* Robertson's History of Scotland.
** Robertson.
Buchanan, the historian, Queen Mary's traducer, died in September, 1582.
His contemporary, Sir James Melville of Halhill, in writing of him says
he was "a man of notable endowments for his learning and knowledge in
Latin poesy, {113}much honoured in other countries, pleasant in
conversation, rehearsing at all occasions moralities short and
instructive, whereof he had abundance, inventing where he wanted. He was
also religious, but was easily abused, and so facile that he was led by
every company that he haunted, which made him factious in his old days,
for he spoke and wrote as those who were about him informed him; for he
was become careless, following in many things the vulgar opinion; for he
was naturally popular, and extremely revengeful against any man who had
offended him, which was his greatest fault." Truly these phrases: "he
spoke and wrote as those who were about him informed him"; "inventing
where he wanted"; "easily abused, and so facile that he was led by every
company that he haunted"; "extremely revengeful against any who had
offended him," seem to be not without application to much of what he
wrote regarding Mary Stuart.
On 9th November Jedburgh saw its last of this most unfortunate among
women. On that day the Queen and her Court set out for Craigmillar,
travelling on horseback by way of Kelso, Home Castle, Berwick, and
Dunbar. But the effects of that grievous sickness at Jedburgh long
remained with her.
Many, in the days that are long dead, were the Burgh's royal visitors;
but no figure more romantic in history has ever trod its streets
than his who in 1745 passed one night there on his disastrous march
southward. At no great distance from the house where Mary lay ill,
stands a fine old building, occupied once by a being no less ill-fated
than was the unfortunate Queen of Scots. In a "close" leading from the
Castle gate you find the door of this house--on its weather-beaten
stone lintel the date 1687. The sorely worn stone steps of a winding old
staircase lead to rooms above, all panelled in oak. But as in the case
of the "comfortable church" that once took away from the beauty and
dignity of the grand old Abbey, so here the ruthless hand of modern
"improvement" has been at work. The tenants of the building--there are
several--pre{114}sumably finding the sombre oak all too gloomy to meet
their view of what is fitting in mural decoration, have remedied this
defect by papering the panels, and in some instances by giving them what
is call "a lick of paint." Sadly altered, therefore, is the interior of
the building from what it was that night in November, 1745, when Bonnie
Prince Charlie slept within its massive walls. But the outside, with
its quaint double sun-dial set in the wall facing the Castle-gate, is no
doubt now as it was then.
Of this visit, local tradition has not much to tell. There is the story
that the advance guard of that section of the Prince's army which he
himself led, marching from Kelso, reached Jedburgh on the Sunday when
the entire community was at church, and it is said that a message was
sent to the minister of the Abbey church requiring him to close the
service and send his congregation home to prepare rations for the main
body of the army. The order, if it were really given, was apparently not
resented, for when the Prince himself marched in, the women of Jedburgh,
at least, flocked into the street to kiss his hand. The regard and
homage of the women he got here, as elsewhere, but of that of which he
stood most in need, the swords of the men, he got none. As at Kelso, not
a single recruit followed him. One, indeed, a neighbouring farmer, did
ride in to join the Royal standard, but he was a day after the fair;
the army had already marched. Did the sound that tradition says Jedburgh
heard long ere the Prince's arrival, the sound as of an army on the
march, the distant rumble of moving artillery, the tramp of innumerable
feet, and the dull throb of drums pulsing on the still night air, scare
Borderers away from his enterprise? Was it superstition, or was it a
real lack of interest, or was it merely "canniness," that so effectually
damped the ardour of recruits both at Kelso and at Jedburgh? Whatever
the cause, no man followed him; only the blessings and good wishes of
the women were his wherever he went.
