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IN THE BORDER COUNTRY
* * * * *
POPULAR BOOKS ON ART.
Edited by W. Shaw Sparrow
THE ART AND LIFE LIBRARY. 1. "THE BRITISH HOME OF TO-DAY" (_out of
print_). 2. "THE GOSPELS IN ART." 3. "WOMEN PAINTERS OF THE WORLD." 4.
"THE OLD TESTAMENT IN ART," Vol. I. 5. "THE MODERN HOME" (_out of
print_). 6. "THE OLD TESTAMENT IN ART," Vol. II. 7. "THE APOSTLES IN
ART."
HISTORY, TRAVEL, RUSTIC LIFE. 1. "MARY QUEEN OF SCOTS," with 26 Pictures
in Colour by Sir James Linton, R.I., and James Orrock, R.I.; the text by
Walter Wood. 2. "IN THE BORDER COUNTRY," with 25 Pictures in Colour by
James Orrock, R.I., and Historical Notes by W. S. Crockett. 3. "IN
RUSTIC ENGLAND," with 25 Pictures in Colour by Birket Foster; the text
by A. B. Daryll.
THE ART AND LIFE MONOGRAPHS. 1. "ETCHINGS BY VAN DYCK," in Rembrandt
Photogravure the full size of the Original Proofs. Also an Edition de
Luxe with Carbon Print Photographs of all the Etchings; the text by
Prof. Dr. H. W. Singer. 2. "INGRES--MASTER OF PURE DRAUGHTSMANSHIP."
Twenty-four Rembrandt Photogravures of important Drawings and Pictures;
the introductions by Arsene Alexandre and W. Shaw Sparrow.
ARTISTS OF THE PRESENT DAY. I. "FRANK BRANGWYN, A.R.A." the
introductions by Leonce Benedite and W. Shaw Sparrow. 2. "LUCY E.
KEMP-WELCH," the introductions by Professor Hubert von Herkomer and
Edward F. Strange.
SERIES OF BIBLE PICTURES. "THE SAVIOUR IN MODERN ART."
London: Hodder & Stoughton
* * * * *
[Illustration]
FRONTISPIECE
VIEW OF DUNSTANBOROUGH
FROM A WATER-COLOUR SKETCH
PAINTED BY
JAMES ORROCK, R.I.
IN THE BORDER COUNTRY
With Pictures in Colour by
JAMES ORROCK R I
And Historical Notes by
W. S. CROCKETT
Edited by W. Shaw Sparrow
Hodder & Stoughton
London 1906
DEDICATED
TO THE MEMORY
OF
SIR WALTER SCOTT
PREFACE
Most of us prefer to spend our holiday tours
away from our own country. There is a
feeling of mild adventure when the land
we behold is unknown to us, and when the
language we hear filters into our questioning minds
through an interpreter's suavity and chatter. And
if we go to Switzerland we may earn even a
reputation for intrepid pluck among the friends
who listen to us on our return home, while the
unlucky guides, who found for our trembling feet
a pathway around each danger, will amuse their
families during the winter with little tales at our
expense, told with rough satire and with short,
gruff peals of laughter resembling the noise of a
crackling ice-sheet when it begins to slip downhill.
No doubt, heroism on the hillside has a vast
attraction to brave, fearless hearts like our own;
but we should find, here in our own country, quite
as much adventure as is good for us, and quite as
much novelty also, if only we could bring ourselves
to believe that knowledge of native scenes and
traditions does not come to us in baptism or by
virtue of our birth as British folk. If you ask a
friend whether he knows the Border Country, he
will probably answer yes, and then go on to say
that he when a lad at school was a great reader
of Scott, and thank heaven! his memory is a good
one. Push the matter further, ask whether he has
verified the truth of Scott's descriptions by a visit
to the places described, and you will probably
hear that your friend would rather dream of the
North Pole or be bitten fiercely by the swarms of
lively insects treasured throughout Brittany in
every cottage and hotel.
All this being somewhat commonplace, you may
wish to get closer to this subject, and your friend
at last, driven to bay, comes to the real point that
pricks and distresses him. "You see," he will
say, "a holiday tour at home is such a dickens of a
gamble. You can't say how much it will cost.
The only thing at all certain about it is that the
cost will be more than you can afford. Wherever
you go you become a goose to be plucked."
Let us rebel against this iniquity! It is not
a question of cheating, it is a trait of the national
character. In Great Britain, as among the Americans,
the gift of long sight in business has become
very common, and few persons think it worth their
while to see the practical good things within easy
reach of the blessed short sight of common sense.
Our chief aim is not to keep a market open and
steady, but to glut it with over-production or
to block it with excessive prices. "Here is a
holiday-tripper, so let us make him pay!" That seems
to be the unconquerable maxim at all seaside resorts
and in every place where tired workers seek rest
and health. I have known a week's holiday in
the New Forest to cost as much as a tour of three
weeks in the beautiful and bracing Ardennes.
The Belgian is content to draw his customers back
to him, while the Englishman grasps all he can get
and sends us away discontented.
