|Writing{336} of Peebles in the year 1847 or 1848, Sir Thomas Dick
Lauder speaks of "the singular air of decayed royalty that hangs over
it, and which so strangely blends with its perfect simplicity and
rurality."
[Illustration: 0356]
More than any other of the Scottish border towns, Peebles has a right
to talk of "royalty." A royal poet has sung of her Beltane Feast
the evidence is at least as much for, as against, acceptance of the
time-honoured {337}belief that King James I was author of "Peblis to the
Play." Professor Veitch strongly favours that conclusion. And unbroken
tradition points to the King as the author.
From earliest times the town was a favourite residence of the Scottish
monarchs, and to this day its place-names, such as King's Meadows,
King's House, King's Orchards, for example, suggest royal traditions.
The Burgh Records of Peebles, go back very far--to October 1456, in the
reign of James II. It is a town of much interest and of much beauty,
beautiful especially as regards its situation and surroundings, and
there are still in it many remains that speak eloquently of the past.
There is the old five-arched stone bridge, dating from about 1467,
altered, of course, and widened since that date, but still the same
old bridge. Until the erection of the bridge at Berwick early in the
seventeenth century, I suppose that this was the only one spinning Tweed
in all its course. Then there Is the ancient Cross of Peebles, which,
after various vicissitudes and excursions, at length stands once more on
the spot where it was originally placed. It is said by the writer of the
Statistical Account of the Parish to have been "erected by one of the
Frasers of Neidpath Castle, before the time of Robert the Bruce, and
bears the arms of the Frasers."
There are still to be seen within the burgh the ruins of the Cross
Church, and of the Church of St. Andrew. The former got its name from
the fact that in May, 1261, "a magnificent and venerable cross was found
at Peblis," which was supposed to have been buried close on a thousand
years before that date. Shortly after the unearthing of this cross,
there was found near the same spot a stone urn, containing ashes and
human bones, and on a stone the words carved: "The place of St. Nicholas
the Bishop." On account of the miracles which were reputed to have been
wrought where the cross was discovered, Alexander III caused a church to
be erected on the spot, "in honour of God, and of the Holy Rood." This
Cross Church in some unexplained way escaped practically unscathed
during {338}the English invasion of 1548-49, and from 1560 till 1784 it
served as the Parish Church--deprived, no doubt, of many an interesting
relic of the past. At the last-named date, our zealous forefathers,
_more majorum_, pulled it down--all but a fragment--in order, out of the
material so obtained, to build a new Parish Church. (They had in those
times a perfect genius for wrecking the beautiful and interesting, and
for erecting the ugly and the dull.)
The other old church, that of St. Andrew, was founded about the year
1195. It, however, unlike its neighbour, suffered badly at the hands of
the English in 1548, after which it gradually fell into ruin, and
met the fate that was wont to wait on most of our venerable Scottish
buildings. The tower alone remained, impervious to wind and weather,
defiant of man's destroying hand. Thirty years ago, it was restored by
the late Dr. William Chambers,--"more honour to him had he been less
successful in concealing the old work," says Sir Herbert Maxwell, in
his "Story of the Tweed." It was in the Church of St. Andrew, tradition
says, that Cromwell's troopers stabled their horses in 1650 when siege
was being laid to Neidpath Castle.
Peebles at one time was a walled town, and I believe that some fragments
of fortification remain. But the names: "Northgate," "Eastgate,"
"Portbrae," still recall former days. There was a castle also, a
royal residence; but though it yet stood in the end of the seventeenth
century, or even a little later, there is now not a vestige of it to
be found. Again, no doubt, the ruthless hand of our not very remote
ancestors!
