ELLWAND
|All the way up Tweed from a mile below Mertoun Bridge, up past the
cauld where the pent water spouts and raves ceaselessly, along the bank
where lies St. Boswells Golf Course, round that noble sweep where
the river holds Dryburgh lovingly in the crook of its arm, up by
the boulder-strewn streams above, and round the elbow by the foot
suspension-bridge, past the lofty red scaurs and the hanging woods to
the Monk's Ford, trout fishing--at least from the right bank--is
free. And though it goes without saying that pool and stream are "sore
fished," yet it is not possible by fair angling to spoil Tweed. Many a
fisher may depart, empty and downcast, but if he persevere, some day he
shall have his reward. To him who patiently teaches himself to know the
river and the whims of its inhabitants, to him who studies weather and
time of day--or, may be, of night--there must at length come success,
for many are the trout, and large. The writer has known a yellow trout
of 8 lbs. 12 ozs. to be killed with fly hard by the golf course. The
weight is of course exceptional, but many a beauty of 2 lbs. and over is
there to be taken by him who is possessed of skill and patience; and
to me is known no more enticing spectacle than one of these long swift
pools of a summer evening, in the gloaming, when the water is alive with
the dimples of rising trout.
And what a river it is, however you take it! What a series of noble
views is there for him who can withdraw his attention from the water.
[Illustration: 0241]
Let him climb, in the peaceful evening light, to the top of the red
and precipitous Braeheads behind the long single street of St. Boswells
Green, pleasantest of villages, and there gaze his fill at the beautiful
Abbey far beneath his feet, sleeping amongst the trees across the river.
Or let him go farther still, up by the leafy path that overhangs the
rushing water, till he come to the little suspension-bridge. And let
him stop there, midway across, and face towards the western sky and the
three peaks of Eildon that stand out beyond the trees clear-cut against
the warm after-glow. At his feet, mirroring the glory of the dying day,
a broad shining sweep of quiet water broken only by the feeding trout;
on his left hand, high in air the young moon floating like lightest
feather; above the fretful murmur of some far-off stream, a bird piping
to his mate. And over all, a stillness that holds and strangely moves
the very soul. I think that if there be one with him attuned to his
mood, an hour may pass and the gloaming have deepened almost to dusk,
and neither of them shall have spoken a word, or noticed that the time
has sped. And still they will linger, unwilling to break the spell.
At Leaderfoot the river is crossed by two stone bridges, one, the lofty
naked viaduct of the Berwickshire Railway; the other, older and more
pleasing, carries the picturesque road that, breaking out from the leafy
woods of Drygrange and leaving on its left hand the hallowed site of Old
Melrose, leads past St. Boswell's Green and the Kennels of the Buccleuch
Hunt, over by Lilliard's Edge to Jedburgh. Between, and immediately
above, the bridges at Leaderfoot are some glorious salmon casts, where
nigh on a century ago Scrope was wont to throw a fly. Strange that
during twenty years, in all that magnificent water fished by him, from
Kelso to Caddonfoot, he never once landed a salmon of thirty pounds,
and but few as heavy as twenty. There may have been more fish in his
day,--one cannot judge; they got more, but then they took them not
only with fly, but by "sunning" and by "burning" the water, and by many
another means that now is justly considered to be poaching. But they
seldom caught a salmon approaching in weight those which are now
commonly taken in Tweed every season. Thirty pounds is a weight by no
means noticeable now-a-days, and scarcely a year passes that fish of
forty pounds and over are not taken by some fortunate angler; even above
Melrose cauld, an obstruction that checks the ascent of many big fish,
they have been got, far up the river, as heavy as thirty-eight pounds.
Floors Water, at Kelso, I believe holds the record as regards size; in
1886 a fish of fifty-seven and a half pounds was captured. And as to
numbers, though it is of course possible to labour for a week or more in
Tweed--as elsewhere--even with the water apparently in good order, and
with plenty of fish up, fresh from the sea, and meet with no manner of
success, on the other hand there is on Makerstoun Water the pleasing
record of twelve, fourteen, fifteen and sixteen salmon killed by one
rod on four consecutive days; fifty seven fish in all, and
{223}seventy-three for the week.