After leaving Jedburgh, the Prince's army made over the {115}hills in
two divisions, one following the old Whele-Causeway (over which the main
Scottish army marched on Carlisle in 1388, what time Douglas's flying
column made a dash into England down the Rede valley from Froissart's
"Zedon"); the other marching by Note o' the Gate, the neighbouring pass
that runs between Dog Knowe and Rushy Rig. These were then the only
two practicable ways over the hills into Upper Liddesdale. "Note o' the
Gate" is a puzzle. What does the name mean? "Note" may be merely the
Cumberland "Knot" or "Knote," a knob or projection on a hillside. I
understand the term is common enough in that part of the country, as in
Helmside Knot, Hard Knot, etc. But even if this word, though differently
spelled, does bear the same meaning both in Cumberland and in
Liddesdale, I do not know that it gets us any nearer the "Gate." There
is no rugged pass here, no Gate between precipitous mountains. One
explanation--for what it may be worth--comes from a tradition that the
name was given by Prince Charlie himself, through his misunderstanding
a remark made by one of his officers. As they tramped over the moorland
pass, the Prince overheard this officer say to another: "Take note of
the gait," _i.e._, "Take note of the way." That night, when they were
at Larriston, the Prince puzzled everyone by referring to something that
had taken place back at "Note of the Gate." The story seems far fetched.
Many a tale survives of the doings and iniquities of the Prince's
wild Highlanders as they straggled over these lonely Border moors.
"Straggled," seems to be a more appropriate term than "marched," for,
according to the testimony of eyewitnesses, the men appear to have kept
no sort of military formation. Or at least what formation they did
keep was of the loosest, and no check on plundering. It is a lonely
countryside at best; human habitations were few and widely separated,
but from the infrequent cottages, property of an easily portable nature
took to itself wings as the army passed, {116}and sheep grazing on the
hills melted from sight like snow before the softening breath of spring.
Once they caught and killed some sheep in a "stell," and they cooked one
of them in an iron pot that lay in the stell, Unfortunately, they did
not take the precaution to cleanse the pot, and the resulting brew
disagreed so sorely with one of the thieves that the spot is called the
Hielandman's Grave to this day. Some others, that evening when they were
encamped, forced a man to kill and cut up sheep for them, and for this
work he was given a guinea. The pay did not benefit him much; for a part
of Highlanders, as the man went towards home, put a pistol to his head
and made him refund. They tried the same game on a man named Armstrong,
down on the Liddel at Whit-haugh Mill. But Armstrong was too much for
them; one who shared the old reiver blood was not to be intimidated,
and he knocked the pistol out of the hand of the threatening Highlander,
secured it himself, and turned the tables most unpleasantly.
One unlooked-for result of the Prince's march through those desolate
regions, was a very great increase in the number of illicit stills, and
in the consumption of whisky that had paid no revenue to King George.
So impressed were the Highlanders with the wild solitude of the glens on
all sides of their line of march, and with the facilities presented by
the amber-clear burns that tinkle through every cleuch, that when the
rebels were returning from Derby, numbers of the men got no farther
north than the hills of Liddesdale and the Border, but entered there on
the congenial pastime of whisky-making.
Though the proportion of Borderers who followed Prince Charlie down into
England, or throughout his campaign, was so very meagre, yet there lived
among those solemn Border hills many faithful hearts, whose King he was
to the end.
"Follow thee! Follow thee! Wha wadna follow thee?
King o' our Highland hearts,
Bonnie Prince Charlie,"
{117}They were not only Highland hearts that were true to him. In her
_Border Sketches_, Mrs. Oliver mentions a Hawick man, named Millar, who
accompanied his master, Scott of Gorrenberry, all through the campaign
of 1745-46, and who to the end of his days had an undying devotion to
his Prince, and till the day of the latter's death, an imperishable
faith that he would come to his own again. Long after the '45, Miller
became "minister's man" in one of the Hawick churches, and his grief,
one Sunday morning in 1788, was overwhelming when the news was told to
him that the Prince was dead. "E-eh! Doctor," he cried brokenly to his
* reverend informant, "if I'll get nae good o' your sermon the day; I
wish ye hadna telled me till this afternoon. If it had been the German
Lairdie, now, there wad hae been little mane made for _him_ But there'll
be mony a wae heart forby mine this day." Indeed, who even now can read
of Bonnie Prince Charlie's end, and _not_ have "a wae heart"?