It is true that the railway companies are doing
all in their power to make holidays at home welcome
and inexpensive. Their enterprise in this respect
has no limits. But we cannot live on cheap railway
tickets alone, whether single or return. Something
should be done--and the newspapers could help--to
establish in all attractive districts a reasonable
tariff for board and lodging. It is only thus that
Great Britain will be made popular during the
holiday season, and that the great stream of gold--the
holiday-making Pactolus--will be drawn
from the Continent to nourish our own country
sides and rural folk.
It seems to be certain that, during the reign
of the old stage coach, life in rustic England was
cheaper than it is to-day. At any rate we must
account in some way or other for the immense
number of county histories and illustrated
topographical books which teemed from the press from
the middle of the eighteenth century to the time
of J. M. W. Turner. To study these works is to
be sure that our forefathers took the greatest
delight in their own country, and that huge sums
of money were spent in procuring fine sketches and
adequate engravings. Side by side with these
books on British topography were volumes on
foreign travel, like those by William Alexander,
who in 1792 accompanied Lord Macartney's
embassy to China, where he made many exquisite
sketches, brimful of humour and playful observation.
John Webber, R.A., in 1776, accompanied
Captain Cook on his third and last voyage, and
made a drawing of Cook's death, which Byrne and
Bartolozzi engraved. Two other Royal Academicians,
Thomas and William Daniell, made India
their sketching-ground, and in their great work on
"Oriental Scenery," published in 1808, they devoted
six volumes to a subject as fascinating as it was
unhackneyed. Many other artists, too, travelled
and made sketches for books, ranging from Girtin's
Paris Views to Turner's "Rivers of France," and
from Sir David Wilkie's Eastern sketches, reproduced
in lithography by Nash, to the familiar work of
Prout, Harding, J. F. Lewis, R.A., and Louis Haghe.
But these books on foreign travel, admirable
as they were, did not eclipse the many volumes on
British scenery and landscape antiquities. All
the ablest men among the earlier water-colour
painters--Hearne, Malton, Dayes, Girtin, Turner,
Francia, Havell, De Wint, David Cox, Cotman--made
topographical sketches for illustrations, and
lucky is he who "finds" their earliest efforts.
To-day, happily, there are signs of renewed life in
the old taste for picture books on the beauty and
romance of our own country. It is a taste that
invigorates, storing the mind with tonic memories
and filling the eyes with beautiful scenes and
colours; and we may be sure that it needs for its
gratification books which are easy to carry and to
read. The great folio of other days, as heavy
almost as a country squire, is rightly treasured in
the British Museum, like the remains of the Neolithic
Man discovered in Egypt.
The subject of the present book--the Border
Country--should set us thinking, not of one holiday,
but of many; and he who has once tasted the
Border's keen rich air will long to return both to
it and to the traditions that dwell among the vast
landscapes and in the ruined castles. The distinguished
connoisseur and painter whose sketches are here
reproduced, has gone back to the Border Country a
dozen times and more, always to find there a renewal
of his first pleasure and a host of fresh subjects,
that form a delightful connecting-link between each
to-day and the armoured epochs of the long ago.
And if the Border Country, with its enchanted
places and memories, delights a landscape-painter,
it is equally attractive to students of architecture,
to lovers of folk-lore and literary history, to writers
of romance in search of traditions and local colour,
and to those of us also who indulge a passion for
collecting either as botanists or as geologists.
The rivers and streams have a rare fascination,
and anglers, having made their choice, can come
by all the sport which they desire. As to the hills,
they have a certain modesty of height deceptive
to the unwary, for although they have not won for
themselves a reputation for fatalities to be described
as Alpine, they are yet so dangerous when a mist
gathers about them and thickens, that a climber
may lose his life there quite comfortably, and
without enjoying more than the customary amount
of rashness or inexperience. Briefly, men may
find in the Border Country nearly all their hobbies,
and nearly all their professional studies.
In this book the historical notes are written
by one who lives by the Tweed, and whose name
is associated with Border subjects. Mr. Crockett's
work is filled with the Past, while the outdoor
sketches by Mr. Orrock are at once so faithful
topographically, and so much in sympathy with the
classic traditions of English Water-Colour, that
they show us what the Border Country is to-day,
when seen through the medium of a painter's
observation and knowledge.
W. SHAW SPARROW.
CONTENTS
Page
Title Page. By David Veazey 3
Dedication Page 5
Preface. By Walter Shaw Sparrow 7
Contents 12
IN THE BORDER COUNTRY
BY W. S. CROCKETT
Page
I. Introduction 17
The Making of the Border 23
The Christianizing of the Border 26
Border Warfare 36
II. The English Border: Northumberland 44
"Merrie Carlisle" 60
III. The Tweed and Its Associations 75
IV. "Pleasant Teviotdale" 94
V. In the Ballad Country 105
VI. The Leader Valley 117
VII. Liddesdale 124
PLATES IN COLOUR BY JAMES ORROCK, R.I.
FRONTISPIECE.