An interesting and very ancient custom continues to be observed in the
town. Annually, on the second day of May, there is chosen from among the
youthful beauties of Peebles one who is styled the "Beltane Queen"; and
Beltane Sports and Festivities are held. Chambers says: "The festivities
of Beltane originated in the ceremonial observances of the original
British people, who lighted fires on the tops of hills and other
{339}places in honour of their deity Baal; hence Beltane or Beltien,
signifying the fire of Baal. The superstitious usage disappeared... but
certain festive customs on the occasion were confirmed and amplified,
and the rural sports of Beltane at Peebles, including archery and
horse-racing... drew crowds not only from the immediate neighbourhood,
but from Edinburgh and other places at a distance."
"Peblis to the Play" is a description of the Festival as it was held in
the day of the author; "a picture of rustic life and festivities, of
the humorous and grotesque incidents of a mediaeval Feast Day in an
old provincial town, the centre of a rural district," says Professor
Veitch.
"At Beltane, when ilk bodie bownis 1
To Peblis to the Play,
To heir the singin and the soundis,
The solace, suth to say;
Be firth 2 and forest furth they found, 3
They graythit 4 them full gay;
God wot, that wald they do, that stound,5
For it was their Feist Day,
They said,
Of Peblis to the Play."
Space does not permit me to quote more than the opening verse.
1 Makes ready to go.
2 Enclosed wood, or place.
3 Issue, or go forth.
4 Dressed.
5 Time: German stunde.
Before moving on up the valley, one may recall the fact that at the Old
Cross Keys Inn at Peebles Sir Walter found, in its then landlady,
the original of his "Meg Dods" of "St. Ronan's Well." Guests arriving
now-a-days at this Inn--which is as often called "the Cleikum" as the
Cross Keys--still drive into the yard under the "old-fashioned archway"
of the novel; still there is shown "Sir Walter's room," overlooking the
yard; and still, it may perhaps be noted, there is to be found at the
head of affairs one who, while leaving out Meg's "detestable
{340}bad humour" and asperity of tongue, in all essentials is worthy to
rank as her successor. "Her kitchen was her pride and glory; she looked
to the dressing of every dish herself, and there were some with which
she suffered no one to interfere.... Meg's table-linen, bed-linen, and
so forth, were always home-made, of the best quality, and in the best
order; and a weary day was that to the chambermaid in which her lynx eye
discovered any neglect of the strict cleanliness which she constantly
enforced." The most fervent patriotism cannot, I fear, blind one to the
sad fact that a majority of Scottish country inns do not strive very
successfully to vie with Meg in those qualities which made her so
shining an ornament of her sex. Too often one is left to the greasy
attentions of a waiter of foreign tongue, whose mercies it might be
desired were more tender than the scrag-end of the cold beef to
which, in a parlour of the lethal-chamber variety, he somewhat tardily
introduces tired wayfarers. And the beef itself might in many cases
taste none the less of beef, if it were served on table-linen not quite
so elaborately decorated with outlines of mustard pots and Worcester
Sauce bottles, left by the day-beforeyesterday's commercial traveller.
This Cleikum, or Cross Keys Inn, is a building of more than respectable
age; it dates from the year 1653, when it was the town house of the
Williamsons of Cardrona, a tower a few miles down Tweed, nearly opposite
to Horsburgh. Probably both the Cross Keys and its neighbour the
Tontine Hotel--. Meg's "Tomteen," the "hottle" of which she spoke so
wrathfully--were in Sir Walter's mind when he wrote the novel.
And now we may set out once again up Tweed--not forgetting, however,
that Peebles with its mills also contributes no small share to the
pollution of that much-injured river. A mile or so out of the town,
there is the old castle of Neidpath, in very remote days a stronghold of
the Frasers of Fruid and Oliver Castle, in Tweedsmuir. A Hay of Yester,
ancestor of {341}Lord Tweeddale, succeeded the Frasers in 1312, by
marriage with the daughter of Sir Simon Fraser;
[Illustration: 0361]
and after the Hays, by purchase came the Queensberry family, of
whom, the fourth Duke, "Old Q.," Wordsworth's "Degenerate Douglas,"
{342}"unworthy lord," did his best to wreck the estate in 1795. What
he could spoil and disfigure, he did spoil and disfigure. And here at
Neidpath he swept off the face of nature every stick of timber, old and
young, that could be felled or destroyed, leaving, as far as lay in his
power, the landscape bare almost as it was when primeval chaos ended.
