|Two{249} miles up the river from Lindean you come to Selkirk. But
this is not the route by which that town should be approached; by the
Galashiels road, one is in the heart of Selkirk almost before one is
aware of any streets. To see properly the old royal burgh clinging to
the steep side of its hill, and to realise the beauty of its situation,
it is necessary to come from Galashiels up Tweed by the road diverging
at Rink. Thence cross Yair Bridge, go by that beautiful highway through
the shaggy woods of Sunderland Hall, past Ettriek-bank and the Nettley
Burn, down by Linglie, across Ettrick by the old bridge, and so up into
the Market Place of Selkirk by the Green, (which is not anything in the
nature of a lawn, but, on the contrary, a rather steep road).
This is a route longer, but to those not pressed for time, one
infinitely more pleasant and beautiful than the direct way between the
two towns. By it you see the exquisite bit of Tweed valley that lies
between the junction and Yair Bridge, and, pausing as you cross that
bridge, you have on either hand a prospect infinitely fair of heathery
hill, green, leafy wood, and glorious river, the latter, above you on
the right, hurrying down from Yair Cauld, a glittering sheet of eddying
water, sweeping in magnificent curve past its elms at the foot of a
mighty tree-clad brae; then passing beneath your feet, chafing and
hoarsely roaring, it plunges through between imprisoning rocks, till
once more comparative peace is gained in reaches dear to the heart of
salmon fishers. Then you leave the bridge at Yair, and climbing an easy
gradient, pass along by a pleasant, shady road through rich woods, over
the hill to Ettriekbank, where tradition says Queen Mary crossed the
Ettrick on her way to Jedburgh in 1566.
[Illustration: 0270]
In itself, Ettriekbank possesses no feature of interest, but it recalls
to mind the fact that here, in 1818, two harmless-looking hawkers with a
cart were wont to call at intervals, ostensibly to sell fish. Had their
real errand been known, it is little fish they would have sold, and
short would have been their shrift at the hands of the roused and
horrified country-folk. They were Burke and Hare, the notorious
body-snatchers, and the real purpose of the cart in which they brought
fish was to carry back to Edinburgh the bodies they might procure in the
country.
Burke and Blare! Still, after the lapse of close on a century their
memory is held in execration in the Border, still is their name a kind
of vague horror even to those to whom it may convey little else, and who
are almost wholly ignorant of what hideous crimes were committed by the
pair. It was, of course, not only _dead_ bodies that they took. These
they ravished from new made graves; but they took also living men,
drugged or filled with drink, and murdered them for the sake of the
price their corpses would bring as subjects for dissection by some of
the doctors of that day. Hare turned king's evidence. After the trial
and execution of his accomplice, he was smuggled away to the United
States. There his identity was discovered, and an infuriated mob
threw him into a limekiln, where he was badly burned and his eye
sight destroyed. After a time, when the rage and horror aroused by his
misdeeds might to some extent be supposed likely to have died away, he
returned to England, and as late as 1855 he was alive and in London. A
blind, white haired, frouzy, ragged old man, led by a dog, used daily to
slouch up Oxford Street, turn at the Circus towards Portland Place,
post himself near where the Langham Hotel stands, and beg there from
charitable passers-by. How many of them would have given, had they known
that this old man was Hare, a ruffian stained with the blood of perhaps
half a score of victims? How many of them, shrinking aside, would have
stepped into the foulest gutter rather than be contaminated by even
brushing against the hem of his filthy old garments? Few then knew who
he was; but there are men yet alive who may possibly remember having
seen him. An eminent London surgeon, who died, comparatively speaking,
but the other day, very well remembered, and occasionally spoke of, the
grizzly old ruffian who stood, with tapping stick, holding a bowl for
alms. The late Mr. Serjeant Ballantine, too, in his _Reminiscences_
describes the appearance of the man.
Immediately after passing Ettriekbank, the road, coming {252}suddenly
out from a clump of trees, breaks into view of a wide and pleasant
valley, with a goodly prospect of wood and heathery hill stretched
far to the west and south. Down this valley sweeps the gravelly bed of
Ettrick; on its farther bank, on the flat haugh, stand a long line
of mills and the station of a branch line of railway. Above, rising
abruptly, tier upon tier in cheerful succession, trees and houses that
blend into the smiling face of Selkirk. And perhaps it is by reason of
the width of the setting in which they are placed, or because down the
mighty funnel of the valley comes rushing the west wind that sweeps all
smoke away, but somehow it seems that the mills on the haugh below the
town give no air of squalor or of dirt to the landscape.