To face
View of Dunstanborough Title page
PLATE 2
Crag Loch and the Roman Wall 24
PLATE 3
Bamborough from Stag Rock 32
PLATE 4
Holy Island Castle: Harvest Time 36
PLATE 5
View of Norham Castle 40
PLATE 6
Twizel Bridge of the XIV. Century 44
PLATE 7
Flodden Field and the Cheviot Hills 48
PLATE 8
View of Warkworth 52
PLATE 9
View of Alnwick Castle 56
PLATE 10
View of Prudhoe-on-Tyne 60
PLATE 11
View of Carlisle 64
PLATE 12
View of Naworth Castle 68
PLATE 13
View of Lanercost Priory 72
PLATE 14
View of Bewcastle 76
PLATE 15
View of Melrose 80
PLATE 16
Melrose and the Eildons from Bemersyde Hill:
Scott's favourite View 84
PLATE 17
Dryburgh Abbey and Scott's Tomb 88
PLATE 18
The Remnant of Wark Castle 92
PLATE 19
Berwick-on-Tweed 96
PLATE 20
Hollows Tower (sometimes called Gilnockie
Tower) 100
PLATE 21
Goldilands, near Hawick 104
PLATE 22
"He passed where Newark's stately tower
Looks out from Yarrow's birchen bower" 112
PLATE 23
View of New Abbey and Criffel 116
PLATE 24
Criffel and Loch Kindar 120
PLATE 25
Caerlaverock Castle 124
I. INTRODUCTION
From Berwick to the Solway as the crow flies is little more than seventy
miles. Between these two points lies the line that divides England from
Scotland. But to follow this line literally along its every little in
and out means a distance of no fewer than forty good miles more.
Stretching diagonally across the country--north-east or south-west--we
have the river Tweed as eastmost boundary for a considerable
space--close on twenty miles; then comes the lofty barrier of the
Cheviots extending to thirty odd miles, constituting the middle portion
of the Border line; and finally, the Kershope Burn, with the Liddel and
Esk Waters, and the small stream of the Sark, make up the westmost
division, another twenty miles, at least. But to follow the Border on
foot, by every bend of Tweedside, and over every nick and nook of the
Cheviots, and the remaining water-marches, means, as has been indicated,
a walk of not less than one hundred and ten miles. Almost everywhere in
the land portion of the Border line--the Cheviots generally--the
boundary is such that one may stand with one foot in England and the
other in Scotland, and the rather curious fact will be noted, says one
who has made this Border pilgrimage _par excellence_, that Scotland
nowhere receives a single rivulet from England, whilst she sends to
England tiny head-streams of the Coquet and Tyne only. The delimitation
is thus a quite natural and scientific one, coinciding pretty closely to
the water-parting of the two countries. Upon either side of this line of
demarcation stretches the Border Country, famous in war and verse the
whole world over--Northumberland and Cumberland to the south-east on
English soil, and to the north-west, Berwickshire, Roxburghshire, with
part of Dumfriesshire, the distinctively Border counties on the Scottish
side. A wider radius, however, has been given to the Scottish Border
from a very early period. Old Scots Acts of Parliament, applying to the
Border district, embrace the counties of Peebles and Selkirk within the
term, though these nowhere touch the frontier line, and portions of
Lanarkshire and the Lothians have been also included. But on the face of
it, these latter lie entirely outside the true Border limit. A line
drawn on the map from Coquetmouth to "Merrie Carlisle," thence to the
town of Dumfries, and again, almost due north, to Tweedsmuir (the source
of the Tweed) in Peeblesshire, and to Peebles itself, and from Peebles
eastward by the Moorfoots and Lammermoors to the German Ocean at St.
Abbs, will give us for all practical purposes what may be regarded as
the Border Country in its widest signification, geographical and
historical.
There is, of course, a narrower sense in which the phrase, the Border
Country, is used--the literary. That, however, applies almost entirely
to the Scottish side, for neither of the English Border counties owns a
tithe of the associations in literature and romance that belong to those
beyond the Tweed. The extraordinary glamour which has been cast over the
Tweed and its tributaries by the writings of Sir Walter Scott, the
Ettrick Shepherd, John Leyden, and others, has given a prominence to the
Scottish side which is nowhere shared by its southern neighbour. But to
say so is no disparagement to the English side. For what it lacks in
literature it makes up in other admirable characteristics. Both Borders
are rich in historical memories. Their natural features are not
dissimilar, and in commercial prosperity they are much akin. In union
they have long been happily wedded.
The Border Country is a region of streams and hills which hardly rise to
the dignity of rivers and mountains. Unlike the Clyde, the Tweed has no
broad estuary laden with the commerce of the world. And the highest
summits, Broad Law (2754 feet) in Scotland, and the great Cheviot (2676
feet) in England, have nothing in common with the rugged Highland peaks
except their height. Both, it has been said, are monuments of denudation
only, "lofty because they have suffered less wear than their
neighbours."