Replanting could not be set about as long as "Old Q." lived, and a
hundred years scarce repaired the damage he did. It is curious to note
how one who in all respects during his life was so very far removed from
grace, at the end wished to lie (where I believe his body does lie),
under the Communion Table of St. James's Church, Piccadilly--in his
estimation perhaps a sort of side-gate or private entrance to Heaven.
The path is steep and the way thorny to most of us. And how fares "Old
Q."? I hardly think that the inhabitants of Peebles, had they been Roman
Catholics at the time of his death, would have paid for Masses for the
soul of the dead "Old Q.," as they did lang syne for the soul of the
dead King James the First.
Neidpath Castle is said by old Dr. Pennecuick to have been in reality
the stronghold which was anciently called the Castle of Peebles.
But there are allusions to the "Castel of Peebles" in the Earl of
Tweeddale's Rental book for 1685, and Neidpath was Neidpath centuries
before that date. On this subject, Professor Veitch, writing about 1877,
says: "The Castle of Peebles was standing and inhabited in the early
part of last century. It was afterwards pulled down, and the materials
converted, according to the morality and taste of the time, into one of
the least architecturally attractive palish edifices in Christendom." As
to Neidpath's age, there is no sure record, but as it was a seat of
that Sir Simon Fraser who defeated the English three times in one day at
Roslin Muir in 1303, its antiquity must be very great. And what a place
of immense strength it must originally have been, before the days
of artillery. Its walls are ten feet thick, put together with that
{343}ancient form of cement which, when dry, became hard as the stones
it bound together; and it stands on a high rock overhanging an elbow
of Tweed where the water is deep, and was therefore on the river face
unassailable.
[Illustration: 0363]
But the day of artillery came too soon for Neidpath. It fell before
the guns of Cromwell in 1650. after a most gallant resistance under the
young Lord Yester,--father, I suppose, of the Lord Yester who wrote the
fine old ballad "Tweedside."
Like every other part of the Yale of Tweed, here also it is beautiful.
Looking back towards Peebles from above Neidpath the view is very fine,
though perhaps an eyesore may be found in the unwholesome speckled
appearance given to the castle by the way in which the "facing" of its
walls has been done.
Little more than a mile from here, Tweed is joined by Manor Water, a
stream now probably best known as that beside which stands the cottage
of "Bowed Davie," the original of Scott's "Black Dwarf" of Mucklestane
Muir. Sir Walter was staying at Hallyards, on Manor Water, in 1797, with
his friend Adam Ferguson, and it was on that occasion that he first saw
{344}David Ritchie, a poor mis-shapen dwarf, embittered by the derision
which his extraordinary personal appearance everywhere brought on him,
and who had retired to this unfrequented valley, where he built himself
a cottage of dimensions in keeping with his own stature.
[Illustration: 0364]
The cottage still stands, "where from his bole the awsome form peer'd
grim on passer-bye," but at least the exterior has been modernised, and
an addition has been made; his garden wall, with its ponderous stones,
is much as Bowed Davie left it. The "Black Dwarf" was not written till
a good many years after Ritchie's death. His grave is in Manor Kirkyard,
not, as he himself originally meant it to be, in a secluded spot of his
own choice, surrounded by the rowan-trees that it comforted him to think
could be relied on to keep witches, and evil spirits generally, at a
respectable distance. Poor Davie! There were worse things than witches
to be taken {345}into account. It is said--Dr. John Brown mentions
it--that his body proved a temptation too great to be resisted by
resurrectionists. They dug him up, and carried the poor "thrawn" frame
to where it could be sold. Perhaps in death he still excites that
derision or pity which in life so angered him; his bones may now lie in
some city anatomical museum.