Would that one could say the same with regard to the effect of their
dyes and refuse on the condition of the river. By a steep red "scaur"
below Linglie there once was a pool clearer than amber, across which
in summer weather small boys, breathless but greatly daring, essayed
to swim. Farther down, at the back of Lindean Flour Mill, was another,
where in the long twilights of June,
". . trout beneath the blossom'd tree,
Plashed in the golden stream,"
and whence many a pounder and half-pounder was drawn by eager young
fishers. Where is that seductive amber-clear water now? Alas! in these
days it is of a sickly blue tint, smelling evilly; and the stones in
its bed, that once were a clear, warm grey, with yellow boulders
interspersed that flashed in the stream of a sunny day like burnished
copper,--they are slime-covered and loathsome, things to be shunned.
Surely more can be done to check this pollution of our beautiful
streams. So far as can be ascertained, there is but one of the mills of
Selkirk that strives (and I believe it strives successfully,) so to deal
with its refuse that the water it uses may be returned to Ettrick in a
condition that does not defile that stream. {253}Nevertheless, it has to
be admitted that during the autumn floods salmon do run the gauntlet
of Ettrick's lower reaches, and in countless numbers congregate below
Selkirk Cauld (or weir), where the difficulty of ascent acts as a
partial check on their continued migration. On a day in the month of
November, if there should happen to be a considerable flood in the
river, this cauld is a sight worth going a long way to look at. A
wide rushing sea of tawny, foaming water--a hundred yards from bank to
bank--races over the sloping face of the cauld, and, where it plunges
into the deep pool at foot, rears itself in a mighty wave, with crest
that tosses in the wintry breeze "like the mane of a chestnut steed."
From daylight till dark you may watch the fish,--big and little, from
the thirty-pound leviathan to the little one or two-pound sea trout--in
their eagerness to reach the spawning-beds of the upper waters, hurl
themselves high in air over this great barrier-wave, then, gallantly
struggling, continue for a while their course up the rushing torrent,
till gradually they lose way and come tumbling back, head over tail,
into the pool from which half a minute before they had emerged. It is
like standing by one of the jumps in an endless kind of tinny Grand
National Steeple-chase; so many fish are in the air at once at any given
moment that one becomes giddy with watching them. Probably a good
many do in time accomplish the ascent, or perhaps get up by the
salmon-ladders in mid-stream, but the great majority are swept back,
over and over again. Those that make their attempt near the side, in the
shallow water out of the main force of the current, are frequently taken
in landing-nets (by water-bailiffs stationed there for the purpose), and
are carried up and set at liberty in the smooth water above the cauld.
It must be confessed that a considerable number are also taken in this
way, or with the help of a "cleek," by poachers. The bailiffs cannot be
everywhere; and a salmon is a temptation before which (in the Border)
almost the most virtuous of his sex might conceivably succumb. The
average {254}Borderer, indeed, I believe would cheerfully risk his life
sometimes, rather than forego his chance of "a Fish."--"The only crime
prevalent [in Selkirk] is that of poaching," says the Rev. Mr. Campbell,
minister of the parish for fifty years, writing in 1833. There was one,
greatly sinning in this respect, of whom nevertheless, because of his
gallant end, I cannot think without a feeling almost of affection.
He--with a fish where no fish should have been--was hopelessly
outmanoeuvred by the bailiffs, escape cut off on every side, and only
the river, red, swollen, and cold as ice, open to him. "Here's daith or
glory for Jockie!" he cried, and plunged into a torrent from which he
came no more alive.
A little higher up than the cauld is the Piper's Pool, where, until he
was hit by a chance bullet that brought him rolling like a shot rabbit
down the brae into the water, a piper stood piping that September
morning of 1645, when Montrose and Leslie were striving for the victory.
On the bank above, those inhabitants of Selkirk who cared to run some
risk--which was probably the whole community--took up their position
and watched the fight as from a grand stand. There is no better vantage
point imaginable.
Leslie, I suppose, crossing opposite the gap called Will's Nick, (not
far from Lindean), came up the left bank of Ettrick and, hidden by the
fog, skirted along the edge of the hills till he was within striking
distance of the Royal camp, when he took them, no doubt, both in flank
and in rear. But how did a man of Montrose's experience allow himself to
be thus fooled? Montrose passed the night in Selkirk, and he received
no information whatever of any hostile movement. It was too late when
he and what mounted men he could hastily collect came thundering and
foaming through the shallow stream next morning, and went spurring over
the flat haugh against the enemy. Someone besides Traquair must have
played him false. It is inconceivable that he had no pickets out, or
employed none of his cavalry on outpost duty. If they were {255}out, in
spite of the fog they could not fail to have got in touch with some part
of Leslie's force. No large body of troops could have come undetected by
a route so obvious, if those on the look-out for them were doing their
duty.
Selkirk on this occasion saw war, as it were from the dress circle.
The town was burned to the ground by the English after Flodden, and at
various other odd times, but I do not think that it ever saw much actual
street fighting such as was the experience of Jedburgh again and again.
