INNERLEITHEN, TRAQUAIR
|Sweet{319} in truth flows Tweed here, as all will own who leisurely
wend their way--it is too beautiful to justify hurried progress--under
leafy boughs where the sun slants down in fairy pattern on a road
divorced by but a narrow edge of greenest grass from the clear, hurrying
river. Here, at your very hand, you may see countless I! ripples of the
rising trout, that feed beneath the elms of Yair." There over against
you on the far bank of Tweed is Yair itself; and on the hither side,
nestling above a lofty bank among its grand old trees, the beautiful
ruin of Fairnilee, with its hospitable modern mansion hard by. It was
in this line old seventeenth-century Scottish mansion that Alison
Rutherfurd wrote her exquisite version of the "Flowers of the Forest."
In the old ruined house the little room in which she wrote is still
intact, and now is carefully preserved from farther possibility of
decay. But why, one wonders vainly, why was a place so fair ever
abandoned, and allowed so long to crumble away as if it had been a thing
accursed?
"Gin ye wad meet wi' me again,
Gang to the bonny banks o' Fairnilee;"
said the Queen of Faery to True Thomas. And were she here now in the
Border land, to no more enchanting spot could she tryst in the sunny
slope above the river, the giant limbs of {320}mighty trees green with
the leafy crown of June, or flushed with the blood red and orange of
autumn;
[Illustration: 0340]
the ceaseless song of water gushing over the cauld and dashing among the
boulders below; the wide expanse that carries the eye through the
waving boughs over the gleaming belt of water, and away far up the hill
purpling with the bloom of heather,--or late in the season, "grymed"
with the new fallen snow,--up and over to the broad summit of the Three
Brethren Cairn. In very truth it is itself a fairyland, and, standing
here, to the mind comes, {321}
[Illustration: 0341]
{322}irresistibly, thought of the hidden Gold of Fairnilee that in
boyhood one sought for so diligently.
[0342]
Then, higher up the river a mile or thereby, at the foot of Neidpath
Hill, the long deep, swift hurrying stream in which, when autumn floods
have done their work, there is not a yard where a lordly salmon may not
be hooked. And higher still, there is Caddonfoot, and Clovenfords, in
whose little inn Sir Walter used to stay before he lived at Ashiesteel;
and the Nest, snug quarters of a famous Edinburgh Fishing Club, among
whose members in old days was included the name of many an eminent Scot.
Then opposite the Nest, across the river, Ashiesteel, which, almost more
eloquently than even Abbotsford itself, speaks of Sir Walter. Here were
spent the seven happiest years of his life; here he wrote the "Lay of
the Last Minstrel," "Marnuon," and "The Lady of the Lake"; here came
into his service those most faithful of followers, Mathieson (his
coachman) and Tom Purdie, the latter, before the good fortune that
brought him to the notice of "the Shirra," a most accomplished poacher
of {323}salmon. Who has not read, and smiled over, the tales that Scrope
tells of him in his "Days and Nights of Salmon Fishing in Tweed?"
Purdie's eccentricities were many, his tongue free and outspoken to an
extent that one would suppose might at times have ruffled the temper
even of a man so tolerant and sweet-tempered as Scott. Yet the
attachment that sprang up between the three, Sir Walter, Mathieson,
and Purdie, was of the deepest and most abiding, ending only with their
lives. All men--all living things, one might say--loved Scott; these
two adored him, and their master's affection for them, and his trust in
them, were profound. Mathieson outlived the others; Purdie was the first
to go. The end was very sudden, and the blow affected Sir Walter as if
the death had been that of a near and dear relative. A niece of Mungo
Park used to tell afterwards of Sir Walter's visit to the widow, as
related by Mrs. Purdie herself. There came a tap at the door, she said,
and he came silently in, sitting down without a word in the chair that
Mrs. Purdie handed to him. And, "he juist grat, an' better grat, the
tears rinnin' doon his cheeks." At last the poor woman said brokenly;
"Ye mauna tak' on that way, Sir Walter. Ye mauna tak' on. Ye'll maybes
get some other body juist as guid as Tam."
