|As we ascend Teviot, after Jed its next important tributary is the
Ale, not so named from the resemblance of its waters, when flooded, to
a refreshing beverage. Sir Herbert Maxwell says that the name was
originally written "Alne" (as in Aln, Alnwick) and this form survives in
the place-name in Ale, Ancrum, the site of a desirable Scottish victory.
The word would at first be Alne crumb, the crook of Alne or "Ale." Crom
does mean "crook" in Gaelic, I understand, and Ale does make a crook or
bend round Ancrum, so the names are tokens of the possession of the dale
by Gaelic-speaking people, very long ago. In Timpendean, the name of
a ruined tower opposite the point where Ale enters Teviot, we have the
English "dene" or "den," as in the neighbouring Hassendoan The places
of most historical interest on lower Ale are Ancrum Moor and Lilliard's
Edge, the scene of a battle in which the Scots partly avenged the
incessant burnings and slayings by the men of Henry VIII, inflicted
while the prince was furious at his failure to secure the hand of the
baby Queen, Mary Stuart, for his puny son, later Edward VI. Henry
first hoped, by the aid of these professional traitors, chiefs of the
Douglases,--the Earl of Angus and his brother, Sir George--to obtain
the Royal child and the great castles, and the {170}Crown of Scotland,
without drawing sword. Baffled in this by the adroitness and patriotic
courage of Cardinal Beaton, he sent his forces to rob, burn, and slay
through all the eastern and central Marches. In February 1545, Hertford
had finished his own work of ruin, despite which the Earl of Angus
declared that he loved Henry VIII "best of all men." There followed
a breach in this tender sentiment, _amantium irai._ Hertford's
lieutenants, Evers and Laiton, with "assured Scots" of Teviotdale,
wearing St George's cross, were harrying the Border. The Scottish
Regent, the fickle, futile, good-humoured Earl of Arran, called for
forces, but met little response, for, as a contemporary diarist writes,
all men suspected the treachery of Henry's lover, and of the Douglases,
"ever false, as they alleged." Yet Scott, in his ballad of "The Eve
of St John," speaks of "the Douglas true and the bold Buccleugh"; the
Scotts of Buccleuch, in fact, were ever loyal. The Laird, approached
with bribes in English gold, rejected them in language of such
pardonable profanity as frightened and astonished the English envoy,
accustomed to buy Scottish traitors by the gross.
So mixed were affairs that while Wharton was trying to kidnap Sir George
Douglas for Henry, Sir George was endeavouring to betray Arran to the
English. They worsted the pacific Regent near Melrose, burned town and
abbey, and desecrated the ancestral graves there of the Douglases, among
them the resting place of the Earl who fell, when "a dead man won a
fight," at Otterburne. The English clearly did not understand that Angus
and his brother were eager to make their peace with Henry by relieving
their treacheries to their country.
The ruining of his ancestors' tombs aroused the personal fury of
Angus, moreover Henry had made large gifts of Angus's lands to Evers and
Laiton. Angus therefore gathered his forces, breathed out threats, and
joined hands with Arran, who was also supported by a very brave man,
Norman Leslie, {171}presently to be one of the assassins of Cardinal
Beaton--in Henry's interest. Norman, however, was patriotic for the
moment, and the bold Buccleuch was ever trusty. As Angus and Arran
followed the English, Leslie and Buccleuch "came lightly riding in" and
the Scots united on the wide airy moor of Ancrum.
The English saw their approach, and saw their horses moving to the rear.
Supposing that the Scots were in retreat, (they meant to fight on foot,
and only sent their mounts to the rear,) the lances of Evers and
Laiton galloped gaily in pursuit. But what they found was "the dark
impenetrable wood" of stubborn spears. With the sun and the wind and
blown smoke in their faces, the English cavalry charged, and were
broken on the _schiltroms_ or serried squares as they were broken at
Bannockburn. Hereon the clan Ker, the men of Cessford and Ferniehirst,
"assured Scots," tore off their crosses of St. George, and charged
with Leslie, the Douglases, and Buccleuch. The English were routed, the
country people rose against them; Evers and Laiton lost their new lands
with their lives, eight hundred of the English were slain, and two
thousand were taken alive--which is rather surprising. The English
evacuated Jedburgh, and the Scots recovered Coldingham.
Meanwhile the good-natured, false, feckless Regent Arran wept over the
dead body of Sir Ralph Evers. "God have mercy on him, for he was a fell
cruel man, and over cruel. And welaway that ever such a slaughter and
blood shed should be among Christian men," sobbed the Regent. His heart
was better than his head. Even George Douglas had warned Henry VIII of
what would result from "the extreme war that is used in killing women
and young children." In my childhood I heard and never forgot, the
country rhyme on an Amazon of a girl, who, to avenge her lover, took
arms at Ancrum moor. She fell, and on her tomb, which has been many
times restored, the following epitaph is {172}engraved:
"Fair Maiden Lilliard
Lies under this stane;
Little was her stature,
But muckle was her fame.
Upon the English loons
She laid many thumps,
And when her legs were cuttit oft
She fought upon her stumps."
Clearly this is a form of
"For Widrington I must bewail as one in doleful dumps,
For when his legs were cutten off he fought upon his stumps."
Lilliard's Edge, the ancient name of the scene of this fair lady's fall,
must have suggested the idea of a girl styled Lilliard, and her story
was thus suggested to the rhymer and became a local myth.