Few of the Scottish Border towns in 1745 showed open hostility, or
indeed anything but a luke-warm friendship, for the gallant young
Pretender. Dumfries, however, was an exception. The inhabitants of that
town, with men from Galloway, Nithsdale, and Annandale, full of zeal
for King George and secure in the belief that the fighting men of the
Prince's army were all safely over the March into England, hurried
to intercept the rebel baggage train as it passed near Lockerbie, and
carried off thirty-two carts to Dumfries. The Highlanders, however,
getting word of this affair before the army marched from Carlisle,
detached a party to Dumfries to demand the return of the waggons or
the payment of an indemnity, "the notice of which has put Dumfries in
greater fear and confusion than they have since the rebellion broke out,
and expect no mercy." But the Prinnce's party was recalled before it
had reclaimed the lost baggage-carts or exacted this alternative sum
of £2,000, and Dumfries imagined that now all was weil. They had the
waggons; and for a little {118}time they triumphed. So triumphant,
indeed, were they, and so filled with confidence in their own warlike
powers, that when false rumours reached them that the Highlanders had
been utterly routed and cut to pieces at Lancaster, not only were there
"great rejoicings in Dumfries by ringing of bells and illuminating their
windows," but "a considerable party of our light horse were sent off
immediately, after the Chevalier," and "about three hundred militia,
composed of townspeople and the adjacent paroches... are to go to the
water of Esk to stop their passing and to apprehend any small parcels of
them flying." Dumfries was not so warlike a couple of weeks or so later,
when Lord Elcho at the head of five hundred men of the Prince's advance
guard marched in and demanded the immediate payment of £2,000 in money
and the delivery of a thousand pairs of shoes, two hundred horses, and
a hundred carts. Not all that the Prince demanded was paid before the
northward march was resumed, but his visit cost the town something like
£4,000--irrespective of what the Highlanders took. Whilst he remained
in Dumfries, the Prince lodged in the Market Place, in a private house
which is now the Commercial Inn. It is said that when his army marched
up Nithsdale, halting for the night at the Duke of Queensberry's
property, Drumlanrig, the Highlanders in the morning, to show their
loyalty to King James, slashed with their swords portraits of King
William and Queen Mary which had been presented to the Duke by Queen
Anne,--an inconvenient method of declaring allegiance.
Though of minor interest, there are other houses in Jedburgh besides
Queen Mary's and that in which Prince Charlie lodged, in which the
townsfolk take some pride. There is the building in which Sir David
Brewster was born in 1781; that where Burns lodged when he visited
Jedburgh in 1787; that in Abbey Close in which Wordsworth and his sister
had lodgings in 1803, when Sir (then Mr.) Walter Scott visited them
and read to them part of the then unpublished "Lay of the Last
{119}Minstrel"; there is the old Black Bull Inn,--no lunger an inn,--and
interesting only as the place where in 1726 Sir Gilbert Eliott of Stobs
stabbed Colonel Stewart of Stewartfield with his sword one evening as
they sat at supper. Claret was plentiful and good in. Scotland in those
days, and Colonel Stewart had not given his vote to Sir Gilbert, who
was candidate for the county. Swords flew out on slender excuse in the
eighteenth century. This particular sword was long kept in the family
of Sir Gilbert Elliot's butler, and after passing through the hands of a
resident in the village of Denholm, became the property of Mr. Forrest,
the well-known gun-maker of Jedburgh, by whom it was finally deposited
in the Marquess of Lothian's museum at Monteviot.
Jedburgh, of course, amongst other claims to distinction was famed for
its witches--as what place was not, indeed, in times when harmless
old women were adjudged innocent or guilty of the charge of witchcraft
according as they sank or floated when thrown into deep water. If they
sank--well and good, that meant that they were innocent, and they went
to Heaven, having at any rate the satisfaction of knowing beforehand
that, in such case, at least their memory would be cleared of the
suspicion under which they had lain; if they floated--again well and
good; that proved conclusively that the charge against them was a true
one, and they were rescued from the water only to be burned alive. "Thou
shalt not suffer a witch to live," was the text which our ancestors
regarded as the Eleventh Commandment. We were not a whit better even at
as late a date as the seventeenth century, than are those West African
tribes of the present day whose medicine-men still "smell out" witches.
Only, the West Africans practise the art now more or less in secret, and
they are more humane in the death they inflict than were our ancestors;
they do not burn.
Jedburgh's testing place for witches was a pool below the spot where
now the Townfoot Bridge crosses the river. There is a story told of
a notorious witch who was ducked here along with {120}a batch of her
sinful associates. No doubt _they_ all floated right enough; their
reputation as witches of the most mischievous description had long been
almost too well established to need such a test as that of the river.