"_No_, my dear old friend," he said, at length mastering his emotion.
"No. There can never be but one Tom Purdie."
In truth no one could, and no one ever did, replace him. A very few
years, and Mathieson drove his master for the last time, that memorable
drive in September, 1832, when the horses of their own accord stopped at
his favourite view above Bemersyde; that September when the whole world
mourned for him who was gone, who yet lives for ever, not alone in
Border hearts, but in the affection of all humanity.
In Sir Walter's day, no bridge spanned the river at Ashiesteel, and the
ford was not always a safe one; Sir Walter and his horse on at least one
occasion, when the water was heavy, had to swim when crossing. But "the
Shirra" was always the most reckless of riders, and would plunge in
where none dared follow. "The deil's in ye, Shirra," said Mungo Park's
brother to him--not on one occasion only--"the deil's in ye. Ye'll never
halt till they bring ye hame with your feet foremost." It was at this
Ashiesteel ford that Leyden, when Sir Walter's guest, came to grief. He
and "the Shirra," and Mr. Laidlaw of Peel were riding one day. Leyden
was talking, as one having authority, of the paces and good manners of
Arab horses, and telling tales of the marvellous skill with which their
owners managed them. "Here," said he, gathering up his reins, "is one
of their feats"----; but just at that moment the pony on which he rode
(_not_ a docile Arab steed) took it into its head to bolt down the steep
bank into Tweed, and Leyden disappeared over its head into the stream.
"Ay, ay, Dr. Leyden, is _that_ the way the Arabs ride?" said Laidlaw
{325}gravely, when the rider reappeared, dripping like a river-god.
[Illustration: 0345]
Up the Glenkinnon Burn from Ashiesteel, at Williamhope Ridge, is the
spot where Scott said his last farewell to Mungo Park. At the open drain
which then separated moor from road, Park's horse stumbled badly. "A bad
omen, Mungo, I'm afraid," said Sir Walter. "Freits (omens) follow them
that fear them," cried Park, gaily, setting off at a brisk canter.
[Illustration: 0346]
"I stood and looked after him; but he never looked back," Scott used to
tell, afterwards. And they met no more. Ere very many months had passed,
Park lay dead, somewhere by that great African river with whose name
his own will be for ever linked. But Williamhope has older memories than
this; "William's Cross" was the name given to a great stone on the hill
here, which marked the spot where the Knight of Liddes-dale fell,
slain by his kinsman's sword one August day in 1353. {327}Quilting the
neighbourhood of Ashiesteel, the road, in close company now with the
railway from Galashiels to Peebles, still winds up the beautiful banks
of Tweed, past Thornilee and Holylee, past boulder-strewn reaches and
pleasant streams where big trout lie,--"a chancier bit ye canna hae,"
I think Stoddart says,--on past where, high on the farther side,
overhanging the river, stand the crumbling ruins of Elibank Castle. This
was a stronghold built--or possibly only enlarged--in 1595 by Sir Gideon
Murray, father of Muckle Mouthed Meg, heroine of the story which tells
how young Scott of Harden, caught reiving the Murrays' cattle, was given
his choice between matrimony and the rope and "dule-tree." Harden, it
is said, at first chose the latter, but at the last moment, as a mate
scarcely to be preferred to death, took the lady. There was probably a
good deal of bravado and "bluff" about Harden's wavering--if indeed
the story is a true one. But in any case it was a wedding in which
the proverb: "Happy the Wooing that's not long adoing," was well
exemplified. All went well with bride and with reluctant bridegroom;
they "lived happy ever after," as in the most orthodox fairy tale. And
of their descendants, one was our own Sir Walter.
And now we come to Walkerbum and Innerleithen, manufacturing townships.