[Illustration: 0243]
And in a similar period in November, 1903, Upper and Lower Floors Water
produced between them one hundred and forty-three fish, the average
weight for Lower Floors being nineteen pounds. {224}A little
above Leaderfoot, on the opposite bank, is Newstead with its Roman
camp,--though the visitor will be disappointed with what he may now see;
there are no walls, no remains of buildings, such as exist at Bremenium,
or down on the Roman Wall in Northumberland.
[Illustration: 0244]
Behind Newstead, high on the nearest peak of Eildon, are well-defined
remains of a Romo-British station. Where they got a sufficient supply of
water at that elevation is puzzling: it is a large camp, and could not
possibly be held by a numerically weak body of men.
From the head of that "brae" by Newstead that overhangs the river, you
will look on a scene typical of Tweed. Far through the broad and smiling
valley the river winds towards you, like a ribbon shot with silver; a
mile away, across green fields, lies the venerable abbey, dreaming in
the sunshine--"thy ruins mouldering o'er the dead." And, up stream,
the distant belching chimneys of Galashiels cause one fervently {225}to
thank Heaven that beside the old monastic pile there are no tweed mills
to foul the air, and to pollute the lovely stream more even than is now
the case.
[Illustration: 0245]
Mercifully, as regards trade, it is still at Melrose as it was when
the "solemn steps of old departed years" paced through the land
with youthful vigour. The little town is yet guiltless of modern
iniquities--except as regards the railway and the inevitable
Hydropathic, both of which are no doubt necessary evils (or blessings?)
of these latter days. And except, also, that the modern villa is
overmuch in evidence. A hundred years ago, when there was little of a
town but the open Market Place hedging round the Old Cross of Melrose,
it must have been a better, or at least a more picturesque place. On to
the Abbey itself now the town's houses jostle, treading on its skirts,
pertly encroaching. Therefore it lacks the charm and solitude of
Dryburgh. Yet is its own charm irresistible, its beauty matchless,--"was
never {226}scene so sad and fair."
[Illustration: 0246]
To the halting pen, it is the indescribable. In the deathless lines of
the Wizard himself, its beauty lives to all time. But a thousand years
of purgatory might not suffice to wipe from their Record of Sin the
guilt {227}incurred by Hertford, and Evers, and Laiton, in 1544 and 1545
when they wantonly profaned and laid waste this dream in stone and lime,
wrought by "some fairy's hand." Nor in later days were our own people
free from offence in this respect. The number of old houses in the
immediate neighbourhood is probably very small into which have not
been built stones from the ruined abbey. Even across the river they are
found; in the walls of a mouldering old farm house there, pulled down
but a few years ago, were discovered many delicate bits of scroll work
and of finely chiselled stone.
A mile to the west of Melrose lies the village of Darnick. Here is a
fine old tower dating from the sixteenth century, the property still of
the family that originally built it. Fain would Sir Walter Scott have
bought this picturesque old building after he moved to Abbotsford,
and many another has looked on it with longing eyes, but no offer has
succeeded in divorcing it from the stock of the original owner, though
the surrounding lands have melted away. Somewhere about 1425 a Heiton
built the earliest tower. That, naturally, could not stand against the
all-destroying hand of Hertford in 1544, but the Heiton's descendant
repaired, or rebuilt, it in 1569, and ever since it has remained in the
possession of the family, still, I believe, is occasionally inhabited
by them. It is now probably the finest existing specimen of the old
bastel-house. From its watch-tower may be had a glimpse of Tweed
at Bridgend, where Father Philip, Sacristan of St. Mary's, took his
involuntary bath. This is the Bridgend mentioned in Sir Walter's Notes
to _The Monastery_. The ancient and very peculiar bridge over Tweed
which gave to the hamlet its name is described in the text of the novel.