Selkirk was out of the main current of invasion, and it was only odd
"spates" that came her way, such as when, in 1304, Edward I passed
through the town on his march back to England; and again when in 1309
Edward II, following an unexpected route to the north, took her on his
way. Still, Selkirk had always been familiar with at least the pomp and
circumstance of war. The town was old when Earl David founded its abbey
in 1113; probably it had always been a headquarters of the Scottish
Kings and their retinue, when hunting in the Forest. Certainly William
the Lion, Alexander II, and Alexander III all passed a good deal of
time in his castle, which of old stood on an eminence in what are now the
grounds of Haining, near the "head" of the town. Probably the Court came
here chiefly for the purpose of hunting; the Forest of Ettrick was famed
for its deer, as its men--unlike the majority of their countrymen--were
famed for their archery. At Falkirk, in 1298, the English themselves
bore witness to the warlike prowess of the men of Selkirk, as well as to
their stature and fine appearance. At Bannockburn the sons of the forest
distinguished themselves. And again at Flodden.
Regarding the part borne by her sons in the last-named great struggle,
there are many trad-'fons to which the inhabitants of Selkirk cling
tenaciously. Some, I fear, will not bear too close investigation,
Traditions are mis-chancey things to handle; it does not always do to
enquire too closely if one would retain one's faith. A large body of the
men of {256}Selkirk and the Forest went to Flodden, and they fought as
they always did fight. That much, at least, is certain. But who shall
say how many returned from that fatal field? The Burgh Records are
silent. There is a mournful gap of two months in the history of the
town; not an entry of any sort for eight weeks in the autumn of 1513.
And, says Mr. Craig-Brown in his History of Selkirkshire, "Quite as
mournful and significant are the frequent services of heirs recorded
after the battle." Selkirk suffered severely at Flodden. There, as
elsewhere, her sons did their duty; and they fell gloriously. One could
wish that that might suffice: it is an ungrateful task to rake among the
dead cinders of time-honoured traditions. But it is the detestable habit
of the day to leave none of our ancient beliefs unassailed: the more
beloved the tradition, the more likely is some one to remain unsatisfied
till he has upset it. Yet it must be admitted that few of our cherished
legends emerge triumphant when assailed by the scoffer. That, for
instance, of Fletcher and the English standard captured at Flodden,
which has been revered in Selkirk by so many generations of Souters, I
fear, when it is investigated, must crumble into dust.
Certainly the tradition regarding the origin of the town's Arms is
impossible of maintenance. The figures are so obviously those of the
Virgin and Child; the halo and the glory round their heads forbid
any other interpretation. But it is easy to imagine that after the
Reformation no Scottish town would care to acknowledge any connection,
however remote, with the detested Church of Rome. Hence probably the
legend of the dead woman and her still living baby who were found at
the Lady-wood Edge by the Selkirk survivors of Flodden. Such a body, of
course, may quite possibly have been discovered, and the tradition would
be used later to account for the figures that appear in the town's Arms.
Just in the same way is a gargoyle in Melrose Abbey, beside the reputed
grave of Michael Scott, now pointed out to {257}American and English
tourists as an authentic representation in stone of that mighty Wizard.
As to the "Souters of Selkirk," there can be no proof either way; but
I prefer to believe that the song is old, almost as old as Flodden.
Perhaps I have misread Mr. Craig Brown, and am wrong in believing that
he regards it as commemorating a famous football match played in 1815
between Souters and men under the leadership of Lord Home. If that
were so, it could not have been sung at Dalkeith in 1804, when the
Selkirkshire Yeomanry were present at a banquet there after the False
Alarm. We read that Lord Home called for the song on that occasion,
but that none of the Yeomanry cared to sing it before a man on whose
ancestor it reflects, whereupon, amid rapturous applause, Lord Home sang
it himself. If it refers to a football match, it must be to one of very
ancient date, but one that surely could not fall to have left some mark
on the minds of the Souters. Mr. Plummer, of Sunderland Hall, Sheriff
Depute of the county prior to Sir Walter Scott, writing in 1793 says
that though he had lived all his life within two miles of Selkirk and
had known the song from his boyhood, there was not in his day, and he
believed there never had been, any tradition connecting the song with
anything of the nature of a football match. The verses may not have been
written, probably were not written, immediately after the battle, but I
am confident that it refers to Flodden--in spite of the fact that there
was then no _Earl_ of Home. No doubt the song has had variants from
time, to time; probably there was no allusion to an "Earl" in the
original verses. Popular calumny shortly after Flodden taxed Lord Home
with having been the cause of James's defeat and death; he was unable,
as we know, to come to his Sovereign's aid. This popular belief, coupled
with the fact that Selkirks representatives suffered more cruelly than
did Lord Home's men---and therefore, of course local prejudice would
infer, did their duty {258}better--would be quite sufficient to give
rise to the sentiment: "Down wi' the Merse to the Deil." In his letter
of 1793, referred to above, Mr. Plummer says: "At election dinners,
etc., when the Selkirk folks begin to get _fou'_ they always call for
music, and for that tune in particular. At such times I never heard
a Souter hint at the football, but many times speak of the battle of
Flodden." So far as it goes, there is nothing in the evidence to suggest
a football origin for "The Souters of Selkirk."