But this is what led to their final overthrow. The chief witch of this
"covine" had a husband, the village pedagogue, a man of repute for piety
and for the rigour of his Sabbath keeping, and it was notorious that
in season and out of season this good man would remonstrate with his
wife--without doubt, people said, endeavouring to wean the woman from
her sinful habits.
Now, one must of course admit that such continued efforts to save could
not fail to be excessively irksome to any witch, and must goad not only
her, but also her accomplices, as well as her Master, the Devil, to
revenge. Hence, when the schoolmaster's dead body was found one fine
morning floating in the river, the majority of the drowned man's
neighbours had no hesitation in believing that his wife and her partners
in iniquity had dragged him in the night from his hard-earned rest,
and had thrown him into the deepest pool in Jed. And this was the more
certain, because the deceased man had several times confided to friends
a pitiful tale of how he stood in terror of his life, and how his wife
and her "covine," had already more than once hauled him through the
roughest streams of Jed. Sundry pious elders, moreover, affirmed
that they had attended with him a sederunt of their church rulers the
previous evening--when, perhaps, a trifle of something may have been
taken in a quiet way to keep out the cold--and that at a late hour
afterwards they accompanied him to his own door, whence, they admitted,
they had come away in a hurry because of the wrathful and threatening
tones in which they heard this witch addressing her husband. And this
evidence was to some extent corroborated by the neighbours, who told how
they had been awakened from sound sleep that night by the noise made
by the poor victim loudly singing the twenty-third Psalm as the horrid
troupe hurried him down the street towards the river--a rope {121}about
his neck, said some. Moreover, it was told, on evidence which people saw
no reason to doubt, that at the time this poor man was being hurried to
his death, a company of fairies was seen dancing on the top of the
tower of Jedburgh Abbey, where after the drowning of the unfortunate
schoolmaster by the witches, the whole company regaled themselves
liberally with wine and ale. Certainly, both wine and ale _were_ found
to be missing from a neighbouring cellar the following day; and as the
door of the cellar had been locked, obviously the loss could only be
attributed to the schemes of fairies or witches. The one tale lent
an air of truth to the others; therefore people were not backward in
crediting both. He who accepted the story of the dancing fairies could
have little difficulty in giving credence to that of the witches'
"covine" dragging their unresisting prey through the streets. And so
another wretched victim or two went to her long home by a fiery death.
The schoolmaster was probably insane on some points, and trumped up the
story of the witches having repeatedly ducked him. Our ancestors could
swallow anything in the way of marvel. This story of the Jedburgh
schoolmaster is told in "Historical Notices of the Superstitions of
Teviotdale"; and it is added therein that popular tradition says that "a
son of Lord Torpichen, who had been taught the art of witchcraft by his
nurse," was of the party of witches, and that it was he who first gave
information regarding the murderers.
The Ettrick Shepherd must have known this story well. Perhaps it
suggested some of the verses in "The Witch of Fife," in "The Queen's
Wake."
"Where have ye been, ye ill woman,
These three lang nichts frae hame?
What gars the sweit drap frae yer brow, '
Like clots o' the saut sea faem?
"It fears me muckle ye have seen
What guid man never knew;
It fears me muckle ye have been
Where the grey cock never crew." {122}
"Sit down, sit down, my leal auld man,
Sit down and listen to me;
I'll gar the hair stand on yer crown
And the cauld sweit blind yer e'e.
"The first leet nicht, when the new moon set,
When all was douf and mirk,
We saddled our naigs wi* the moon fern leaf,
And rode frae Kilmorran Kirk.
"Some horses were of "the broom-cow framed,
And some of the green bay tree:
But mine was made of a hemlock-shaw,
And a stout stallion was he.
"We rode the tod doon on the hill,
The martin on the law;
And we hunted the hoolit out o' breath,
And forcit him doon to fa'."
"What guid was that, ye ill woman?
What guid was that to thee?
Ye wad better have been in yer bed at hame
Wi' yer dear little bairns and me."
"And aye we rade and sae merrylie we rade,
Through the merkist gloffs o' the night;
And we swam the flood, and we darnit the wood,
Till we cam to the Lommond height.
"And when we cam to the Lommond height,
Sae blythlie we lighted down;
And we drank frae the horns that never grew
The beer that was never brewin.