About Ancrum the Ale, like the Jed, and, over the Border, the Eden and
Coquet, beautifies itself by cutting a deep channel through the fine
red sandstone of which Melrose Abbey is built. These channels are always
beautiful, but Ale, otherwise, as we ascend its valley, is a quiet trout
stream "that flows the green hills under." In my boyhood, long, long
ago, Ale abounded in excellent trout, and was my favourite among all
our many streams. It does not require the angler to wade, like Tweed and
Ettrick; it is narrow and easily commanded. The trout were almost as
guileless as they were beautiful and abundant; but I presume that they
are now almost exterminated by fair and unfair methods. The Scot, when
he does not use nets, poisons, and dynamite, is too often a fisher with
the worm, and, as I remember him, had no idea of returning even tiny
fish to the water, as James Thomson, author of The Seasons, himself a
Border angler, advises us to do.
Guileless, indeed, since old time has been the character of the trout of
Ale. Sir Thomas Dick Lauder tells how in his boyhood he went once with
a chance-met "souter" from Selkirk to the long pool in Ale above Midlem
bridge, and how there, {173}by a most unsporting device, they captured
the innocent trout almost by the sack-load. "We came," he says, "to a
very long gravelly-bottomed pool, of an equal depth all over of from
three to four feet. Here the souter seated himself; and, shortening both
our rods, and fitting each of them with the three hooks tied back to
back, he desired us to follow him, and then waded right into the middle
of the pool. The whole water was sweltering with fine trouts, rushing in
all directions from the alarm of our intrusion among them. But after we
had stood stock still for a few moments, their alarm went off,
and they began to settle each individually in his own place.
'There's a good one there,' said the souter, pointing to one at about
three yards from him; and throwing the hooks over him, he jerked him
up, and in less than six seconds he was safe in his creel. We had many a
failure before we could succeed in catching one, whilst the souter never
missed; but at length we hit upon the way; and so we proceeded with our
guide, gently shifting our position in the pool as we exhausted each
particular spot, until the souter's creel would hold no more, and
ours was more than half filled with trouts, most of which were about
three-quarters of a pound in weight; and very much delighted with the
novelty of our sport, we made our way back to Melrose by the western
side of the Eildon hills, and greatly astonished our companion with the
slaughter we had made, seeing that he had been out angling for a couple
of hours in the Tweed, without catching a single fin." A slaughter of
the innocents, indeed! But the most inveterate poacher could not now,
in any Border stream, hope to rival a feat so abominable in the eyes of
present-day fishers. Nor, if he did attempt it, would he be likely to
find trout so utterly devoid of guile as to submit thus quietly to be
hooked out of the water one by one till the pool was emptied. Trout
are better educated, if fewer in number, than they appear to have been
eighty or ninety years ago. It is difficult, too, to see where the fun
of this form of fishing comes in, after the rather {174}cheap excitement
of catching the first one or two. But they did curious things in the
name of Sport in the earlier half of last century. Many of the methods
of catching salmon that are written of approvingly by Scrope, that great
angler of Sir Walter's day, are now the rankest of poaching, and are
prohibited by law.
The mid course of Ale is through "ancient Riddel's fair domain," as
Scott says in the great rhymes of William of Deloraine's midnight ride
from Branksome Tower to Melrose. There is now no Riddel of Riddel.
Here I shall mercilessly quote the whole of William of Deloraine's
Itinerary from Branksome Tower till he rides Ale when "great and muckle
o' spate."
"Soon in his saddle sate he fast
And soon the steep descent he past,
Soon cross'd the sounding barbican,
And soon the Teviot side he won.
Eastward the wooded path he rode,
Green hazels o'er his basnet nod;
"He pass'd the Peel of Goldiland,
And cross'd old Borthwick's roaring strand;
Dimly he view'd the Moat-hill's mound.
Where Druid shades still flitted round;
In Ilawick twinkled many a light;
Behind him soon they set in night;
And soon he spurr'd his coarser keen
Beneath the tower of hazeldean.
"The clattering hoofs the watchmen mark:--
'Stand, ho! thou courier of the dark.'--
'For Branksome, ho!' the knight rejoin'd,
And left the friendly tower behind.
He turn'd him now from Teviotside,
And guided by the tinkling rill,
Northward the dark ascent did ride,
And gained the moor at Horslichill;
Broad on the left before him lay,
For many a mile, the Roman way. {175}
"A moment now he slack'd his speed,
A moment breathed his panting steed;
Drew saddle-girth and corslet-band,
And loosen'd in the sheath his brand.
On Minto-crags the moonbeams glint,
Where Barnhill hew'd his bed of flint;
Who flung his outlaw'd limbs to rest,
Where falcons hang their giddy nest,
Mid cliffs, from whence his eagle eye
From many a league his prey could spy;
Cliffs, doubling, on their echoes borne,
The terrors of the robbers' horn;
Cliffs, which, for many a later year,
The warbling Doric reed shall hear,
When some sad swain shall teach the grove,
Ambition is no cure for love!
"Unchallenged, thence pass'd Deloraine,
To ancient Riddel's fair domain,
Where Aill, from mountains freed,
Down from the lakes did raving come;
Each wave was crested with tawny foam,
Like the mane of a chestnut steed.
In vain! no torrent, deep or broad,
Might bar the bold moss-trooper's road.
At the first plunge the horse sunk low,
And the water broke o'er the saddlebow;
Above the foaming tide, I ween,
Scarce half the charger's neck was seen;
For he was barded from counter to tail,
And the rider was armed complete in mail;
Never heavier man and horse
Stemm'd a midnight torrent's force.
"The warriors very plume, I say,
Was daggled by the dashing spray;
Yet, through good heart, and Our Ladye's grace,
At length he gained the landing place."