There is now no trace of such a bridge, but in the early part of the
eighteenth century the pillars yet stood. They are described in Gordon's
_Itnerarium Septentrionale_ (1726), and in Milne's account of the Parish
of Melrose published in 1794, there is a full description. Those pillars
yet stood, he says. "It has been a timber bridge; in the {228}middle
pillar there has been a chain for a drawbridge, with a little house for
the convenience of those that kept the bridge and received the custom.
[Illustration: 0248]
On this same pillar are the arms of {229}the Pringles of Galashiels."
In Sir Walter's day, only the foundations of the piers existed. He tells
how, "when drifting down the Tweed at night, for the purpose of killing
salmon by torch light," he used to see them.
A Heiton of Darnick fell at Flodden. His successor played no
inconspicuous part in the bitter fight by his own tower side, on
Skirmish Field, scene of that memorable encounter in 1526 between Angus
and Huccleuch, when the stake was the person of the young king, James
V. Turn-Again, too, is in the immediate neighbourhood, on the lands of
Abbotsford, where the Scotts turned fiercely on their pursuers, and Ker
of Cessford was slain. It is curious to note that beneath what is now
a lawn at Darnick Tower many skeletons were dug up some years ago, and
beside them were swords. Doubtless the skeletons were those of men slain
in this fight; but why were their swords buried with them? Over the
hill, at Holydene, an ancient seat of the Kers of Cessford, there was
also unearthed years ago within the walls of the old castle, a gigantic
skeleton, by its side a very handsome sword. Were their weapons, in the
sixteenth century, laid convenient to the grasp of the dead warriors, as
in Pagan times they were wont to be?
Bowden Moor and Halidon are but over the hill from Darnick. It was
from this direction, by the descent from Halidon (or Halyden, modern
Holydene), that Buccleueh came down on Angus, after Cessford and
Fernihirst and Home had ridden off. But the Homes and the Kers returned,
and spoiled the play for the outnumbered Scotts.
"Now Bowden Moor the march-man won,
And sternly shook his plumed head,
As glanced his eye o'er Halidon;
For on his soul the slaughter red
Of that unhallowed morn arose,
When first the Scott and Carr were foes;
When royal James beheld the fray,
Prize to the victor of the day; {230}
When Home and Douglas, in the van,
Bore down Buccleuch's retiring clan,
Till gallant Cessford's heart-blood dear
Reek'd on dark Elliot's border spear."
[0250]
Less than a couple of miles to the west from Darnick, we come to that
which Ruskin pronounced to be "perhaps the most incongruous pile that
gentlemanly modernism ever designed." I fear that even the most
devoted Borderer must admit that Abbotsford _is_ an incongruous pile.
Nevertheless it is hallowed ground, and one may not judge it by common
standards. It reminds only of the gallantest struggle against hopeless
odds that ever was made by mortal man; it speaks only of him whom
everyone loved, and loves. "The glory-dies not, and the grief is past."
But what a marvellous change has been wrought over all {231}that
countryside since "the Shirra" bought Abbotsford, a hundred and two
years ago. Undrained, unenclosed, treeless and bare, covered for the
most part only with its rough native heath--that was the character of
the country. And the house; "small and poor, with a common _kail-yard_
on one flank, and a staring barn on the other; while in front appeared
a filthy pond covered with ducks and duckweed, from which the whole
tenement had derived the unharmonious designation of Clarty Hole." It
does not sound enticing; and already offers had been made to him of a
property near Selkirk, where, among fields overhanging the river, was a
site unsurpassed for natural beauty of prospect, whence Ettrick could
be viewed winding past "sweet Bowhill," far into the setting sun. It was
Erskine, I think, who urged him to buy this property--land which then
belonged to the writer's grandfather and greatgrandfather. But it
was too far from Tweed, Scott said; "Tweed was everything to him--a
beautiful river, flowing broad and bright over a bed of milk-white
pebbles," (pebbles, alas! that, there at least, are no longer
milk-white, but rather grey with sewage fungus and the refuse of mills).