It has always seemed to me, (who, being a native, am on that account
possibly no impartial witness,) that the people of Selkirk have ever
possessed in greater degree than their neighbours the true Spirit of
the Sportsman. Of the inhabitants of Yarrow and Selkirk, a
seventeenth-century writer recorded that "they are ingenuous, and hate
fraud and deceit; theft or robbery are not heard among them, and very
rarely a Ly to be heard in any of their mouths, except among them of
the baser sort." There has always been in them, I think, little of that
"win, tie, or wrangle" disposition which is usually to be found among
small communities; and they were never of the sort who "heave half a
brick at the head" of the outland wayfarer. In their dealings with the
French officers, prisoners of war on parole, who were quartered in the
old town from 1811 to 1814, the Selkirk people displayed an admirable
generosity and a gratifying amount of good feeling,--though in that
respect none of our Border towns can be said to have been lacking. One
of these French prisoners afterwards, when an old man, published most
interesting reminiscences of his stay, and he writes of his involuntary
hosts with appreciation, and almost with affection. In 1811, when the
accumulation of prisoners of warm England had become very great, it
was decided to distribute a large part of them throughout Scotland. To
Selkirk, as its share, came a hundred and ninety men.
How it may be now, I cannot say, but in the writer's boyhood the memory
of these prisoners still lived, and old people told {259}innumerable
tales of the strange habits of "thae Frainch." "They made tea oot o'
dried whun (furze) blossoms, an' they skinned the very paddas (frogs),"
said one old man. The writer of the reminiscences referred to above
makes no allusion to "paddas," but he does mention that "a lake in the
neighbour hood supplied abundance of very delicate pike." This lake may
have been the Haining Loch, a picturesque sheet of water over which,
however, there is, or used to be, at times a nasty vegetable scum. "One
of the most beautiful and peaceful lakes that ever was seen," is Sir
Thomas Dick Lauder's description of it as it was in his day. I think,
however, that the French writer probably refers to the Pot Loch, a small
and once very deep lochan, or pond, nestling in a hollow at the foot of
the pleasant heathery hills on which is now the Selkirk Golf Course.
It is a much more likely spot than the Haining for the prisoners to
frequent. The former is on the town's property, the latter on an
estate in private hands. And in the former there are, or at least there
certainly used to be, many pike of no great size. It was here, too, that
tradition told us the prisoners went to catch frogs? That Frenchmen in
their own land lived chiefly on a diet of frogs was the firm belief of a
majority of the town's inhabitants, ("French frogs" of course was a term
of contemptuous reproach,) and that the prisoners went to the Pot Loch
for any other purpose than to obtain supplies of what seemed to the
townsfolk to be a very loathsome dainty, would never occur to them. The
fact that the edible frog did not exist there, would make no difference
in their belief. That was no difficulty; frogs were frogs all the world
over; and frogs of course included toads. The French ate them all.
The writer of the reminiscences, M. Doisy de Villargennes, tells us that
some of the prisoners were "passionately fond of fishing, and excelled
in it,"--national prejudice of course forbids that we should accept the
latter part of the statement as correct!--and that they used to fish in
Ettrick and {260}Tweed. Part of the former, close to the town, would
be within their "bounds," but the Tweed is far outside the mile radius
which was their limit of liberty.
[Illustration: 0280]
On every road, one mile from the town, was placed a post bearing the
words "Limit of the Prisoners of War"; down the road which leads towards
Bridgelands there is still a memorial of these unfortunates,--a thorn
bush, called the Prisoner's Bush, which marked their limit in that
direction. Any prisoner found outside the boundary was liable to be
fined one guinea--a process, one would imagine, something akin in
certain cases to getting blood from a stone--and the fine was supposed
to go to the person who informed on the delinquent. To the credit of
Selkirk it must be recorded that no one ever claimed this reward; even
when a prisoner uprooted a notice post and carried it a mile farther
along the road, it was, we are told, only "to the amusement of the
inhabitants," who, M. Doisy adds, "never on any occasion took advantage
of a regulation ir virtue of which whoever might see us outside the
fixed limits was entitled to one guinea, payable by the delinquent."