Within the Vestry of Manor Parish Kirk, there is, accord ing to the
Ordnance Gazetteer of Scotland edited by Mr. F. H. Groome, "a table
made of oak that had been used for church building not later than
the thirteenth century; and a bell in the belfry bears the Latin
inscription: 'In honore Sanct. Gordiani MCCCCLXXVIII.'" And far up the
vale, near Kirkhope, is the site of this St. Gordian's Kirk, "marked by
a granite runic cross, with the old font stone at its base."
Manor Valley in days of old must have been a "mischancey" spot for any
stranger whose intentions were, so to speak, not "strictly honourable."
There were, in and about it, not fewer than nine or ten peel towers, two
at least of which--Barns and Castlehill--belonged to the Burnets, than
whom none bore higher reputation as reivers and men of action. In 1591
no Borderer was more renowned for his exploits and for his conduct of
midnight forays, than William Burnet, the "Hoolet of Barns." His tower,
Barns, is rather nearer Tweed than Manor, but it is included in the
strongholds of Manor Valley. It is still in excellent preservation, but
the roof is modern, and the upper part of the tower has been greatly
altered from what it was originally. The accommodation in such towers
must have been something of the most cramped; in this instance the
outside dimensions of the tower (three stories) are only twenty-eight
by twenty feet. On the lintel of the door is the date 1498, but there
appears to be some uncertainty as to whether the figures were not added
at a later time. Castlehill, now a ruin, "hollow-eyed, owl-haunted," was
somewhat larger and stronger than Barns. Higher up the valley is Posso,
now mere fragments of walls. It was of old a {346}seat of the Bairds,
who were succeeded in the sixteenth century by the Naesmiths.
[Illustration: 0366]
At Posso Craigs was the eyry whence Henry Ashton in the "Bride of
Lammermuir" got his hawks. And here under the craigs is the Ship Stone.
The whole valley teems with objects of antiquarian interest--the tumulus
called the Giants' Grave, up Glenrath Burn; the "cup-marked fallen
monolith," that was once an old woman whom the devil turned into stone;
the old Thiefs Road, trodden of old by many a mob of "lifted" cattle;
numerous hill forts. And from the bosom of the wild hills springs Manor;
a tiny rivulet from Dollar Law--(is "Dollar" a corruption of "Dolour,"
the Hill of Sorrow?)--from Notman Law another; infantile rills from
Shielhope Head, Black Law, Blackhouse Heights, grim round-shouldered
hills that rise all of them to a greater altitude than two thousand
feet. And everywhere is the music of running water.
"In its far glen, Manor outspreads its arms
To all the hills, and gathers to itself
The burnies breaking from high mossy springs,
And white streaks that fall through cleavings of the crags
From lonely lochans where the curlews cry."
{347}Cademuir, by the way, the hill on Manor's right at its junction
with Tweed, is the supposed scene of Arthur's seventh battle against the
Pagans. _Cad_ is Welsh for battle,--Gaelic, _cata_, hence _Cad-more_,
the "great battle." Professor Veitch hesitates between this site and
that of the neighbouring pre-historic hill fort, the Lour, near Dawyck,
but thinks the former the more probable. Just below the height of the
Lour, till the beginning of the nineteenth century there stood, he says,
an almost perfect _cromlech_, consisting of "two or more upright stones,
and one flat stone laid across as a roof, all of remarkable size." This
_cromlech_ was known in the district as Arthur's Oven. It is humiliating
to have to confess that it, the neighbouring old peel tower of Easter
Dawyck, the Tower of Posso, and the ancient Kirk of St. Gordian, were
all made into road metal, or used as material for building walls or farm
buildings, by Sir Walter Scott's father, of all people in the world. One
may wonder what were Sir Walter's thoughts when he came to know.