Above the point where William rode the water, the scenery is quiet and
pastoral; about Ashkirk and Synton we are in the {176}lands of lairds
whose genealogies are recounted in the rhymes of old Satchells, who
"can write nane
But just the letters of his name."
Further up, Ale rests in the dull deep loch of Alemuir, which looks as
if it held more pike than trout. And so we follow her into the hills and
the water-shed that, on one side, contributes feeders to the Ettrick.
It is a lofty land of pasture and broken hills, whence you see the airy
peaks of Skelfhill, Penchrise, the Dumon, and the ranges of "mountains"
as Scott calls the hills through which the Border Waters run, Yarrow,
Ettrick, Borthwick Water and Ale Water. A "water" is larger than a
"burn," but attains not to the name of a river.
Rule, the next tributary as we ascend Teviot, is but a "Water," a pretty
trout stream it would be if it had fair play. The question of fishing
in this country is knotted. Almost all the trout streams were open to
everybody, in my boyhood, when I could fish all day in Tweed or Ale, and
never see a rod but my own. The few anglers were sportsmen. "Duffer" as
I was, I remember a long summer day on Tweed at Yair, when, having come
too late for the ten o'clock "rise" of trout, I had an almost empty
creel. Just before sunset I foregathered with old Adam Linton, his large
creel three-quarters full of beauties. "What did you get them with?"
I asked. At the moment he was using the tiniest midges, and the finest
tackle. "Oh, wi' ae thing and another, according to the time o' day,"
he answered. I daresay he used the clear water worm, fished up stream;
deadly sin m Hampshire, but not in the Forest. Since these days the
world has gone wild on angling, the waters are crowded like the Regent's
canal with rods. Now I am all for letting every man have his cast; but
the only present hope for the survival of trout is in the associations
of anglers who do their best to put down netting and dynamiting. A
close time when trout are out of season, we owe to Sir Herbert Maxwell,
opposed as he was by the Radical Member for the Border Burghs. I {177}am
not sure that there is a rule against slaying trout under, shall we say,
seven inches? However it may be, I had my chance and wasted it; being a
duffer. Trout may become extinct like the Dodo; it makes no odds to
me. I never cast fly in Rule, nor even examined "the present spiritless
parish church," on the site of a Norman church of the early twelfth
century. The few relics of carved stone fill Sir Herbert Maxwell's
heart with bitterness against the dull destroyers. Our Presbyterian
forefathers, as far as in them lay, destroyed every vestige of the noble
art whereof these glens were full, when, in the twelfth century, the
Border was part of a civilised country. For all that I know, they were
innocent of ruin at Bedrule; the English of Henry VIII may here, as all
through this region, have been the destroyers. They were Protestants of
a sort. Moreover in Rule dwelt the small but fierce clan of Turnbull,
who, between Scotts and Kers, fought both of these great clans, and
now, as a power, "are a' wede awa'." Perhaps an enemy of theirs took
sanctuary in the church, and they "burned the chapel for very rage," as
the Scotts burned St. Mary of the Lowes shortly before the Reformation.
Somewhere about 1620, Rule Water had her minstrel, named Robin,
nick-named "Sweet-milk," from the place of his residence. In my opinion
these singers of the late days of James VI and I, were the survivors of
the Border minstrels who, says Queen Mary's Bishop of Ross, Lesley, the
historian, made their own ballads of raids and rescues, such as _Jock o'
the Cow_, and as much as is not Scott's of _Kinmont Willie_. There was
a rival minstrel, Willie Henderson, whom I take to have sided with the
Scotts, while Robin was the Demodocus of the Eliotts of Stobs. The pair
met, drank, fought, and Willie pinked "Sweet-Milk" Robin, the Eliotts'
man.
"Tuneful hands with blood were dyed,"
says Sir Walter, but what was the cause of the quarrel? I have
a hypothesis. The famous ballad of _Jamie Telfer_ exists in two
{178}versions. In one the Scotts are covered with laurels, while Martin
Eliott plays the part of a cur. In the other, the Eliotts gain all the
glory, while Scott of Buccleuch acts like a mean dastard. One of these
versions is the original, the other is a perversion. The ballad itself,
which takes us all through the Border, from Bewcastle on the English
side, to the fair Dodhead on Upper Ettrick, is not of the period of the
incidents described. As far as these are historical, the date is about
1596. The author of the ballad does not know the facts, and makes
incredible statements. Consequently he is late, writes years after the
Union of the Crowns (1603) and the end of Border raids. I guess that
either Will Henderson was the author of the ballad in favour of the
Scotts, and that Robin, the minstrel of the Eliotts, perverted it into
the Eliott version, or _vice versa_, Robert was the original author,
Will the perverter. Here, in any case, was infringement of copyright and
deadly insult. The poets fought. Certainly, Robin fell, and the Eliotts
hanged Will, gave him "Jeddart justice." To the ballad we shall return;
it is, though inaccurate, full of the old Border spirit, and is in
itself an itinerary of the Marches.
These high powers, the Scott and Eliott clans, like the States of
Europe, were now allies, cementing their federacy by intermarriages; and
again were bitter foes. The strength of the chief of the Eliotts was
in Liddesdale, of the Scotts, in Teviotdale. They were allies for young
James V against his Keepers, the Douglases,
"When gallant Cessford's life-blood dear
Reeked on dark Eliott's Border spear"
at "Turn Again," a spot on Scott's estate of Abbotsford. They were foes
in 1564-66, in Queen Mary's reign, when Martin Eliott, chief of his
clan, plotted with the Armstrongs to betray her strong fortress of
Hermitage to the English.