He himself, he says, "frequently went fishing several miles down the
Tweed," and {261}was never fined, never in any way molested. In fact,
great and small in Selkirk, from the Sheriff Depute of the county down
to the town's bellman, and the "drucken" ne'er-do-weel who is to be
found in every small town, and whom one would scarcely expect to be
proof against a bribe that would provide him with the wherewithal for
a royal spree, all combined to wink at these infringements of the
regulations. Sir Walter himself, indeed, who was then living at
Abbotsford, used frequently to have some of the prisoners to dine and
spend the evening there. It is interesting to read the account of these
visits, and to note how Sir Walter impressed his foreign visitors. Says
the writer of the Reminiscences: "There was one person just at this time
whom I did not then appreciate as I afterwards did--Sir Walter Scott,
then plain Mr. Scott. Probably no one knew, unless his publishers,
or ever suspected him of being 'The Great Unknown,' the author
of 'Waverley.' As for us we only saw in Mr. Scott, the Sheriff of
Selkirkshire, a lawyer of some repute in Edinburgh. As sheriff be
frequently came to Selkirk, he having his home at Abbotsford, little
more than three miles distant from Selkirk.
"Mr. Scott became acquainted with one of our comrades, named Tarnier,
a young man of brilliant talent, excellent education, and of remarkably
exuberant spirits. Shortly after, without the knowledge of the
Government agent, or rather, with his tacit approval, Tarnier was
invited to Abbotsford, and he gave us on his return a vivid description
of his reception there. Later, probably at our countryman's suggestion,
he was requested by Mr. Scott to bring with him three of his friends
each time he was invited to dinner at Abbotsford. Thus I was present
on two or three occasions, invited, not by the host himself, but by my
comrade Tarnier.
"It would be, as far as I can remember, about the month of February,
1813, and our mode of procedure was as follows:--In the twilight,
those who were invited repaired to the boundary the milestone already
mentioned--there a carriage {262}awaited us, which took us at a good
pace to Abbotsford, where we were most graciously received by our host.
We only saw Mrs. Scott during the few moments before the announcement
of dinner, at which she was not present. Mrs. Scott was, as we supposed,
French, or of French extraction; in fact, she spoke French perfectly:
Mr. Scott had married her at Carlisle. Our host appeared to us in quite
a different aspect to that under which we had known him passing in the
streets of Selkirk. There he gave us the impression of being a cheery
good-natured man, whose face was rather ordinary, and whose carriage
somewhat common, and halting in his gait, this probably due to his
lameness. At Abbotsford, on the contrary, we found him a gentleman full
of cordiality and gaiety, receiving his guests in a fashion as amicable
as it was delicate. The rooms were spacious and well lighted; the table,
without being sumptuous, was on the whole _recherché_. One need not
expect me to describe very exactly the surroundings of Abbotsford, as on
the occasions I was privileged to be there, we arrived in the twilight,
and we returned when it was quite dark by the same means of locomotion.
Thus, with the exception of the dining room, and a short glimpse of
the salon, all that I know about Abbotsford has been derived from
publications which everyone has read. Neither should it be expected that
I can give details of repasts to which I was invited sixty-five years
ago. But the general theme of our conversation has remained Immutably
fixed in my memory. The principal subject of our discussion did not
ordinarily turn on politics, but on minute details concerning the French
army. All that particularly referred to Napoleon, and above all, traits
and anecdotes, appeared to interest our host in the highest degree, who
always found the means, we observed, to bring round the conversation
to this subject if it happened to have diverged in any way. As can be
imagined, we took good care to repeat nothing unfavourable regarding the
character of our beloved Emperor. We little suspected that our host was
gathering material for a {263}work published ten years later under the
title of 'A Life of Napoleon Bonaparte.'" That Sir Walter's estimate of
the Emperor greatly displeased M. Doisy, goes almost without saying.
It will be remembered, also, that the French General, Gourgaud, was so
bitterly incensed by some statements in this book that a challenge to
Sir Walter was fully expected; and assuredly it would have been accepted
if given.
Selkirk in the Time of the French prisoners was a small place of two
thousand inhabitants or less, the houses nearly all picturesquely
thatched, very few roofed with slate as at present. It must have been
matter of no small difficulty in such a community suitably to house a
sudden influx of strangers. Indeed there _was_ very great difficulty,
until it was discovered that the Frenchmen were to pay for their
accommodation, and then the difficulty vanished. But it would be hard at
the present day to find in Selkirk lodgings of any sort at the rate (2s.
6d. a week) which then satisfied owners of houses.
The following is the French prisoner's description of Selkirk: "The town
is encircled by beautiful hills on all sides: in the centre it had a
large square adorned with a fountain; a very fine bridge crossed the
Ettrick. An ordinary-looking building belonging to the National Church
and a much larger one owned by the Presbyterians, or rather the
sect known by the name of Anti-Burghers, who had for their pastor an
excellent and venerable man named Lawson, were the only two buildings in
Selkirk worthy of notice."