A little way up from Manor Valley, and joining Tweed from the
northern side, is Lyne Water. It is not possible to pursue all Tweed's
tributaries to their source, however full of interest each may be, for
their name is legion. But Lyne cannot be passed without note being taken
of its little--very little--early seventeenth century Parish Church. And
adjoining it are remains of a great Roman camp--Randall's Wa's, i: has
been called locally from times long past. Perhaps it was here--at least
it was on Lyne Water--that Sir James Douglas captured Randolph before
the time came when the latter finally cast in his lot with the Bruce.
Farther up, on an eminence at the junction of Lyne and Tartli Waters,
stands the massive ivy-clad ruin of Drochil Castle. Built by the Regent
Morton in the sixteenth century, Drochil was never completed, and never
occupied. Just before the building approached completion, Morton, judged
guilty of complicity in the murder of Darnley, was executed, beheaded by
"the Maiden"--a sort of Scottish {348}guillotine--on 2nd June, 1581;
and the home of a Regent of Scotland, "designed more for a palace than a
castle of defence," is now a rum, of use only as a shelter for cattle!
[Illustration: 0368]
Happrew, on Lyne, is the scene of the defeat "wrought by the lords
William de Lalymer, John de Segrave, and Robert de Clifford, upon
Simone Fraser and William le Walleys at Hopperowe," in 1304. And on the
elevated heathy flat below which Tweed and Lyne meet, there is what is
called the Sheriff's Muir, of old a mustering place for Scottish forces
during the wars with England.
And now, as we run up Tweed's left bank, we have on the one side Stobo,
with its ancient church--of which mention has been made earlier in this
volume--and its fine woods; on the other bank, Dawyck, and the castles
of Tinnies and Drummelzier. From the thirteenth well on into the
seventeenth century, Dawyck was the home of a distinguished Tweedside
family, the Veitches, once the Le Vaches, of Gascony, of whom one,
William le Vache, signed the Ragman Roll at the Castle of Peebles in
1296. At the same time that {349}the Veitches held Dawyck, Drummelzier
was the headquarters of another powerful Border family, the Tweedys; and
for the delicate questions involved in the origin of this family's name,
readers may consult Sir Walter's introduction to "The Betrothed." Of
necessity, as things went in those days, these two families quarrelled,
and from the quarrel emerged a feud long and bloody, in which, ere it
ended, half the countryside was involved. Wherever a Veitch and a Tweedy
met, they fought, and fought to kill. On the haughs of the river one
summer's day, young Veitch and young Tweedy, each, perhaps, looking for
trouble, came together face to face. The grey of next morning saw of the
latter but
"A face upturned to the breaking dawn,
Dead by the Tweed, but honour sav'd."
He lay beside the quiet water, and over him, it is said, like a snowy
pall drooped the clustering May-blossom.
"His mother sought him on the haugh,
She found him near the white flower'd thorn;
The grass red wet; the heedless birds
Pip'd sweet strains to the early morn."
In 1590, the head of the Veitches, "the Deil o' Dawyck," an immensely
powerful man, had for his ally William Burnet, "the Hoolet o' Barns," a
man equally powerful. These two daunted the Tweedy of that day; the
feud for a space lay-dormant. But, most unhappily for the Veitches, it
chanced that "the Deil's" son rode into Peebles alone one morning. And
that was the end of young Veitch. For nine Tweedys, in two parties,
trapped him near Neidpath, came on him in front and from the rear as he
rode towards home; and it was no fight, but bloody murder that reddened
the grass that day. Four days later, two Veitches met John Tweedy, Tutor
of Drummelzier, in the High Street of Edinburgh, and young Veitch's
bloody death was avenged; "a tooth for a tooth," no matter how many were
concerned in its drawing. And so it {350}went on _ad nauseam_, a Veitch
killing a Tweedy, a Tweedy a Veitch. The feud was alive even as late as
1611; and for anything that I know to the contrary, it endured as long
as the two families were there to neighbour each other on Tweedside.