In this feud the Eliotts attacked Scott of Hassendean in his tower on
Hassendean burn, the next tributary of Teviot, but {179}the ballad
of _Kinmont Willie_ makes Gilbert Eliott of Stobs ride with the
bold Buccleuch to the rescue of Willie from Carlisle Castle (1596).
Unluckily, in 1596 Gilbert Eliott was not yet the Laird of Stobs.
[Illustration: 0199]
This Gilbert, at all events, married the daughter of the Flower of
Yarrow, the wife of Auld Wat Scott of Harden, himself the neighbour
and foremost fighting man of the laird of Branksome in Teviot, the
bold Buccleuch. His descendant, Sir Walter, has made Auld Wat's name
immortal, and, in Jamie Telftr, has certainly interpolated a spirited
stanza.
In the village of Denholm, on Teviot, opposite to Hassendean, was born
John Leyden, the great friend of Scott, a poet in his way, but much more
remarkable as a man of amazing energy of character, an Orientalist, and
a collector of ballads. But few now know what
"distant and deadly shore
Holds Leyden's cold remains,"
His memory is twined with that of Sir Walter, and he is one of {180}the
most living figures in Lockhart's Life of Scott. Leyden had the poetic
quality, not judiciously cultivated, of the old Border minstrels,
while the energy which the clans expended in war was given by him to
omnivorous studies.
Below Denholm, but on the other side of the river, nearly opposite the
junction of Rule Water with Teviot, is Minto, in the fourteenth century
a property owned by one of that unruly clan, the Turnbulls. Later,
it passed to the family of Stewart, and finally, somewhere about the
beginning of the eighteenth century, it was bought by Sir Gilbert
Elliot, ancestor of the Minto branch of that family. The present house
dates only from 1814, but it has a curious legend attached to it, which
is mentioned in Sir Walter Scott's diary, under date 23rd December,
1825. He says: "It is very odd that the common people about Minto and
the neighbourhood will not believe at this hour that the first Earl is
dead." [He died in June, 1814.] "They think he had done something in
India which he could not answer for--that the house was rebuilt on a
scale unusually large to give him a suite of secret apartments, and that
he often walks about the woods and crags of Minto at night, with a white
nightcap and long white beard. The circumstances of his having died on
the road down to Scotland is the sole foundation of this absurd legend,
which shows how willing the public are to gull themselves when they can
find no one else to take the trouble. I have seen people who could read,
write, and cipher, shrug their shoulders and look mysterious when this
subject was mentioned. One very absurd addition was made on occasion
of a great ball at Minto House, which it was said was given to draw all
people away from the grounds, that the concealed Earl might have leisure
for his exercise."
To the east of Minto House are Minto Crags, towering precipitous to
a height of over seven hundred feet. On the summit is the ruin called
Fatlips Castle, which is said to have been the stronghold of the
fourteenth-century owner of Minto, {181}Turnbull of Barnhill, a
notorious Border freebooter. A small grassy platform, or level space, a
little below the ruin, is called Barnhill's Bed, "Where Barnhill hew'd
his bed of flint,"--a convenient spot, no doubt, in old days on which to
station a sentry or look-out.
The third Sir Gilbert Elliot of Minto was apparently in his own way
something of a poet, but the ever tolerant Sir Walter Scott, to whom
he used to read his compositions, confesses that the verses were
"but middling," Sir Gilbert had, however, a better title, at least to
collateral fame; he was the brother of the Jean Elliot who wrote that
undying lament, the "Flowers of the Forest."
It is curious to note that in 1374 the church of Minto belonged to the
diocese of Lincoln.
Here at Minto, if credence in the reality of Fairies no longer lingers
amongst the people,--one of the writers of this volume records, some
chapters back, that he found traces of the belief not very many years
ago still surviving at Flodden Edge,--at least but a very few generations
have passed since it died. Throughout Teviotdale, perhaps to a greater
extent than in any other part of the Border, tales still are told which
show how strong was once this belief in the existence of the Little
Folk, and many of the customs that, we are told, were followed by
country dwellers in order to propitiate the Good People, or to thwart
their malevolence, are very quaint, Should it chance, for instance, that
at the time a child was born the blue bonnet usually worn by the husband
was not kept continually lying on the mother's bed, then there would be
the most imminent danger of that child being carried off by the Fairies,
and a changeling being left in its place. Many a fine child has been
lost through neglect of this simple precaution. Generally, if the
abduction took place before the child had been christened, a pig or a
hedgehog, or some such animal, was substituted for the infant; but
if the Fairies did not succeed in their design till after the child's
baptism, then they left another bairn in its {182}place, usually a
peevish, ill-thriven, wizen-faced little imp. A tale is told of a woman
who lived at Minto Cragfoot, and whose child, in consequence of some
trifling lark of precaution in the matter of the blue bonnet, was
carried off, and in the end was rescued only by the superior knowledge
and power of a Presbyterian minister. Whilst she herself was engaged
one day in gathering sticks for her fire, the woman had laid her child
beside a bush on the hill side. She neither heard nor saw anything
unusual, but on going to pick up her child at the close of her task,
instead of her bonny, smiling little son she found only a thin, wasted,
weird little creature, which "yammered" and wept continually. Recourse
was had to the Reverend Mr. Borland, (first Presbyterian minister
of Bedrule after the Reformation,) and that gentleman at once
unhesitatingly pronounced that this was no mere human child. The mother
must go to the cliffs, said Mr. Borland, and there gather a quantity of
the flowers of the fox glove, (locally called "witches thimbles,") and
bring them to him. These Mr. Borland boiled, poured some of the extract
into the bairn's mouth, scattered the boiled flowers all over its body,
then put it in its cradle wrapped in a blanket, and left it all night
alone in the barn. Mr. Borland took the key of the door away with him,
and gave instructions that under no circumstances was anybody to enter
the barn until he returned next day. The anxious mother watched all
night by the door, but heard no sound; never once did the child wail.