The hills are still beautiful; perhaps, owing to extensive tree
planting, more beautiful now than then; still within a step of Selkirk
is the purple heather, and the heartsease and blue-bell a-swing in the
summer breeze; still on every side the view lies wide and glorious.
And even in the winter, when snow first "grimes" the hills, or when the
northern blast has wrapped them in its winding sheet, one can gaze, and
repeat with heartfelt and perfect sincerity:
"By Yarrow's stream still let me stray,
Though none should guide my feeble way;
Still feel the breeze down Ettrick break,
Although it chill my wither'd cheek."
[Illustration: 0284]
"In {264}the centre it had a large square adorned with a fountain." The
"square" of Selkirk is, in effect, a triangle, (in which now stands
Sir Walter Scott's monument,) but as to the "fountain," I should have
doubts; it was probably what used to be called the "Pant Well," whence
was drawn water (supplied from the {265}Haining Loch) of a body and
bouquet indescribable. "Hoots!" scornfully cried, in later days, an old
woman, apropos of a new and irreproachable supply which had been got for
the town from another source, "Hoots! It has naether taste nor smell!"
Alas! that one should record the fact,--in old days the drainage of the
upper town (what there was of drainage in those times, that is to say),
fell into the Haining Loch not a hundred yards from the spot where
the town's supply was drawn off! And yet people lived in Selkirk to
unusually great ages. Our ancestors were hardy persons; but perhaps it
was only the very fit who then survived.
It must have been a dull, uneventful, depressing life, that of the
prisoners in Selkirk, more especially in those months between October
and March, when darkness comes early and the days are chill and grey.
What news they got was chiefly of fresh disasters to their country's
arms in Spain, and the rejoicing of the townsfolk over Wellington's
victories was of necessity exceedingly bitter to the Frenchmen. It was
execrable taste on the part of the inhabitants of Selkirk thus to show
their joy, says the writer of the Reminiscences--"indelicate," he calls
it. But the chances are that they were chiefly mannerless schoolboys
who thus misbehaved. I fear he looked for more than poor fallen human
nature is prepared to give, if he expected the townspeople entirely to
suppress their pleasure. Many a heart in Selkirk was then following with
dire anxiety the movements of our Army in the Peninsula, dreading the
news that any hour might bring of mishap or death to son, brother,
or friend; every soul the place took the profoundest interest in the
welfare of those men who had gone from their little community "to fecht
the French" and, however desirable it might be that the feelings of
prisoners should not be lacerated, it seems too much to expect that the
townsfolk should go apart in secret places in order to express, without
offence, the joy they must feel when those they loved were covering
themselves with glory. {266}Provided that no one was ill-mannered enough
to jeer at or to taunt the prisoners, I hardly think they had a right
to complain, more especially as they themselves had already sinned in
respect of rejoicing openly over victory. On a certain occasion they
heard of a great French success in Russia. Two prisoners concealed
themselves and were locked up in the church one Sunday after evening
service; about midnight these men admitted their comrades, and together
they roused sleeping Selkirk by a terrific joy-peal of bells. Honours
were easy between the two nations, I think. Both acted under strong
feeling; those were strenuous days, and feeling naturally ran high.