It is difficult to imagine all this attractive Border Country as at one
period a vast ocean-bed, over which waves lashed in furious foam, and
sea-birds shrieked and flew amid the war of waters. Yet geology assures
us such was its condition ages ago. By-and-by, it became a great rolling
plain or table-land, and in age after age--how many and how long it were
vain to speculate--there was carried on that stupendous process by which
those fair green hills and glens have been so marvellously scooped out,
and moulded and rounded into the objects of beauty that we see about us
now. In the great glacier movements, in the working of the ice-sheets,
and under the influences of frost, beating rain, and a constant
water-flow operating through a countless series of years, we have the
scientific explanation of their present benign and comfortable-looking
appearance. The Border hills are of a purely pastoral type, grass-grown
from base to summit, and usually easy of ascent. Here and there one
meets with a distinctly Highland picture--in the deep dark glens down
Moffatdale, for instance, but in the main they exhibit "the sonsie,
good-humoured, buirdly look," for which Dr. "Rab" Brown expressed the
liveliest predilection. Once at the curiously plateau-like summit of
Broadlaw (out-topped in Southern Scotland by the Galloway Merrick only)
or Hart Fell (2651 feet), or the Cheviot, the feeling amounts to a kind
of awe even. Scott speaks of the silence of noonday on the top of
Minchmoor, and the acute sense of human littleness one always feels
amidst the "mountain infinities." "I assure you," he says, "I have felt
really oppressed with a sort of fearful loneliness when looking around
these naked towering ridges of desolate barrenness." The picture seen
from such a height is both an inspiring and a humbling one. Beneath, it
is a veritable earth-ocean that we are gazing upon. On all sides an
innumerable series of what look like huge elephant-backed ranges are
seen to be chasing each other like waves of the sea, as it were, ridge
after ridge, rising, flowing, falling, and passing into the one beyond
it, as far as the eye can reach. Enclosed between each we know are the
rushing hill-burns and broader streams by which the Border country is
everywhere so much blessed and beautified. At such a height we are
entirely outside the human touches--altogether alone with Nature at her
simplest and solemnest. The cry of a startled sheep and the summer hum
of insects on the hill-top--
"That undefined and mingled hum,
Voice of the desert, never dumb"--
are the only indications of life where all trace and feeling of man and
his work have disappeared. Occasionally we shall meet by chance with the
shepherd, maybe, who has his dwelling far down among the "hopes"--the
cul-de-sacs of the uplands. Amongst those hills he lives and moves and
has his being. All sorts of weather-conditions find him at his work. He
never thinks of the loneliness, and the winter storms have not the
terrors for him as for his predecessors. In some respects his life is an
ideal one, and his class has a goodly record for intelligence and fine
physique. The best specimens, indeed, of the country's manhood are drawn
from the agricultural labouring classes--the "herds" and "hinds" who
make up the bulk of the population in the purely rural districts. For
agriculture, it need scarcely be said, is the staple business of both
Borders. The Tweed industry, to be sure, affords employment to
thousands, but on the Borders, as elsewhere, the land is the crucial
problem. Within recent years many of the rural parishes have been
woefully depleted, and until the land question is fairly tackled there
seems small hope for a fresh and brighter chapter in the domestic
history of the Border Country.
A hundred years have transformed the face of the Border Country in a
marked manner. The development of agriculture, and the growth of the
tree-planting spirit, which began to bestir itself about the beginning
of last century, have given to the Border its modern picturesqueness and
its look of prosperity. Sir Walter Scott himself may be said to be the
father of arboriculture in the South of Scotland. In the creation of
Abbotsford, forestry was his main out-of-doors hobby, and the example
set by one who had studied the subject thoroughly, and who discoursed
pleasantly upon it, was quickly followed by all the neighbouring lairds
and many others besides. Not that the country was altogether treeless
before Scott's day. Here and there "ancestral oaks" clumped themselves
about the great castles and mansions, with perhaps some further attempt
at embellishment. But that was rare enough. It needed a man like Scott
to popularize the notion, and to take the lead in an undertaking
fraught, as this age well sees, with results so beneficent. We do not
forget, of course, that in earlier historic times practically the whole
of the Border Country was covered with wood. Its inhabitants, whose very
names--Gadeni and Ottadini--signified "dwellers in the wood," were found
by the Romans in their dense forests, and the first settlements were
only possible through clearances of growing timber. Across the country,
from Cadzow, in Renfrewshire, to the Ettrick, there stretched the vast
Wood of Caledon (whence Caledonia), known at a later period as the
Forest of Ettrick, or simply as the Forest (_e.g._, the "Flowers of the
Forest"). There is no doubt that it was largely a forest in the ordinary
acceptation, and not a mere deer-forest use of the term. Over and over
again we have the various charters, as to the Abbeys, for instance,
authorising the monks to cut down for building purposes and fuel oaks
"from the forest," both in Selkirk and in Melrose, in Kelso and the
Ettrick. The original religious house of Melrose was entirely of oak. So
were the first churches founded by Kentigern and Cuthbert, and those
even of a later date. The Forest of Ettrick survived to the time of the
Stuarts, who had here their favourite hunting expeditions, James V. and
Queen Mary especially being frequent visitors to the Borderland. The
Forest of Megget, or Rodono (a sub-division of that of Ettrick), yielded
on one occasion no fewer than five hundred head of game, bird and beast
of the chase, and at another time eighteen score of red deer. In the
reign of Mary there was issued a proclamation limiting and prohibiting
the slaughter of deer in the Forest on account of their growing
scarcity. And by the time of James VI. the hunting possibilities of the
Border were at an end.
More than anything else, the laying down of the great railway lines and
the immense road improvements of last century have opened up practically
every corner of the Border Country. There are now no places so utterly
inaccessible as Liddesdale was during Scott's visits. It is possible to
reach the most out-of-the-way parts with comparative comfort. And with
the dawn of the motor age, still greater hopes and possibilities appear
in store.