And next morning when Mr. Borland arrived he was able to hand to
the mother her own child, fat and smiling as when carried off by the
fairies. It was a heroic remedy, but probably the sick child did not
swallow much of that decoction of _digitalis_. In any case, they did
not have coroners' inquests in those days, and had the worst come to the
worst, the uncomplaining fairies would have borne the blame.
It was up Teviot, in the days when witches flourished, that a poor woman
lived, whose end was rather more merciless than {183}that inflicted
on most of her kind. A man's horse had died suddenly,--elf-struck, or
overlooked by a witch, of course. To break whatever spell the witch or
elf might have cast over other animals the owner of the dead horse cut
out and burnt its heart. Whilst the fire was at its fiercest and the
heart sizzling in the glow, there rushed up a large black greyhound,
flecked all over with foam and evidently in the last stage of fatigue,
which tried persistently to snatch the heart from the fire. One of the
spectators, suspecting evil, seized a stick and struck the animal a
heavy blow over the back, whereupon, with a fearful yell, it fled, and
disappeared. Almost at that instant, a villager ran up, saying that his
wife had suddenly been taken violently ill; and when those who had been
engaged in burning the heart went in to the man's cottage, they
found his wife, a dark-haired, black-eyed woman, lying, gasping and
breathless, with her back, to their thinking, broken. She, poor woman,
was probably suffering from a sudden and particularly acute attack of
lumbago. But to those wise men another inference was only too obvious.
She was, of course, a witch, and it was _she_ who, in the guise of a
greyhound, had tried to snatch the horse's heart from the fire, and who
had then got a stroke across her back that broke it. They insisted that
she should repeat the Lord's prayer,--an infallible test, for if she
were a witch she would be sure to say: "lead us into temptation, and
deliver us not from evil." And so, when the poor woman, her pain failed
to get through the prayer to their satisfaction, they bound her, carried
her away, and burnt her alive in the fire where the horse's heart had
been roasted.
Two or three miles across the river from Minto is Ruberslaw, a rugged
hill, towering dark and solitary, a land-mark for half the Border. More
than any of its distant neighbours in the Cheviot range, it seems to
draw to itself the hurrying rain clouds, more than any other it seems to
nurture storms. About its grim head all Teviotdale {184}may
"see with strange delight the snow clouds form
When Ruberslaw conceives the mountain storm--
Dark Ruberslaw, that lifts his head sublime,
Rugged and hoary with the wrecks of time;
On his broad misty front the giant wears
The horrid furrows of ten thousand years."
Like many another wild Border hill, Ruberslaw was a favourite lurking
place for the persecuted Covenanters, and near its top is a craggy chasm
from which, it is said, Wodrow's "savoury Mr. Peden" used to preach
to his scattered congregation. It was on this hill that the pursuing
dragoons all but caught the preacher and his flock one day; they were
caught, indeed, like rats in a trap, had it not been for Ruberslaw's
well known character for breeding bad weather. The soldiers were
advancing in full view of the conventicle. Way of escape there was none,
nor time to disperse; mounted men from every quarter were scrambling up
the steep face of the hill, and in that clear light what chance was left
now to hide among the rocks and boulders!" "O Lord," prayed Peden with
extreme fervour, "lap the skirts of thy cloak ower puir auld Sandy." And
as if in answer to his petition, there came over the entire hill a thick
"Liddesdale drow," so dense that a man might not see two feet around
him. When the mist cleared again, there was no one left for the dragoons
to take.
Above Hassendean, but on the other side of Teviot, is one of the few
remaining possessions in this country, namely Cavers, of the great and
ancient House of the Black Douglases. The relics are a very old flag;
its date and history are variously explained by family legend and by
antiquaries. It is not a pennon, therefore not Hotspur's pennon taken
by the Earl of Douglas before the battle of Otterburne. It is nothing of
the Percys', for it bears the Douglas Heart and a Douglas motto. On the
whole it seems to have belonged not to the Black, but to their rivals
and successors, the Red Douglases, who were as unruly, and "ill to
lippen to" by Scottish kings, as the elder branch. {185}The lady's
embroidered glove, with the letters K.P., ought to have belonged to
Hotspur's wife, who is Kate in Shakespeare, a better authority than you
mere genealogists.
[Illustration: 0205]
As we ascend, the water of Teviot becomes more and more foul; varying,
when last I shuddered at it, from black to a most unwholesome light
blue. It is distressing to see such a fluid flowing through beautiful
scenes; and possibly since I mingled my tears with the polluted stream,
the manufacturers of Hawick have taken some order in the way of more or
less filtering their refuse and their dyes.
Hawick, to the best of my knowledge, contains no objects of interest to
the tourist who "picturesques it everywhere." A {186}hotel is called
the Tower Hotel, and contains part of an ancient keep of the
Douglases--"Doulanwrack's (Douglas of Drumlanrig's) Castell," which
Sussex spared in 1570 when he "made an ende of the rest" of Hawick,--but
"you would look at it twice before you thought" of a castle of chivalry.