In spite of all its manifest drawbacks, "Clarty Hole," appealed to
Scott. It was near the beautiful old abbey, and the lands had been
abbey-lands. An ancient Roman road led through the property from Eildon
Hills to that ford over Tweed which adjorned the farm, (and with this
ford for sponsor, he changed the name from "Clarty Hole" to "Abbot's
Ford.") Over the river, on the rising ground full in his view was the
famous Catrail; and through his own land ran the Rhymer's Glen, where
True Thomas foregathered with the Queen of Faëry. Bit by bit, Scott
added to his land, bit by bit to his cottage, regarding which his first
intention was "to have only two spare bedrooms, with dressing-rooms,
each of which will on a pinch have a couch-bed." And his tree-planting
had begun at once. When the property was first acquired from the
Reverend Dr. Douglas of Galashiels, there was on it but one solitary
strip of {232}firs, so long and so narrow that Scott likened it to a
black hair-comb.
[Illustration: 0252]
It ran," says Lockhart, "from the precincts of the homestead to near
Turn-Again, and has bequeathed the name of _the Doctor's reiding-kame_
to the mass of nobler trees amidst which its dark, straight line can now
hardly be traced." I do not think that "the Doctor's redding-kame" now
survives {233}as a name, even if the original trees be still to the
fore. In any rase they would attract no attention, for what Sir Thomas
Dick Lauder says was then "as tame and uninteresting a stretch of ground
as could well be met with in any part of the world," is now rich in
woods, and everywhere restful and pleasing to the eye--though it may be
conceded that Galashiels has stretched a villa-bedecked arm farther up
Tweed's left bank than might have been quite acceptable to Sir Walter.
At Boldside, of whose "ruined and abandoned churchyard" he writes in
his introduction to the _Monastery_, there is now a railway station,
and suburban villas, large and small, dot the landscape ever the more
plentifully as one approaches that important manufacturing town which
a century back was but a tiny village peopled by a few industrious
weavers. No longer, I fear, can it be said that Boldside's "scattered
and detached groves," combining with "the deep, broad current of the
Tweed, wheeling in moonlight round the foot of the steep bank.... fill
up the idea which one would form in imagination for a scene that Obcron
and Queen Mab might love to revel in."
The Fairy Folk have fled from scenes tainted by an atmosphere of railway
and modern villa. Even the Water-bull has ceased to shake the hills with
his roar around Sir Walter's "small but deep lake" at Cauldshiels. Yet
as late as the time of our grandsires people told gravely how, one warm
summer's day, a lady and her groom, riding by the sullen shore of this
"lochan," ventured a little way from the edge in order to water their
thirsty horses, and were immediately engulfed in the Kelpie's insatiable
maw. If such a tragedy ever did happen, no doubt the explanation is
simple enough. Without any warning the hard upper crust would give way
beneath the horses' feet, and, struggling vainly, they would sink in the
fathomless, spewing, inky slime below. Once trapped in that, no power on
earth could ever bring them out {234}again, dead or alive. A like
fate nearly befell the writer when fishing alone one day in a gloomy,
forsaken, kelpie-haunted Border hill loch. Dense fog came down,
wreathing over the quiet water, hiding the dripping heather and the
benty hill. A bird of the bittern kind boomed dismally at intervals, and
a snipe bleated. It was a cheerless prospect; and the temperature had
fallen with the coming of the fog. But through the mist could be heard
the sound of trout rising in the little loch, and one bigger than his
fellows persisted in rising far out. The sound was too tempting. The
fisher waded out, and still out; and ever the big trout rose, luring him
on. Another step, and another; it was no longer stony under foot,
and the bottom began to quake, Still the footing was hard enough,
and nothing happened; and again the big fish rose just out of casting
distance. One more step would do it; and what danger could possibly be
added in so small a distance? So one more step was taken, and--without
a second's warning the crust broke. Only one thing saved the fisher;
instinctively, as he sank through the fetid slime, he threw himself
on his back, striking vigorously with his arms. But it took many an
agonised, almost despairing, stroke ere his legs _sucked_ out of that
death trap. Nor, as long as there was water shoreward deep enough
to swim in, did he again attempt to wade. His rod had not been
abandoned--which was matter for gratulation; but, soaked to the skin,
chilled to the very marrow, and reeking with the stench of putrid swamp,
it was no thing of joy that day to make his devious way home over an
unfamiliar hill that was wrapped in impenetrable folds of dense mist.