The latter, with its famed medicinal well, has been identified, or
identifies itself, with St. Ronan's of the Waverley Novels. It is
prettily situated on the Leithen, by wide spreading haughs, and the
surroundings, like all in Tweedale, cannot fail to attract. But what may
be said of Innerleithen, on top of that terrible Report issued in 1906
by H. M. Stationery Office? It will take some living down, if all that
was then said by the Tweed Pollution Commission is without exaggeration,
and if--as one is informed--nothing has yet been done to sweep away, or
at least greatly to improve, the conditions revealed. Here is what the
Report says of the river Leithen, a stream in former days called by Sir
Thomas Dick Lauder "a fine trouting river."
"Occasionally, in time of
{328}
[Illustration: 0348]
{329}heavy rainfall, severe floods occur on the Leithen; when these
occur, a large amount of water flows down the bed of the stream, which
is usually dry, carrying with it all the rubbish and filth to the Tweed.
[Illustration: 0349]
The mills are supplied with water from the mill-lade, and one of them
obtains water from the Tweed when necessary. The people of the town are
entirely engaged in the woollen industry; wool scouring, weaving, and
dyeing are all carried on here. The town is sewered. All the sewage is
collected in an outfall sewer, which discharges into the mill-lade below
the lowermost mill, and about three hundred yards from the Tweed; there
is no attempt at purification of {330}the sewage. The liquid refuse from
the mills is discharged into the lade. The water of the lade where it
discharges to the Tweed is very foul with sewage and dye water... Below
the point at which the lade discharges to the Tweed the water of this
river is greatly fouled, the bottom of the river is covered with
sewage deposit and the stones coated with sewage fungus. The river here
contains also a large amount of refuse of all kinds, such as pots and
pans, old linoleum, old iron-work, and such like. Although there is a
daily collection of rubbish in the town, a great deal of large sized
rubbish is thrown into the bed of the Lei then, and the tip to which
all refuse is taken, together with offal from the slaughter houses, is
situate just where the Lei then falls into the Tweed. In times of flood
the water of the Leithen excavates this refuse tip, and carries the
refuse into the Tweed. Some of the mill-owners here have tanks for
settling the spent liquids after dyeing, and in this way some of the
solid refuse is retained, but the coloured liquid is allowed to enter
the river. One is thankful for small mercies; "_some_ of the solid
refuse is retained." But the "offal from the slaughter houses," and the
"tip" to which all refuse is taken! And the sewage which there is "no
attempt to purify"! What grizzly nightmare could be more grizzly than
this?
However, we get soon now above the range of pollution by mill or town.
Peebles only remains; thereafter we have really a river as it used in
its entirety to be, and, above Peebles, as it may still be called, "the
silver Tweed." Before reaching Peebles, however, there is, over against
Innerleithen, on the angle between Quair Burn and Tweed, Traquair House
to notice; and, nearer to Peebles, on its green knoll the old riven
tower of Horsburgh, ancient seat of an ancient family.
Of old, Traquair was a royal residence. In the twelfth century. William
the Lion hunted from its tower; and other of the Scottish monarchs
visited it in later days, the last, I suppose, being Mary and Darnley
in August, 1566. The original tower, {331}or some part of it, I believe
stands now in the north-east corner of the building, but the house has,
of course, been greatly added to at different periods, mostly, however,
during the reign of Charles I.
[Illustration: 0351]
It is a very fine specimen of the old Scottish château, with walls of
immense thickness. Probably it is the oldest inhabited mansion house
in Scotland; a place full of interest. And not least interesting, the
picturesque old gates at the end of the avenue, that have remained so
long unopened. The tale used to run that they had been closed after
the '45, by an Earl loyal to the Stuart cause, who swore that they should
never be opened till the rightful king came back to his own again. As
a matter of fact, however, the misfortunes of Prince Charlie and his
family had nothing to do with it. The gates were not closed till 1796,
when the seventh Earl of Traquair, after the death of his countess,
declared that they should remain shut till they opened to admit one
worthy to take the dead lady's place. That, at least, is the story.