[Illustration: 0206]
The people of Hawick have retained many of the characteristics of the
old Borderers; they are redoubted foes at football; and are said to be
not very scrupulous raiders--of mushrooms. Their local patriotism
is fervid, and they sing with passion their song of "Teribus and
Teriodden," which refers to "Sons of heroes slain at Flodden,"--among
other Flowers of the Forest. And, like their neighbours at Selkirk,
they cherish a banner, said to have been captured from the English.
The Hawick {187}trophy, however, is not attributed to Flodden, but to a
slightly later fight at Hornshole, near Hawick, when those who were left
of the townsfolk fell on, and defeated with great slaughter, an English
raiding party.
[Illustration: 0207]
That the mysterious words Teribus {188}and Teriodden, or Odin, are a
survival of a pious ejaculation imploring the help of Thor and Odin, I
can neither affirm nor deny.
[Illustration: 0208]
It would be a gratifying thing to prove that the memory of ancient
Scandinavian deities has survived the sway of the mediaeval Church and
the Kirk of John Knox. But I have not heard that the words occur in
documents before the eighteenth century. The town has a site naturally
beautiful, as Slitrig, a very rapid stream, here joins Teviot, which,
above the mills of Hawick is _electro clarior_; not of a pure crystal
translucency, but of a transparent amber hue.
Slitrig takes its rise on the Windburgh Hill, on the northern side of
the Liddesdale watershed, a hill of old the known resort of the Good
People, whose piping and revels might {189}often be heard by the
solitary shepherd.
[Illustration: 0209]
The rivulet is said to well out from a small, black, fathomless little
loch high up on the hill. Here, as all knew, dwelt the Keipic, or other
irritable spirit prone to resent human intrusion, and if a stone should
chance to be thrown into the depths of the lakelet, {190}resentment was
pretty sure to be expressed by a sudden dangerous overflow of water into
the burn, whereby destruction would be carried down the valley. That,
tradition tells, is how Hawick came to be devastated, and all but swept
away, early in the eighteenth century. A shepherd, it was said, had
quite accidentally rolled a large stone into the lake, and had thus
roused the Spirit of the mountain to ungovernable fury. Leyden thus
writes of the tradition:
"From yon green peak, black haunted Slata brings
The gushing torrents of unfathomed springs:
In a dead lake, that ever seems to freeze,
By sedge enclosed from every ruffling breeze,
The fountains lie; and shuddering peasants shrink
To plunge the stone within the fearful brink;
For here,'tis said, the fairy hosts convene,
With noisy talk, and bustling steps unseen;
The hill resounds with strange, unearthly cries;
And moaning voices from the waters rise.
Nor long the time, if village-saws be true,
Since in the deep a hardy peasant threw
A pondrous stone; when murmuring from below,
With gushing sound he heard the lake o'erflow.
The mighty torrent, foaming down the hills,
Called, with strong voice, on all her subject rills;
Rocks drove on jagged rocks with thundering sound,
And the red waves, impatient, rent their mound;
On Hawick burst the flood's resistless sway,
Ploughed the paved streets, and tore the walls away,
Floated high roofs, from whelming fabrics torn;
While pillared arches down the wave were borne."
Borthwick Water, too, as well as Slitrig, was famed for its fairies--and
for worse than fairies, if one may judge by the name given to a deep
pool; the Deil's Pool, it is called, a place to be shunned by youthful
fishers. But probably the youthful fisher of the twentieth century cares
neither for deil nor for fairy. Higher up the stream than this pool
is the Fairy Knowe, where a shepherd was once flung into the flooded
{191}burn by the fairies,--at any rate he was carried down the burn one
evening, late, and he _said_ it was the fairies, and no other spirits,
that had flung him in.
[Illustration: 0211]
One very odd relic hard by Hawick is a mote, or huge tumulus, of the
kind so common in Galloway. Probably above it was erected a palisaded
wooden fortress, perhaps of the twelfth century. The area, as far as an
amateur measurement can determine, is not less than that of the tower
of Goldielands, an old keep of the Scotts, some two miles further up
the water, almost opposite to the point where Borthwick Water flows
{192}into Teviot on the left.
[Illustration: 0212]
If we cross the bridge here and follow the pretty wandering water
through a level haugh, and then turn off to the right, we arrive at a
deep thickly wooded dene, and from the crest above this excellent hiding
place of raided cattle looks down the old low house of Harden, (the
Stammschloss of Sir Walter Scott,) now the property of Lord Polwarth,
the head of this branch of the Scotts of Buccleuch. The house is more
modern than the many square keeps erected in the old days of English
invasions and family feuds. The Borthwick Water turns to the left, and
descends from the heights of Howpasley, whence the English raiders rode
down, "laigh down in Borthwick Water," in the ballad of _Jamie Telfer_.
A mile or a little more above Goldielands Tower, on the left side of
Teviot is Branksome Tower, the residence of the Lady of Branksome in
_The Lay of the Last Minstrel._ {193}At Branksome Tower we are in the
precise centre of the Scottish Border of history and romance, the centre
of Scott's country.
[Illustration: 0213]
Yet, looking at Mr. Thompson's excellent sketch, you would scarce guess
it. The house stands very near the Teviot, but still nearer the public
road. Thanks to the attentions of the English at various periods,
especially when the bold {194}Buccleuch stood for the fairest of ladies,
Mary Queen of Scots, against preachers, presbyters, puritans, and their
southern allies, perhaps no visible part of the echlice older than 1570
remains except the tower.