"And aye we danced on the green Lommond
Till the dawn on the ocean grew,
Nae wonder I was a weary wicht
When I cam hame to you.
And we flew ow'r hill, and we flew ow'r dale,
And we flew ow'r firth and sea,
Until we cam to merry Carlisle,
Where we lightit on the lea. {123}
"We gaed to the vault beyond the tow'r
Where we entered free as air,
And we drank, and we drank of the Bishop's wine,
Until we could drink nae mair."
If, however, our forbears were drastic in their manner of dealing with
witches and warlocks, and rigid in the infliction of capital punishment
on criminals guilty of very minor offences, they were extraordinarily
lax as regards the condition in which they kept their prisons. It is
told that, sometime during the eighteenth century, the chief magistrate
of Jedburgh was waited on by the burgh gaoler, who complained that the
main door of the gaol had parted company with its hinges--which, in
fact, had long been eaten through with rust. He had no means of securing
his prisoners. What was he to do? It was a question calculated to puzzle
any ordinary person. But the magistrate was a man of resource. "Get
a harrow," said he. "And set it on end in the doorway, wi' its teeth
turned inwards. If that winna keep them in,--'deed then they're no
worth the keepin'." To as late a date as 1833, Selkirk also was not
much better off than this, as regards its prison. The writer of the
Statistical Account of the Parish at that date complains that prisoners
"_have been frequently in the practice of coming out in the evening, and
returning again before the jailor's visit in the morning._"
If by chance there was ever a period of his life when the Poet Burns
was _not_ susceptible, it certainly was not at the time when he visited
Jedburgh in 1787. Regarding that visit he has left in his diary some
very characteristic notes. He was "waited on by the magistrates and
presented with the freedom of the burgh," he records; he meets and dines
with "a polite soldier-like gentleman, a Captain Rutherfurd, who had
been many years in the wilds of America, a prisoner among the Indians,"
and who apparently rather bored the poet. Captain Rutherfurd's
adventures were assuredly such as could not fail to be well worth
listening to, but what between Burns' respectful {124}admiration of an
armchair that the old soldier possessed, which had been the property of
James Thomson, author of "The Seasons," and his latest attack of love's
sickness, host and guest do not seem to have been quite in accord.
Perhaps the old soldier prosed, and told his battles o'er again to too
great an extent--it is a failing not unknown in old gentlemen; perhaps
the poet wanted to compose a sonnet to his new mistress's eyebrows.--or
whatever may have been Burns' equivalent. (He had just met by the
"sylvan banks" of Jed a young lady possessed of charms that ravished
his too tender heart). Anyhow, he left the district in a very despondent
frame of mind, relieved only by such consolation as might be gleaned
from presenting the lady with a copy of his latest portrait. In his
diary is the following entry: "Took farewell of Jedburgh with some
melancholy, disagreeable sensations. Jed, pure be thy crystal streams
and hallowed thy sylvan banks! Sweet Isabella Lindsay, may peace dwell
in thy bosom uninterrupted, except by the tumult throbbings of rapturous
love! That love enkindling eye must beam on another, not on me; that
graceful form must bless another's arms, not mine." Burns' loves were
almost as many in number as the birds of the air, and scarcely less
trammelled.
As one proceeds up Jed from the ancient royal burgh, probably the first
thing that forces itself on the mind is that the old coach road was not
constructed for present-day traffic. In less than a couple of miles the
river is crossed no fewer than four times by bridges which are curiously
old fashioned, turning blindly across the stream in some instances
almost at right angles to the road, and in the steepness of their ascent
and descent conveying to the occupant of a motor car a sensation similar
to that given to a bad sailor by a vessel at sea when she is surmounting
"the league-long rollers." Nor are some of the gradients on the road a
few miles farther out such as entirely commend themselves to motorists,
two or three of them being as abrupt as one in twelve, and one in
thirteen. {125}Nevertheless the beauties of road and country are great,
especially if it should chance that a visit is paid to the district when
the tender flush of early Spring lies sweet on Jed's thick-wooded banks,
and the trout have begun to think at last of rising again freely to
the natural fly. Or better still, perhaps, when the green and gold, the
russet and yellow, the crimson of Autumn combine with and melt into the
crumbling red cliffs,--surely more generous tinted than ever were cliffs
before. Above, a sky of tenderest blue, an air windless yet brisk, and
just a leaf here and there fluttering leisurely into the amber clear
water that goes wandering by; and from the hushes the sweet thin pipe
of a robin, or the crow of pheasant from some copse. That is the Indian
Summer of Scotland, her pleasantest time of year,--if it were not for
the shortening days, and the recollection that trout fishing is dead
till another season.