The Earl who lived in the latter part of the seventeenth century
belonged to the Church of Rome. "A quiet, inoffensive {332}man," he is
said to have been.
[Illustration: 0352]
But that in no way protected him from the unwelcome attentions of those
zealous Presbyterians who at that time "thought it someway belonged
to us' to go to all the popish houses and destroy their monuments of
idolatry, with their priests' robes, and put in prison the {333}priests
themselves."
[Illustration: 0353]
So a pious mob set out from Edinburgh one grim December day in 1688, and
trudged through the snow to Traquair House. Earl and priest, having got
word of their coming, had fled before the arrival of this gentle band
of Reformers, and though they ransacked all Traquair for "Romish wares,"
they did not find all they expected. Much had been hidden away. The
vestments of the priest this, that, and the other popish emblem could
not be found. However, they did get a good deal--an altar, a large
brazen crucifix, and several small crucifixes, "a large brodd opening
with two leaves, covered within with cloth ot gold of Arras work, having
a veil covering the middle part, wherin were sewed several superstitious
pictures," a eucharist cup of silver, boxes of relics, "wherin were
lying, amongst silk-cotton, several {334}pieces of bone, tied with a red
thread, Having written on them the Saint they belonged to," "a harden
bag, near full of beads," "Mary and the Babe in a case most curiously
wrought in a kind of pearl," a hundred and thirty books--silver-clasped
many of them. No doubt the books, Popish or otherwise, excited to frenzy
those pious but illiterate persons, almost as effectually as "the pot of
holy oil," and the "twelve dozen of wax candles" that they seized.
Not content with all this, however, a detachment of the mob invaded the
house of a neighbouring clergyman "who had the name of a Presbyterian
minister." The orders given by their ringleaders were that this house
should be narrowly searched, but that they themselves were to "behave
discreetly," advice the latter part of which one might give with
equal propriety and effect to the proverbial bull in a china shop.
The Reverend Thomas Louis and his wife apparently did not treat the
inquisitors with the kindness and consideration to which they thought
themselves entitled; they "mocked them," it is complained; and indeed
the minister and his wife carried their resentment so far as to offer
them "neither food nor drink, though"--it is naively added--"they had
much need of it." Undaunted, however, by this shabby conduct on the part
of the reverend gentleman, the mob hunted about till they came on two
locked trunks, which they demanded should at once be opened. This modest
request not being complied with, they "broke up" the trunks--to
"behave discreetly," is no doubt when desired, capable of liberal
interpretation--and therein "they found a golden cradle, with Mary and
the Babe in her bosom; in the other trunk, the priest's robes." So they
made a pile of the articles found here and in Traquair House, carried
them a distance of seven miles to Peebles, and had them "all solemnly
burned at the cross." Such were the enlightened methods of our
seventeenth century progenitors. But, one sometimes wonders, is the
toleration of the mob now-a-days {353}greatly in advance of what was in
1688? However, they did not also "solemnly burn" Traquair House, though
it _was_ a "nest o'paipery."
[Illustration: 0355]
But the last Countess of Traquair has gone through the old gates; and
her son, the eighth Earl, was the last of his line. He died, unmarried,
in 1861; and the last of her race, the venerable Lady Louisa Stuart,
died in 1875, in her hundredth year. Yet still, a pathetic link with
days long dead, the old house stands brooding over the past; and still
there sounds the music of the waters, and the sough of the wind in the
trees of "the bush aboon Traquair." And perhaps he who has
"... heard the cushies croon
Thro' the gowden afternoon,
And the Quair burn singing down to the vale o' Tweed,"
may come away steeped in sadness, yet it is a sadness without sting, not
wholly unpleasing.