PLATE 2
CRAG LOCH AND THE
ROMAN WALL
FROM A WATER-COLOUR SKETCH
PAINTED BY
JAMES ORROCK, R.I.
(_See pp. 24, 44, 45, 71, 73_)
[Illustration]
THE MAKING OF THE BORDER
It is from the Roman historian Tacitus that the light of history falls
for the first time on the Border Country. It is a mere glimpse, however.
But it is enough to show us the calibre of the men who held its forests
and fastnesses at that remote period. They were the Brigantes, a branch
probably of the Celts, who were the first to reach Britain, coming from
the common home-land of the Ayrian race somewhere in Central Asia. Their
kingdom, Brigantia, embraced all the country between the Mersey and
Humber and the Links of Forth. They are spoken of as a strong,
courageous and warlike people, able for many years to keep the Roman
cohorts at bay and to check the northward progress of the invaders. The
Roman Conquest of Britain, as is well known, was begun by Julius Caesar
as far back as B.C. 55. It was not, however, till the time of Julius
Agricola (A.D. 78-84) that the Romans obtained a firm footing on the
island. Agricola's generalship was more than a match for the sturdy
Brigantes. He carried the Roman eagles to the Forth and Clyde, fixing
his main line of defence and his northmost frontier on the isthmus
between these two firths. But about A.D. 120, when the Emperor Hadrian
visited Britain, his chief work was the delimitation of the Roman
territory by the great stone wall still bearing his name, stretching
from the Tyne to the Solway, a distance of 73-1/2 miles. Twenty years
later, however, Lollius Urbicus, the Emperor's lieutenant in Britain,
appears to have revived and restored Agricola's boundary, so that what
we now know as the Border Country, for more than three hundred years
(A.D. 78-410), formed a part of the mightiest empire of the ancient
world. Hadrian's rampart, the great camps at Cappuck, near Jedburgh, at
Lyne in Peeblesshire, and Newstead at the base of the Eildons--the
undoubted Roman Trimontium--with the roads known as Watling Street
and the Wheel Causeway are the chief memorials of a singularly historic
Occupation. Following the withdrawal of the Roman legions the district
became the arena of constant warfare between Picts and Scots and
Britons, until the sixth century, when it appears again in history as a
kingdom of the Saxon Heptarchy under the name of Bernicia, and occupied
by a colony of Angles and Saxons from the Low Countries of the
Continent, the progenitors of the English-speaking race. Ida the Good
governed Bernicia, having for his capital the proud rock-fortress of
Bibbanburgh (so named from his queen Bibba), the modern Bamborough. In
the following century Bernicia was combined with Deira, its southern
neighbour (corresponding to Yorkshire) to form the powerful kingdom of
Northumbria, extending, as Brigantia had done, from the Humber to the
Forth. For the next three or four hundred years the story of the Border
was little more than a wild record of lawlessness and bloodshed. It had
grown to be a kind of happy hunting-ground for every hostile tribe
within fighting distance, and for some even who were drawn from long
distances, like the Danes, the latest of the invading hordes. But there
is nothing of importance to narrate at this period. From a monarchy,
Northumbria fell to the level of an Earldom in 954, and in 1018, the
Scots, consolidated to some extent under Malcolm II., crushed the Angles
of Northumbria in a great victory at Carham-on-Tweed (near Coldstream),
of which the result was the cession to Scotland of the district known as
Lothian--the land lying between the Tweed and Forth. Thus at the dawn
of the 11th century we have the Tweed constituting the virtual boundary
between the two countries. Cumberland, to be sure, was for a time Scots
territory, but this the intrepid Rufus wrested back in 1092. So that by
the close of that century the Border line appears to have taken the
quite natural course of delimitation--the Tweed, the Cheviots, and the
Solway, though it was not till as late as 1222 that a commission of both
countries was appointed to adjust the final demarcation.
THE CHRISTIANIZING OF THE BORDER
It would be interesting to know precisely when and how the light of the
Christian faith first penetrated the Border Country, but neither the
time nor the manner can be ascertained with certainty. Indeed, it is
impossible to say who were the real pioneers of the Gospel within the
realm itself. The probability is that in the first instance it was the
beneficent work of the Romans in whose legions were to be found many
sincere Christians, many faithful soldiers of the Cross. From the
"saints of Caesar's household"--not a mere picturesque dream--mayhap the
Gospel found its way to the coasts of Britain, the greatest boon that
could be conferred on a nation. An unvarying Peeblesshire tradition, for
example, avers that among the first to witness for Christ and His truth
by the banks of the Tweed and its tributaries were Roman soldiers from
the great military station at Hall Lyne, and out of whose quiet
fellowship-meetings in the recesses of the Manor, sprang the church of
that valley, one of the oldest in the county, and dedicated to Saint
Gordian, either the Emperor of that name, or what is more likely,
"Gordian the well-beloved," Deputy of Gaul, who suffered martyrdom about
the year 362. Be that as it may, it is at any rate certain that long
before the departure of the Romans from Britain, Christianity had made
considerable headway in the island. St. Ninian's is the earliest
definite name which has come down to us, about the end of the 4th and
beginning of the 5th century. His labours were confined chiefly to the
Galloway side of the Border, where the remains of his Candida Casa, or
White House, may still be seen at Whithorn on the shores of Wigtown Bay.