[Illustration: 0214]
The Lady of Branksome who finished the actual house after the old
stronghold had been burned, appears to have thought that square keeps
and barmkyns were obsolete in war, owing to the increasing merits of
artillery; and she did not build a house of defence. Manifestly "nine
and twenty Knights of fame" never "hung their shields in" _this_
"Branksome Hall," and never were here attended by "nine and twenty
Squires of name," and "nine and twenty yeomen tall." {195}There is no
room for them, and at Branlcsome, probably, there never was. It is
not to be credited that, at any period, ten of the knights went to bed
"sheathed in steel," to be ready for the English, or
"Carved at the meal, with gloves of steel,
And drank the red wine through the helmet barred." *
The minstrel gave free play to his fancy. The Laird of Branksome, though
Warden of the Marches, never had, never needed, so vast a retinue,
and was so far from "Warkworth or Naworth, or merry Carlisle" that no
Scrope, or Howard, or Percy, could fall on him at unawares.
* The conjectural reading of Srhlopping, "Carved at the
veal" though ingenious (for, as he observes, "the ancient
Scots did not carve oat-meal") has no manuscript authority.
The Scotts, in the reign of James I, already owned the wild upland
pastoral region of Buccleuch between Teviot and Ettrick, and Eckford in
Teviotdale; also Murdiestone on the lower Clyde, a place now too near
the hideous industrial towns and villages near Glasgow. Meanwhile a
pacific gentleman named Inglis was laird of Branksome. He grumbled, it
is said, to Sir Walter Scott of Murdiestone about the inconveniences
caused by English raiders; though, as they had a long way to ride,
Inglis probably suffered more at Branksome from the Kers, Douglases,
and ferocious Turnbulls. Scott was not a nervous man, and he offered to
barter Murdiestone for half of Branksome, which came into his pastoral
holdings at Buccleuch. Inglis gladly made the exchange, and Scott's son
obtained the remaining half of the barony of Branksome, in reward of
his loyalty to James II, during his struggle with the Black Douglases,
(during which he dirked his guest, the Earl, at the hospitable table.)
The Scott lands, carved out of those of the fallen Douglases, extended
from Lanarkshire to Langholm; and as they were loyal to their country,
(at least till the reign of Charles I,) and withal were fighting men of
the best, they throve to Earl's estate, the dukedom coming in with the
ill {196}fated marriage of the heiress to James, son of Charles II, Duke
of Monmouth. Of course if Charles II really married Lucy Walters, (as
Monmouth's pious Whiggish adherents asserted,) the Duke of Buccleuch
would be our rightful king.
[Illustration: 0216]
But the good king, Charles II, firmly denied the marriage, fond as he
was of his handsome son by Lucy Walters; and the good House of Buccleuch
has never believed in the Whig fable of the black box which contained
the marriage lines of Lucy Walters and Charles II. The marriage of
Monmouth with the heiress of Buccleuch was made in their extreme youth
and was unhappy. Monmouth was in love, like Lord Ailesbury, with Lady
Henrietta Wentworth, whom he (according to Ailesbury,) spoke of as "his
wife in the sight of God," which means that she was not his wife at all.
The house of Branksome makes a picturesque object in the middle distance
of the landscape; but is not otherwise {197}interesting. In front of the
door lies, or used to lie, a rusty iron breach-loading culverin of
the fourteenth century; of old, no doubt, part of the artillery of the
castle, when it was a castle.
[Illustration: 0217]
Returning from Branksome Tower to the right bank of Teviot, now a clear
and musical stream, we cross one of the many Allan Waters so common
in Scotland, and arrive at Caerlanrig, where there is a tablet with
an inscription bitterly blaming James V, for his treachery to Johnny
Armstrong of Gilnockie in Eskdale, hanged in 1530. The Armstrongs,
being next neighbours of England on the Border, were a clan of doubtful
allegiance, given to intermarrying with the English, and sometimes
wearing the cross of St. George as "assured Scots." They were the
greatest of reivers on both sides of the Border. In 1530, James V, who
had escaped from the Douglases, and driven Angus, their chief, into the
service of Henry VIII, tried to bring the country into order. He
first arrested the chief men--Bothwell (Hepburn), Ferniehirst (Ker),
Max{198}well, Home, Buccleuch (his old ally), Polwarth, and Johnston;
and, having kept them out of mischief, led a large force into their
region. He caught Scott of Tushielaw in Ettrick, and Cockburn of
Henderland on Meggat Water. Cockburn was tried in Edinburgh for theft
and treason, and beheaded; not hanged at his own door as legend fables.
He was in the conspiracy of Henry VIII and Angus, and had sided with
invaders. Tushielaw suffered for oppression of his tenants. Numbers of
lairds, Kers, Douglases, Rutherfurds, Turnbulls, Swintons, Veitches, put
themselves on the King's mercy and gave sureties for quiet behaviour.
Gilnockie, according to the ballad, came to the King at Caerlanrig in
royal array, with forty retainers. I find no contemporary account of the
circumstances, for Lindsay of Pitscottie gives but late gossip, as he
always does. Calderwood, still later, says that Johnie "was enticed by
some courtiers." Calderwood adds that one of the sufferers with Johnie
had burned a woman and her children in her house. The evidence for Royal
treachery is that of the ballad of Johnie Armstrong, which may have
been the source and authority of ritscottie. We may quote it. It was a
favourite of Sir Walter Scott.
JOHNIE ARMSTRANG.
Sum speikis of lords, sum speikis of lairds,
And sik like men of hie degrie;
Of a gentleman I sing a sang,
Sum tyme called Laird of Gilnockie.