It was a heavily wooded district this in former days, and one or two of
the giants of old still survive,--the widespreading "Capon tree,"
for instance, that you pass on the road a mile from Jedburgh (but why
"Capon" it passes the knowledge of man to decide); and the "King of
the Woods," near Fernihirst, a beautiful and still vigorous oak, with a
girth of 17 feet, four feet from the ground.
On the right, across the river, as you begin to quit the precincts of
the town, there hangs the precipitous red "scaur" over which, that
grim night in 1523, Surrey's horses came streaming, an equine cascade.
Farther on, a mile or so, there perches Douglas's camp at Lintalee. But
his "fair manor" is gone, and that great cave in the face of the cliff
where he kept stock of provisions "till mak gud cher till hys men"; a
fall of rock swept away that, or most part of it, in 1866. It was to
this cave, within Douglas's camp, that in 1317 a priest named Ellis
brought a body of three hundred English soldiers, whilst Douglas was
elsewhere, dealing with Sir Thomas Richmond and his men. But, (as the
song says), Father Ellis "had better have left that beggar alone."
Douglas returned {126}while yet the holy man and his unruly flock were
feasting in the cave. And "then"--it is needless to say,--"there began
a slaughter grim and great," and whatever else Father Ellis and his men
had feasted on, at least they got now a bellyful of fighting. It was the
last meal of which the most part of those Englishmen partook. The
cave is gone, but there still remain, guarding the neck of the
promontory--ruined indeed, and partially filled up, but still prominent
to the eye--the double wall and fosse that Douglas threw across it six
hundred years ago.
Of caves, such as this Douglas cave at Lintalee, there is a vast number
scattered along the cliffy banks of Jed and Teviot, and by some of their
tributary waters or burns. At Mossburn-foot, on Jed, there is a cave,
others are at Hundalee, and elsewhere. Near Cessford Castle, on a small
affluent of the Kale there is one, Habbie Ker's Cave, the same wicked
Habbie--"a bloodie man in his youth"--whose ghost to this day walks by
the old draw-well at the ruined castle of Holydene; on Kale itself there
are several of considerable size; in the cliff overhanging Oxnam, near
Crailing, are others, and at Ancrum, on the Ale; whilst at Sunlaws,
near Roxburgh, in the red sandstone cliffs of Teviot, is a group of
five caves, arranged in two tiers, some of them of fair dimensions, the
largest about twenty six feet long, with a height of eight feet and a
width of eight and a half feet. Another in the upper tier has a length
of twenty three feet, but at the mouth is no more than three feet
in height. In the lower tier, in one of the caves it is said in the
Statistical Account that horses were hid in 1745, to save them from
being taken for the use of the rebel army, when the detachment under
Prince Charlie's own command marched from Kelso to Jedburgh. Many of
the caves in different parts of the country are so well concealed that
a stranger might pass very near to the mouth without suspecting their
existence; some, on the other hand, force themselves on the eye. But
probably in olden times thick undergrowth shut them from view. There
{127}is no doubt that most of them at various times have been used as
places of concealment; probably during the cruel old English wars they
were much resorted to; certainly some of them were places of refuge in
Covenanting times. Very efficient places of refuge no doubt they were,
so long as the entrance was not discovered, but many of them would
probably be easy enough to smoke out. It is mentioned in Patten's
"Account of Somerset's Expedition into Scotland," how "a gentleman of
my Lord Protector's... happened upon a cave in the grounde, the mouth
whereof was so worne with fresh printe of steps, that he seemed to be
certayne thear wear some folke within; and gone doune to trie, he was
redily receyved with a hakebut or two. He left them not yet, till he had
known wheyther thei wold be content to yield and come out, which they
fondly refusing, he went to my Lord's grace, and upon utterance of the
tbynge, gat licence to deale with them as he coulde; and so returned to
them with a skore or two of pioners. Three ventes had that cave, that we
wear ware of, whereof he first stopt up one; another he fill'd full of
strawe, and set it a fyer, whereat they within cast water apace; but it
was so wel maynteyned without, that the fyer prevayled, and thei within
fayn to get them belyke into anoothur parler. Then devysed we (for
I hapt to be with him) to stop the same up, whereby we should eyther
smoother them, or fynd out their ventes, if thei hadde any mor: as this
was done at another issue, about XII score of, we moughte see the fume
of their smoke to come out: the which continued with so great a force,
and so long a while, that we coulde not but thinke they must needs get
them out, or smoother within: and forasmuch as we found not that they
did the tone, we though it for certain thei wear sure of the toother."