It is more than possible that some of Ninian's missionaries, or a rumour
of his work and teaching at all events, had passed beyond the Solway to
the Clyde and Tweed watersheds. But, on the other hand, the difficulties
following the departure of the Romans in the constant incursions from
the Continent and the terrible internecine struggles of the time, would
be sufficient to extinguish whatever light had faintly begun to shine.
And it is not until well on in the 6th century that the darkness begins
to grow less dense. Such names as Augustine, Paulinus, Columba,
Kentigern or Mungo, Aidan and Cuthbert, come upon the scene, with each
of whom seems to rest, as it were, the hope of the Church of Christ in
Britain. In the year 597 Augustine arrived in Kent with forty monks in
his train. The incident, apocryphal perhaps, which led to his mission,
is at least interesting. The story has been told again and again, but it
will bear repeating. Aella, King of Deira, had defeated his northern
neighbour, and with a portion of the spoil hastened to fill the Roman
slave-market. Gregory the Great, in the days that preceded his
pontificate, passed one day through the market-place when it was crowded
with people, all attracted by the arrival of fresh cargoes of
merchandise; and he saw three boys set for sale. They were
white-complexioned, fair and light, and with noble heads of hair. Filled
with compassion, he enquired of the dealer from what part of the world
they had come, and was told "from Britain, where all the inhabitants
have the same fair complexion." He next asked whether the people of this
strange land were Christians or pagans, and hearing that they were
pagans he heaved a deep sigh, and remarked it was sad to think that
beings so bright and fair should be in the power of the Prince of
Darkness. He next enquired the name of their nation. "Angles," was the
reply. "'Tis well," he answered, playing on the word, "rightly are they
called _Angles_, for their faces are the faces of angels, and they ought
to be fellow-heirs with the angels of heaven." "And what is the name,"
he proceeded, "of the province from which they have been brought?" "From
Deira," was the answer. Catching its name, he rejoined, "Rightly are
they named _Deirans_. Plucked from _ire_, and called to the mercy of
Christ." "And who," he asked once more, "is the King of this province?"
"Aella," was the reply. The word recalled the Hebrew expression of
praise, and he answered, "Allelujah! the praise of God shall be chanted
in that clime!" And as Green so beautifully puts it in his "Making of
England," "he passed on, musing how the angel faces should be brought to
sing it." And brought to sing it they were when the evangelist Paulinus
found his way in the best sense, to the heart of heathen Northumbria.
Paulinus, whom men long remembered,
"Of shoulders curved, and stature tall,
Black hair, and vivid eye, and meagre cheek."
had come from Rome with Bishop Justus in 601, and laboured with
Augustine in the evangelization of Kent. When Ethelburga, daughter of
Ethelbert of Kent, Augustine's convert, became wedded to Edwin, the
still idolatrous King of Northumbria, Paulinus accompanied her as
chaplain, and at the same time as missionary among the rude
Northumbrians. The field of his labours was a wide one. For a long time
he made no progress until Edwin himself, moved by his escape from
assassination at the hands of the King of Wessex, and by his victory
over Wessex, and under the gentle constraint of Paulinus, resolved that
both he and his nobles should be baptized, and this resolution was
carried into effect at York, in a hastily-built chapel (the precursor of
the Minster), on Easter Eve, 627.
The conversion of Edwin was followed by a great social revolution.
Having convoked the National Assembly, he unfolded the reasons for his
change of faith. Everywhere he was applauded. Crowds of the nobility,
chiefs of petty states, and the great mass of the people followed the
example of their King. The worship of the ancient gods was solemnly
renounced, and even Coifi, the high priest, was the first to give the
signal for destruction by hurling his lance at an idol in the pagan
temple. Paulinus was now one of the most popular figures in Northumbria.
Wherever he preached, crowds gathered to hear him and to be received,
like their Overlord, into the Christian communion. Many spots in
Northumberland are identified with the name of this early and ardent
Apostle of the North. Pallinsburn, overlooking Flodden Field, is, of
course, Paulinus's Burn, where large numbers were baptized. In one of
his missionary journeys we are told (Bede) how he was occupied for six
and thirty consecutive days from early morn until nightfall, in teaching
the people and in "washing them with the water of absolution" in the
river Glen, which flowed by the royal "vill" of Yeavering (anciently
Ad-gebrin) in Glendale. At the Lady's Well near Holystone, in the vale
of the Coquet, about three thousand converts were welcomed into the
Church of Christ. A graceful Runic cross erected on the spot bears the
following inscription:--
+IN THIS PLACE
PAVLINVS THE BISHOP
BAPTIZED
THREE THOUSAND NORTHVMBRIANS.
EASTER, DCXXVII.+
But after six years of incessant labours, the death of Edwin in battle
with Penda, King of the Mercians, and Cadwallon of North Wales, put a
sudden stop to his work. He did not wait for the honour of martyrdom,
but went back with the widowed queen to Kent, where he became Bishop of
Rochester, and she the Abbess of Lyminge. Paulinus died in 644, and was
buried in the chapter-house at Rochester.
PLATE 3
BAMBOROUGH FROM
STAG ROCK
FROM A WATER-COLOUR SKETCH
PAINTED BY
JAMES ORROCK, R.I.