In the writer's possession are letters sent from Spain to Selkirk at
this period by his grand-uncle, an ensign in the Scots Brigade, now
the 94th Regiment. One, which gives a vivid picture of the storming and
capture of Ciudad Rodrigo on 19th January, 1812, could not have failed
to arouse intense enthusiasm in the town. In so small and friendly a
community, no doubt everybody was in possession of the chief details of
this letter, (and of any other that might chance to come from a soldier
at the front,) within a few hours of its receipt, and that a townsman's
regiment should be the first to enter the besieged town would be
legitimate ground for extreme pride. The following is an extract from
the letter: "About 5 in the afternoon orders came that we were to make
the attack at 7 in the Evening, the Light Division at one Breach and
ours at another. Picks and axes were given to the front rank of the
Grenadiers, and to the first Company of our Regt., and also Ropes to
swing us down into the Ditch, which we were to clear of any obstructions
that were supposed would be laid in our way. Accordingly we moved off
about dusk, and got under cover of a Convent, to a short distance from
the Ditch; there we remained till the hour of attack; it being come, and
everything ready, we rushed forward as fast as our legs could carry us,
cheering all the way. On reaching {267}the Ditch, we found it only about
six feet high, so we leaped down as quick as possible and made to the
Breach with all possible speed, and met with no obstacles. After getting
to it, we found ourselves to be the first there; on the front rank
getting to the top of it, the Enemy saluted us with a volley of grape
shot and shells (the latter they had laid across the top in rows) the
explosion of which was so dreadful that I thought we should have been
all blown up in the air together.... Some of the Men that had got up
to the top came tumbling down, dead as herrings. It stunned us for a
moment, but we gave another cheer and rushed on, scrambled to the top
and drove the fellows from the Guns opposite the Breach. Our Regt. was
about five minutes in the Town (and it is only 200 Men strong) before
any other Regt. came to its support; at last the 5th came, and the
others followed. The French dogs kept peppering at us with Musketry and
Hand-grenades at such a rate that I well thought we would all have been
slain together. At last we drove them from the Ramparts into the Town,
and then they threw down their Arms and surrendered. I went down from
the Ramparts into the Town, but such a scene of confusion I never
beheld: there were our troops plundering the houses as fast as they
were able, one fellow to be seen with two or three Loaves stuck on his
Bayonet, another with as much Pork, and in another place a parcel of
fellows knocking out the end of a Wine Cask with their Firelocks and
drinking away with the greatest fury; some ravishing the Women,
others breaking open doors, and into all such a noise, altogether
inconceivable. This continued four or five hours, and our Brigade was
shortly after moved out of the Town, at which I was very glad.... We
had two Captains killed, but immediately on their falling a Sentry
was placed over them, to guard them from being strip't, and had them
afterwards brought to the Camp and decently buried.... The Enemy that
night blew up the Mines, which killed a great many, both of their
{268}own Men and ours. It was a shocking spectacle, the sight of the
dead bodies lying at the place where it happened, all bruised and burnt
quite black, some wanting both Legs, others blown all to pieces, Legs
and Arms mixed together in confusion; it was there where Genl. M'Kinnon
was killed. You were always wishing to hear of our Regt. doing something
great; Now I think it has done a great deal, but I fear much it will not
receive the praise due to it, as it was not intended that it should be
the first that should enter the Breach, it was only meant that it should
clear the way for the other Brigade; but somehow or other we got to it
before them, and of course did not wait their coming."
Except on this occasion of the bell-ringing, and one other, when
the French officers with some difficulty had induced certain of the
townsfolk to drink to the health of the Emperor, and to shout
"_Vive l'Empereur_" friendly relations were unbroken. But the latter
unpleasantness at one time had threatened to ripen into a very ugly
affair. Bloodshed was narrowly averted. Friendship, however, was
restored, and the prisoners continued to make the best of their
situation. They obtained a billiard table from Edinburgh; they started a
café, they opened a theatre, with an excellent orchestra of twenty-five
performers "superior to all those to which the echoes of our Scottish
residence had ever till then resounded." This theatre was established in
a barn which then belonged to the writer's grandfather. Frescoes on the
walls, which had been painted by the prisoners, were still fairly fresh
in colour though hopelessly obscure as to design, when the writer saw
them in his early boyhood.
In connection with the time when Peace was proclaimed and the prisoners
were being sent back to France, it is pleasant to have to record an
incident greatly to the credit of Selkirk. The pockets of the Frenchmen
were naturally, in their situation, not very well filled; indeed,
amongst the hundred and ninety they could raise no more than £60, a
sum not nearly {269}sufficient to provide transport to the sea port
of Berwick for the entire party. They resolved, therefore, to march on
foot, using what money they had to hire carriages for the few among them
who were in bad health. After an excited night (spent by most of the
ex-prisoners in the Market-place, where they shouted and sang till
daylight, like a pack of schoolboys), just as they were preparing to
set out on their long tramp to Berwick, "an altogether unexpected and
pleasant sight met our view," writes M. Doisy. "Vehicles of all kinds
came pouring in by the streets converging on the centre of the town,
carriages, gigs, tilburys, carts, and a few saddle-horses, all of which
had been sent by the inhabitants of the surrounding parts to convey
us free of expense as far as Kelso, about half-way to Berwick.
This delicate attention had been so well calculated, and so neatly
accomplished, that we could not do otherwise than avail ourselves of
it with many thanks. We therefore separated from our Selkirk friends
without carrying away on the one part or the other any particle of
grudge that might previously have existed between us."
Similar good feeling, however, appears to have been very general between
the French prisoners and the people of the many Border towns where the
former were quartered--though it was almost too much to expect that no
unpleasantnesses should ever occur, when we remember how great a bogie
the Emperor Napoleon then was to the majority of British people, and how
to hate the French was looked on as almost a virtue. "Bless us, and save
us, _and keep the French from us_," was a common form of invocation,
then and later. Persons more ignorant or prejudiced than their
neighbours were sure, sooner or later, to overstep the mark, and bring
disgrace on their nation by boorish or brutal conduct to the defenceless
prisoners. Thus, at Jedburgh for instance, not only did schoolboys
sometimes jeer at and stone the Frenchmen, but one bitter old man, who
no doubt thought that in hating the French he was only carrying out
a manifest duty, actually {270}pointed his gun at, and threatened
to shoot, a prisoner whom he found outside the mile limit. A very
regrettable incident occurred, too, in the same town during rejoicings
over a great British victory. An effigy of the Emperor, mounted on
a donkey, was paraded by torchlight through the streets and was then
publicly burned, in full view of the deeply-pained French officers.