Who first made and used those caves, one wonders. The stone is soft, and
easy to work, and I do not think it was beyond the skill and the tools
of our very remote forbears to have patiently hollow'ed them out, in
suitable places, from the {128}solid face of the cliff. Tool marks may
yet be plainly seen in some of them, marks not such as would be made by
anything in the nature of a chisel, but such as are more suggestive of
a pick, of sorts, an implement--single pointed--not unknown to even very
primitive races.
Scattered all over the Jedburgh district are many ancient camps--hoary
even in the day when Douglas fortified Lintalee; many old castles and
peel-towers, all, or nearly all, now in ruins, some indeed with very
little left save tradition to indicate where once they stood; and here
and there are found vestiges of chapels or shrines, of which possibly
there may remain hardly more in some instances than the green mounds
which cover their fallen walls. The monks wandered far up this pleasant
vale of Jed, carrying the Gospel of Peace through a land that knew of
little save war, but the history of their resting places is even more
vague than is now the outline of their chapel walls. At Old Jed ward,
however, five miles up stream from Jedburgh, you may still in some
measure trace the line of foundations of that venerable little building
which is said to have been built here away back in the ninth century. Of
camps, the number is legion. That near Monklaw, the writer has not seen,
but it is said to be Roman, and its measurements are something like one
hundred and sixty yards each way. At Scraesburgh there is a circular
camp, with a diameter of about one hundred and eighty feet, and with
ramparts still nearly twenty feet in height,--surely that "Skraysburgh,
the greatest towne in all Teviotdale," which, according to the English
version, seems in 1544 to have fallen almost as fell Jericho of old,
when the enemy shouted and blew their trumpets.
Of castles and peel-towers the most are utterly ruined, but Fernihirst
(to which we come presently), still stands, and, over the hill towards
Teviot, Lanton Tower, the latter now incorporated with a comfortable
modern dwelling. Lanton in the twelfth century was the property of
Richard Inglis, who also owned the adjacent tower of Hunthill. Both
these towers {129}were sacked and burned in 1513, after Flodden, by an
English flying column under Sir Roger Fenwicke, and its existence at the
present day Lanton Tower may owe to the fact that when Evers swept
the country side in 1544, and Hertford brought fire and sword in the
following year, it had possibly neither been repaired nor was inhabited.
It was over near Jedburgh, too, to have escaped the notice of Surrey
in 1523. Hunthill was burned again in 1549, and had Lanton then been
anything but dismantled, it could scarcely have escaped the attentions
of the party sent from Jedburgh by the Earl of Rutland to attack
d'Essé's rear-guard at Ancrum ford. A force coming over the hill from
Jedburgh and making for Ancrum would necessarily pass within easy hail
of Lanton. In any case, however, there it stands, its solid walls of
a tenacity not shared by buildings put together with modern mortar.
Strange are the vicissitudes of places and of people. Over this Forest
of Jedworth, and here at Lanton, where of old too often were heard the
blast of trumpet, shouts and oaths of fiercely striving men, the roar
and crackle of burning houses, you will hear now no sound more startling
than the "toot-toot" of the Master's horn and the babble of fox hounds;
for at Lanton Tower are the kennels of the Jedforest Hunt, and many
a glorious run is had with this pack, sometimes in enclosed country,
sometimes among the great round backed Border hills towards Carterfell,
over country that will tail off all but the best of men and horses.
{130}
CHAPTER V JED (continued), FERNIHIRST, RAID OK THE REDESWIRE, OTTERBURNE