(_See pp. 25, 58, 59_)
[Illustration]
But it is ever the darkest hour that precedes the dawn. It was
impossible that England should lose her faith and fall back under the
rule of a mere heathen conqueror. After the "thoughtful Edwin,
mightiest of all the kings of the isle of Britain," as he has been
called (he was, by the way, the founder of Edinburgh), there arose
another champion of the new light in the person of Oswald, Edwin's
nephew. Oswald's history connects him with Columba the Irishman, and
"Apostle of Scotland," to whose splendid work the nation owed its first
real religious advance. About 563, when in his forty-second year, and
accompanied by twelve companions, Columba found a resting-place on the
little island of Hy or Iona, off the west coast of Scotland, whence he
set himself to the great work of his life--the conversion of the Pictish
tribes beyond the Grampians. At Iona Oswald had sheltered during the
home troubles, and many valuable lessons he must have learned for the
strenuous life that lay in front of him. Called to lead his countrymen
against their oppressors, Oswald literally fought his way to the throne.
On a rising ground, a few miles from Hexham, near the Roman Wall, he
gathered in 634 a small force, which pledged itself to become Christian
if it conquered in the engagement. Causing a cross of wood to be hastily
made, and digging a hole for it in the earth, he supported it with his
own hands while his men hedged up the soil around it. Then, like Bruce
at Bannockburn years afterwards, he bade his soldiers kneel with him and
entreat the true and living God to defend their cause, which he knew to
be just, from the fierce and boastful foe. This done they joined battle,
and attacked Cadwallon's far superior forces. The charge was
irresistible. The Welsh army fled down the slope towards the
Deniseburn,--a brook near Dilston which has been identified with the
Rowley Burn,--and Cadwallon himself, the hero of fourteen battles and
sixty skirmishes, was caught and slain. This was the battle of
Hefenfelt, or Heaven's Field, as after-times called it. Not only was the
last hero of the old British races utterly routed, but Oswald, King of
once more reunited Bernicia and Deira, proved himself to the Christian
cause all that Edwin had been, and more, a prince in the prime of life,
and fitted by his many good qualities to attract a general enthusiasm of
admiration, reverence, and love. Resolved to restore the national
Christianity, and to realize the ambitions of his exile life, he turned
naturally to Iona and to the teachers of his youth for missionaries who
would accomplish the holy task. At his request, Aidan, one of the
fittest of the Columban band, was sent to carry on the work of
evangelization in Northumbria, which happy event may be reckoned as the
first permanent planting of the Gospel in the Eastern Border. The light
which he kindled was never afterwards quenched. And as Columba had
chosen Iona, so for Aidan there was one spot to which his heart went out
above all others. This was the island-peninsula of Lindisfarne, off the
Northumbrian coast, so called from the little river Lindis, which here
enters the sea, and the Celtic _fahren_, "a recess." Bede has a fine
passage which is worth quoting:--"On the arrival of the Bishop (Aidan)
King Oswald appointed him his episcopal see in the isle of Lindisfarne,
as he desired. Which place as the tide flows and ebbs twice a day, is
enclosed by the waves of the sea like an island; and again, twice in the
day, when the shore is left dry, becomes contiguous to the land. The
King also humbly and willingly in all cases giving ear to his
admonitions, industriously applied himself to build and extend the
church of Christ in his kingdom; wherein, when the Bishop, who was not
skilful in the English tongue, preached the gospel, it was most
delightful to see the King himself interpreting the Word of God to his
commanders and ministers, for he had perfectly learned the language of
the Scots during his long banishment. From that time many of the Scots
came daily into Britain, and with great devotion preached the word to
those provinces of the English over which King Oswald reigned, and those
among them that had received priest's orders, administered to them the
grace of baptism. Churches were built in several places; the people
joyfully flocked together to hear the Word; money and lands were given
of the King's bounty to build monasteries; the English, great and small,
were, by their Scottish masters, instructed in the rules and observance
of regular discipline; for most of them that came to preach were monks."
(Eccl. Hist. Bk. iii., c. 2). Than Lindisfarne, or Holy Island, as it
came to be called, there is no more sacred spot in Northumbria--in
England even. Its history is coeval with that of the nation, and it was
from that hallowed centre of Christian activity that the gospelizing of
both sides of the Border was planned and prayed over many an anxious
hour and day. Aidan's missionaries went forth planting churches in
various places. One of the best known of these settlements was Old
Melrose, the original shrine by the beautiful bend of the Tweed, a mile
or two down the river from the second and more celebrated Melrose. Here
Eata, "a man much revered and meek;" and Boisil, who gave his name to
the neighbouring St. Boswells; and Cuthbert, the most illustrious of
them all, served God with gladness. Of the latter, certainly the most
conspicuous Borderer of his day, something more must be said. Three
kingdoms claim his birthplace. The Irish Life of the Saint alleges him
to be sprung of her own blood royal; he is affirmed also to have come of
noble Northumbrian descent; whilst the Scottish tradition makes him the
child of humble parents, born and reared in Lauderdale, one of the
sweetest valleys of the Border. It is a fact, at any rate, that when the
light of record first falls upon him the youthful Cuthbert is seen as a
shepherd lad by the Leader; he is religiously inclined, and whilst his
comrades sleep, he spends whole nights in prayer and meditation. One day
he hears voices from out the unseen calling to him. Another night it is
a vision of angels that he fancies he beholds bearing the soul of the
sainted Aidan to the skies. Such was Cuthbert, a kind of mystic, a
dreamer of strange dreams, destined apostle and Bishop, and next to
Augustine himself the most illustrious figure in the annals of English
monasticism. The church of Channelkirk (anciently Childeschirche)
dedicated to the Saint, probably indicates his birth-spot. The Leader
valley is full of legends of his boyhood, the whole west of
Berwickshire, indeed, being haunted ground for Cuthbert's sake. Other
great names in the history of early Border Christianity are those of
Benedict Biscop, the founder of the monasteries of Jarrow and Monk
Wearmouth; Wilfrid, the founder of Hexham; and the Venerable Bede--the
"father of English learning"--whose "Church History of the English
People" is the greatest of the forty-five works that bear his name.