Of Drummelzier Castle only an angle of the tower and a portion of the
main building now stand. It was here that there dwelt that arrogant
bully, Sir James Tweedy, who of old was wont to exact homage from every
passing traveller; and the traveller who omitted to, so to speak, "lower
his tops'ls" as he passed the castle, had cause to rue the day the fates
took him that way. It was a pretty enough game from Tweedy's point of
view. But, as the saying is, one day he "bit off more than he could
chew." A stranger, attended by a very small retinue, passed up
the valley without taking the smallest notice of the castle or its
formidable owner. Foaming with rage, spluttering dire threats, Tweedy
and his men went thundering in pursuit; truly, the back of that stranger
should smart to some tune. But, just as you may see the birses and
tail of a vicious, snarling cur drop when he finds he has inadvertently
rushed out against a bigger dog than himself, so here, Tweedy's mood
changed with astonishing celerity when he jumped from his horse beside
the man he had been cursing and bawling at to stop, and found that the
fugitive he was vowing to flog was his king, James V.
Tinnies Castle was also a holding of the Tweedys, possibly before
the building of Drummelzier. This castle is believed to date from the
thirteenth century, or perhaps earlier, and it seems to have been
a place of considerable size and of great strength. "In no part of
Scotland was there any feudal keep so like a robber's castle on the
Rhine, as that of Tinnis," says Chambers. The building was destroyed
under royal warrant in 1592, at the time when the King issued orders to
raze Dry hope and Harden. The position of Tinnies is immensely
strong. Perched on a lofty eminence, three of whose sides are almost
perpendicular and the fourth a long steep slope, the {351}castle in its
day must have been almost unassailable. Any approach to the walls could
only be made in force by a narrow winding pathway, within shot of, and
fully exposed to, the castle bowmen, and the building itself, as may
even yet be noted, was of a solidity truly formidable. Immense portions
of the walls and flanking towers, yet bound by the old imperishable
cement, still lie where they were bodily hurled by the exploding
gunpowder when James VI's orders were carried out.
Of Dawyck and its magnificent woods one must not forget to take note.
Here in 1725 were planted the first larches introduced into Scotland,
anticipating it is said, by a few years those planted at Dunkeld. And
while on the subject of natural history, one may perhaps quote that most
notable fact regarding Dawyck which Dr. Pennecuick, writing in the early
eighteenth century, vouches for in his "Shire of Tweeddale."
"Here," says he, "in an old Orch-yard did the Herons in my time build
their Nests upon some old Pear-trees, whereupon in the Harvest time are
to be seen much Fruit growing, and Trouts and Iles crauling down the
Body of these Trees. These fish the Herons take out of the River of
Tweed to their Nests, and as they go in at the Mouth, so they are seen
squirt out again at the Draught. And this is the remarkable Riddle they
so much talk of, to have Flesh, Fish, and Fruit at the same time upon
one tree." There is still a heronry at Dawyck, but not, I think, in an
"Orch-yard."
In the neighbourhood of Drummelzier there is a spot that takes us back
in thought to those dim, far off days when the world was in its infancy.
Near to where Powsayl Burn, the "burn of the willows," joins Tweed, you
may see the grave of Merlin the Seer, the Wizard Merlin. Fleeing from
the field of Arderydd (Arthuret, near Carlisle), after the terrible
defeat of the Pagans by the Christians in 573, Merlin found refuge among
the hills of Upper Tweed, and there lived for many years, half-crazed,
a homeless wanderer. Finally, the fear {352}raised by his supposed
possession of supernatural powers, and the dread of his enchantments,
caused a mob of ignorant country-folk to club and stone him to death,
and he was buried where he fell, by the Powsayl burn. In a poem still
extant, Merlin tells how he wandered long in the wild wood of Caledon.
"Sweet apple tree, growing by the river!
Whereof the keeper shall not thrive on its fruit;
Before I lost my wits I used to be around its stem
With a fair sportive maid, matchless in slender shape.
Ten years and forty, the sport of the lawless ones,
Have I been wandering in gloom among sprites,
After wealth in abundance and entertaining minstrels.
After suffering from disease and despair in the forest of Caledon."