There is an origin, likely enough, for the Water-Bull. A great volume of
marsh-gas, bursting from the bottom of a swampy loch, might be seen some
still, foggy day, or in the uncertain evening light, suddenly to boil
up on the surface far out. The wallowing upheaval caused by the belching
gas would readily suggest the part-seen back or side of some formless
monster, whose gambols were agitating the water and {235}causing billows
to surge upon the weed-fringed shore; and a bittern's hollow boom
quivering on the still night air, would easily be construed by the
credulous and ignorant as the bellow of this fearsome monster that they
thought they had seen wheeling and plunging. If he was anything more
substantial than gas, what a beast he would have been to troll for!
One should not forget that it was by the shore of Cauldshiels Loch that
Scott wrote the exquisitely sad lines that yet so vividly paint the
scene:
"The sun upon the Weirdlaw Hill,
In Eterick's vale is sinking sweet;
The westland wind is hushed and still,
The lake lies sleeping at my feet.
Yet not the landscape to mine eye
Bears those bright hues that once it bore;
Though evening with her richest dye,
Flames o'er the hill of Ettrick's shore.
With listless look along the plain,
I see Tweed's silver current glide,
And coldly mark the holy fane
Of Melrose rise in ruined pride.
The quiet lake, the balmy air,
The hill, the stream, the tower, the tree,
Are they still such as once they were,
Or is the dreary change in me?
It is only a little above "the holy fane of Melrose" that there enters
Tweed on the northern side an interesting little burn, the Ellwand, or
Allen. Up the glen--the Fairy Dene, or Nameless Dene--formed by this
stream, lies Glendearg, the tower described in the opening scenes of the
_Monastery_. There are, in fact, three towers in the glen, Hillslap (now
called Glendearg), Colmslie, and Langshaw. Over the door of the first is
the date 1595, and the letters N. C. and E. L., the initials of Nicolas
Cairncross and his wife. Colmslie belonged to the family of Borthwick;
their crest, a Goat's Head, is still on the {236}ruin,--or was some
years ago. But who in old days owned Langshaw is not known to me. For
mutual protection, Border towers were very commonly built thus, in
groups of three--as is instanced, indeed, at the neighbouring village
of Darnick, where formerly, besides the present existing bastel-house,
there stood two others. "In each village or town," says Sir Walter,
"were several small towers, having battlements projecting over the
side-walls, and usually an advanced angle or two with shot-holes for
flanking the door way, which was always defended by a strong door of
oak, studded with nails, and often by an exterior grated door of iron.
These small peel houses were ordinarily inhabited by the principal
feuars and their families; but, upon the alarm of approaching danger,
the whole inhabitants thronged from their own miserable cottages, which
were situated around, to garrison these points of defence. It was then
no easy matter for a hostile party to penetrate into the village, for
the men were habituated to the use of bows and fire arms, and the towers
being generally so placed that the discharge from one crossed that of
another, it was impossible to assault any of them individually."
The Nameless Dene is famed for the "fairy" cups and saucers that are
still to be found in the streamlet's bed after a flood, little bits of
some sort of soft limestone which the washing of the water has formed
into shapes so fantastic and delicate that one hardly needs the
imagination of childhood to believe they are the work of fingers more
than mortal. Up this valley ran the ancient Girthgate, a bridle-way over
the hills used of old by the infrequent traveller, and always by the
monks of Melrose when duty took them to visit the Hospital which Malcolm
IV founded in. 1164 on Soltre, or Soutra, Hill. As late as the middle of
last century the grassy track was plainly to be seen winding through the
heather; perhaps in parts it is not even yet obliterated. Nature does
not readily wipe out those old paths and drove roads that the passing of
man and beast traced across the hills many centuries back.
{237}