Whatever the faults of the Emperor, he was at least adored by his army,
and such instances of brutal ill manners were bound to lead to bad blood
and to reprisals.
Amongst themselves, the prisoners do not seem to have been quarrelsome,
nor were duels common--for which fact, of course, the lack of suitable
weapons may probably have been responsible. There was, however, a duel
at Lauder between two of the prisoners quartered in that town, and one
cannot help thinking that it must have suggested to Stevenson the duel
in "St. Ives," between prisoners in Edinburgh Castle. In Stevenson's
novel, they fought with the separated blades of scissors, securely
lashed to sticks. At Lauder, they used the blades of razors secured in
similar fashion. But, whereas in "St. Ives" the result was the death
of one combatant, in the real duel at Lauder no greater harm came of it
than slashed faces. It might be bloody enough, a duel with razor-blades,
but it could not be very dangerous, except to the tips of noses.
It might perhaps be unseemly to quit the subject of Selkirk without
making at least some mention of a custom which has prevailed there
for something like four centuries. The great day of the whole year in
Selkirk is that of the Common Riding, the Riding of the Marches of
the town's property. The custom as yet gives no sign of waning in
popularity; indeed, as the years pass, it seems to rise steadily in
favour, and where one rode fifty years ago there must now be a good half
dozen who follow the cavalcade. It is a cheerful ride and a beautiful,
in the sweet air of a sunny June morning. Selkirk needs no awakening
that day by the shrill fifes that are so early afoot in the streets;
even the old and the scant of breath {271}rise from their beds betimes,
and make a push to see the muster of riders in the Market Place. Then it
is through the shallows of the gushing river, and away over the breezy
hills, for horsemen all filled with enthusiasm if not in all cases very
secure of seat. It is a pleasant ride,--away over the hill by "Tibbie
Tamson," the lonely grave of a poor eighteenth century Suicide, a
Selkirk woman, the victim of religious despair. Of unpardoned sinners
the chief, as she imagined, in a pious frenzy she took her own life;
therefore must her body be denied Christian burial and the poor
privilege of lying beside her friends in "the auld Kirk yaird." Bundled
into a pauper's coffin, she was carted out of Selkirk under a hail of
stones and of execrations from her righteous neighbours, and here, on
the quiet hill, her body found rest.
Then the route runs across the heather--where whaups wail eerily and
the grouse dash out with sudden whir that sets some horses capering--and
away to the cairn of the Three Brethren, overlooking Tweed and
Fairnilee; then down by the Nettley Burn and across Ettrick where Queen
Mary is said to have forded it, and so home by the Shawburn. to see
the Colours "cast" in the Market Place. And then to breakfast with an
appetite that in ordinary circumstances comes only "when all the world
is young." It is two hundred years and more since it was ordained
that the Marches be ridden on the first Tuesday of June in each
year--formerly, August had been the month--and that the Deacons of all
the Crafts in Selkirk were not only to attend themselves, with their
horses, but that they were to see that every man of their trade who had
a horse should also ride, "all in their best equipage and furniture."
Why the change was made from August to June, I do not know,--unless
it was to permit of the introduction of those immense and very famous
gooseberry-tarts which are so conspicuous a feature in Common Riding
rejoicings. The day's arrangements then and earlier, were much as they
are now, no doubt. But there are {272}no Kers now to slay the Provost,
as in the sixteenth century days of Provost Muthag. The only danger in
these times is that some of the horsemen--unseasoned vessels--may be
induced to swallow one or more of the glasses of raw whisky which are
passed round with liberal hand as the cavalcade sets out from Selkirk.
Whether this is a practice ordained of old with the laudable object of
counteracting any possible risk of chill from the nipping air of the
early morning, or whether it is done in order to inspire courage in the
possible John Gilpins of the assemblage, I know not. Yet of those who
partake, the major part seem to thrive well enough on it; they are none
the worse in the afternoon, when the great body of the townsfolk stream
out southward over the hill to the Gala Rig. Here horse races are run,
over a course most gloriously situated, where a matchless view lies
widespread to the Cheviots and down to far Liddesdale, and away up among
the dim blue hills of Ettrick and Yarrow. There were races held here
at least as early as 1720, and I suppose races of a sort have probably
taken place annually on the same ground ever since.