The place of the "apple tree" was Tal Ard--Talla of to-day; and
somewhere between Drummelzier and Talla, Merlin and St. Kentigern
foregathered for a time. High up on the mighty shoulder of broad law,
too, there is a spring that gushes out from the hillside clear and cool,
that may be the fountain--_fons in summo vertice montis_--beside which
Geoffrey of Monmouth in 1150 tells that Merlin was wont to rest. And the
"fair sportive maid"--that is Nimiane, Tennyson's "Vivien." A Romance
of the fifteenth century tells how "Thei sojourned together longe time,
till it fell on a day that thei went thourgh the foreste hande in hande
devysing and disportynge, and this was in the foreste of Brochelonde,
and fonde a bussh that was feire and high of white hawthorne, full of
floures, and ther thei sat in the shadowe; and Merlin leide hys heed in
the damesels lappe, and she began to taste softly till he fill on slepe;
and when she felt that he was on slepe she aroos softly, and made a
cerne (circle) with hys wymple all aboute the bussh and all aboute
Merlin, and began hir enchantementes soche as Merlin hadde hir taught,
and made the cerne ix tymes, and ix tymes her enchantementes; and after
that she wente and satte down by hym and leide hys heed {353}in hir
lappe, and hilde hym ther till he dide awake; and then he looked aboute
hym, and hym semed he was in the feirest tour of the worlde, and the
most stronge, and fonde hym leide in the feirest place that ever he
lay beforn.... Ne never after com Merlin out of that fortresse that she
hadde hym in sette; but she wente in and oute whan she wolde." Not far
from the churchyard of Drummelzier to this day they point out the grave
where Merlin lies beneath a thorn tree. And to everyone is known Thomas
the Rhymer's prediction:
"When Tweed and Powsayl meet at Merlin's grave
Scotland and England shall one monarch have,"
and how the prophecy was fulfilled that same day on which James of
Scotland was crowned King of England. For Tweed then so overflowed its
banks that burn and river joined beside the spot where Merlin lies,
which, as Dr. Pennecuick says, "was never before observed to fall out,
nor since that time."
Over against Drummelzier, Biggar Water falls into Tweed, and a curious
circumstance about this stream is this, that "on the occasion of a large
flood... the Clyde actually pours a portion of its water mto one of the
tributaries of Tweed." The whole volume of Clyde at Biggar, says Sir
Archibald Geikie, could without any difficulty be made to flow into
Tweed by way of the Biggar Water. The latter at one point is separated
from Clyde by but one and a half miles of almost level ground.
All this region of Biggar Water is rich in remains of old towers and
camps; but of the most important, that of Boghall Castle at Biggai,
seat of the great Fleming family, Lords Fleming in 1460, there is now
practically nothing left standing; the customary fate, the fate that so
long dogged most Scottish historical buildings overtook in about
sixty or seventy years ago. It was a place of strength in 1650, when
Cromwell's men held it; a sketch done in 1779 by John Clerk of Eldin,
shows that it was then entire, or almost entire, and it stood, a fine
ruin, as lately as 1831, when Sir Walter and Lockhart were at Biggar.
{354}With what devilish energy since then must the wreckers have
laboured to destroy! Of Biggar Moss, Blind Harry tells the wondrous tale
of how Wallace, with a diminutive Scottish force, smote here in 1279
a large English army led by Edward I; eleven thousand Englishmen were
slain, says the veracious poet. And if corroboration of Blind Harry be
needed, why is there not standing here, as witness to this very day,
the Cadger's Brig, over which, as local tradition vouches, Wallace,
disguised as a hawker, crossed on his way to spy out the weak points in
Edward's camp! As with most Border places, there is no lack of interest
about Biggar, but considerations of space forbid any attempt to treat of
its history. Yet it must not be omitted that here was born a man greatly
loved in Scotland, Dr. John Brown, best known to the outside world,
perhaps, as the author of "Rab and his Friends."