The King he wrytes a luving letter,
With his ain hand sae tenderly,
And he hath sent it to Johnie Armstrang
To cum and speik with him speedily
The Eliots and Armstrangs did convene;
They were a gallant cumpanie--
"We'll ride and meit our lawful King,
And bring him safe to Gilnockie. {199}
"Make kinnen * and capon ready, then,
And venison in great plentie;
We'll wellcum here our royal King;
I hope he'll dine at Gilnockie!"
They ran their horse on the langholme howm,
And brak their spears wi' mickle main;
The ladies lukit frae their loft windows--
"God bring our men weel hume again!"
When Johnic cam before the King,
Wi' a' his men sae brave to see,
The King he movit his bonnet to him;
He ween'd he was a King as weel as he.
"May I rind grace, my sovereign liege,
Grace for my loyal men and me?
For my name it is Johr.ie Armstrong,
And a subject of yours, my liege," said he.
"Away, away, thou traitor Strang!
Out o' my sight soon may'st thou be!
I grantit never a traitor's life,
And now I'll not begin wi' thee."
"Grant me my life, my liege, my King!
And a bonny gift I'll gie to thee--
Full four-and-twenty milk-white steids,
Were a' foal'd in ae yeir to me.
"I'll gie thee a' these milk-white steids,
That prance and nicker at a speir;
And as mickle gude Inglish gilt,
As four o' their braid backs dow bear."
"Away, away, thou traitor strang!
Out o' my sight soon may'st thou be!
I grantit never a traitor's life,
And now I'll not begin wi' thee!"
"Grant me my life, my liege, my King!
And a bonny gift I'll gie to thee--
Gude four-and-twenty ganging mills,
That gang thro' a' the yeir to me.
* Rabbits.
{200}
"These four-and-twenty mills complete
Sail gang for thee thro' a' the yeir;
And as mickle of gude reid wheit,
As a' their happers dow to bear."
"Away, away, thou traitor strang!
Out o' my sight soon may'st thou be!
I grautit never a traitor's life,
And now I'll not begin wi' thee!"
"Grant me my life, my liege, my King!
And a great great gift I'll gie to thee--
Bauld four-and-twenty sisters' sons,
Sail for thee fecht, tho' a' should flee!"
"Away, away, thou traitor strang!
Out o' my sight soon may'st thou be!
I grantit never a traitor's life,
And now I'll not begin wi' thee!"
"Grant me my life, my liege, my King!
And a brave gift I'll gie to thee--
All between heir and Newcastle town
Sail pay their yeirly rent to thee."
"Away, away, thou traitor strang!
Out o' my sight soon may'st thou be!
I grantit never a traitor's life,
And now I'll not begin wi' thee!"
"Ye lied, ye lied, now King," he says,
T Altho' a King and Prince ye be!
For I've luved naething in my life,
I weel dare say it, but honesty--
"Save a fat horse, and a fair woman,
Twa bonny dogs to kill a deir;
But Ingland suld have found me meal and mault,,
Gif I had lived this hundred yeir!
"She suld have found me meal and mault,
And beef and mutton in a' plentie;
But never a Scots wyfe could have said,
That e'er I skaithed her a puir flee.
{201}
"To seik het water beneith cauld ice,
Surely it is a greit folie--
I have asked grace at a graceless face,
But there is nane for my men and me! *
"But had I kenn'd ere I cam frae liame,
How thou unkind wad'st been to me!
1 wad have keepit the Border side,
In spite of all thy force and thee.
"Wist England's King that I was ta'en,
O gin a blythe man he wad be!
For ance I slew his sister's son,
And on his breist bane brak a trie."
John wore a girdle about his middle,
Imbroidered ower wi' burning gold,
Bespangled wi' the same metal,
Maist beautiful was to behold.
There hang nine targats ** at Johnie's hat,
And ilk ane worth three hundred pound--
"What wants that knave that a King suld have
But the sword of honour and the crown?
"O where gat thou these targats, Johnie,
That blink sae brawly abune thy brie?"
"I gat them in the field fechting,
Where, cruel King, thou durst not be.
"Had I my horse, and harness gude,
And riding as I w ont to be,
It suld hae been tauld this hundred yeir,
The meeting of my King and me!
"God be with thee, Kirsty, my brother,
Lang live thou Laird of Mangertoun!
Lang may'st thou live on the Border syde
Ere thou see thy brother ride up and down!
"And God be with thee, Kirsty, my son,
Where thou sits on thy nurse's knee!
But an' thou live this hundred yeir,
Thy father's better thou'lt never be.
* This and the three preceding stanzas were among those that
Sir Walter Scott most delighted to quote.
** Tassels.
{202}
"Farewell! my bonny Gilnoek hall,
Where on Esk side thou standest stout!
Gif I had lived hut seven yeirs mair,
I wad hae gilt thee round about."
[Illustration: 0222]
John murdered was at Carlinrigg,
And all his gallant companie;
But Scotland's heart was ne'er sae wae,
To see sae mony brave men die-- {203}
Because they saved their country deir
Frae Inglishmen! Nane were sa bauld,
Whyle Johnie lived on the Border syde,
Nane of them durst cum neir his hauld.
It will be observed that Gilnockie puts forward as his claim to respect
the very robberies in England for which, says the poet, he was hanged.
The only sign of treachery is that Johnnie did come to Caerlanrig,
probably in hope of making his peace like many other lairds. Whether he
were "enticed by some courtiers," or whether he risked the adventure
is not manifest. According to Pitscottie he had held England as far as
Newcastle under blackmail.
Above Caerlanrig, Teviot winds through the haughs and moors and under
the alders to its source at Teviot-stone. {204}