By far the most flourishing epoch in the religious development of the
Border was the founding of the great Abbeys under David I.--"St.
David"--as he is often called, though he was never canonized. Whilst
still a Prince, he founded a monastery at Selkirk, and after his
accession to the throne, there arose the four stately fanes of Kelso
(1128), Melrose (1146), Jedburgh (1147), and Dryburgh (1150)--those rich
and peaceful homes of art and intellectual culture whose ruins now
strike us with marvel and regret. There is probably no other country
district equally small in area that can boast a group of ruins at once
so grand and interesting as those that lie within a few miles of each
other along the banks of the Tweed and Jed. Founded almost
contemporaneously, they were destroyed about the same time, by the same
ruthless hands. The story of each is the story of all--burned and
rebuilt, then spoiled and restored again, time after time, until finally
at the dismal Hertford Invasion, in 1545, they all received their
death-stroke. Other religious centres on the Scottish side were
Coldingham in Berwickshire, founded in 1098 by King Edgar, son of
Canmore and St. Margaret; Dundrennan, in Kirkcudbrightshire, founded in
1142 by Fergus, Lord of Galloway; and Sweetheart or New Abbey, founded
in 1275 by Devorgoil, great-great-granddaughter of David the First. On
the English side, the Church had a less vigorous growth, having no such
munificent patron as King David, but there, too, it could boast of
Carlisle Cathedral, the Abbey of Alnwick, the Priories of Lanercost, and
Hexham, and the still more renowned and classic Lindisfarne. The history
of the latter began, as we saw, with the year 635, when Saint Aidan
accepted the invitation of King Oswald to teach the new faith to the
Northumbrians. Aidan's church, built of wood, and thatched with the
coarse bents of the links, could not long withstand the storms or the
brands of the wild sea-rovers. And of the stone sanctuary reared under
the rule of succeeding bishops no portion of the present ruin can be
considered as forming a part. Sir Walter Scott has thrown the spell of
his genius around the picturesque ruins, but the tragical story of
Constance of Beverley has no foundation in fact.
PLATE 4
HOLY ISLAND CASTLE:
HARVEST-TIME
FROM A WATER-COLOUR SKETCH
PAINTED BY
JAMES ORROCK, R.I.
(_See pp. 32, 33, 36_)
[Illustration]
BORDER WARFARE
Of Border warfare it were impossible to treat within the limits of a
library. In no part of the kingdom was the fighting and raiding spirit
more rampant. The Border clans were constantly at war with one another,
the slightest excuse provoking an attack, and not unfrequently was there
no _raison d'etre_ whatever for the accompanying ruin and desolation. It
ran apparently in the blood of those old Borderers to live on unfriendly
terms with their neighbours, and to seize every possible opportunity
against them. The record of the raids does not lean more to one side
than another for aggressiveness, though generally the Scot has been
credited for this quality. But as a matter of fact both sides were
equally at fault and equally determined. And the onslaughts were
often of the most savage and persistent kind, and were almost entirely
unchecked by the legal restraints which were set in force. The division
of the district into East, West and Middle Marches, with a sort of
vice-regal Warden appointed over each, was not always conducive to peace
and good feeling. At certain times, a day of truce was held when the
Wardens of both sides met and settled any questions that might be in
dispute between their followers, but occasionally the decision was
anything but harmonious--as in the case of the Reidswire, for instance.
In the "Debateable or Threep Lands," which lay partly in England and
partly in Scotland, between the Esk and the Sark, no end of worry and
difficulty was experienced. "Its chief families were the Armstrongs and
Grahams, both clans being noted as desperate thieves and freebooters.
They had frequently to be dealt with by force of arms till in the 17th
century, the Grahams were transported to Ireland, and forbidden to
return upon pain of death. Other districts of the Borders from time to
time called forth hostile visitations from the Scottish kings or their
commissioners, when great numbers of the robbers were frequently seized
and hanged. So late as 1606, the Earl of Dunbar executed as many as 140
of them. The Union of the Crowns removed some obvious grounds of
contention between the English and Scottish people, and after the middle
of the 17th century the Borders gradually subsided into a more peaceful
condition."
It was doubtless due to the exigencies occasioned by those frequently
recurring wars and raids from the 13th to the 16th century that the
whole country on both sides of the frontier became so thickly studded
with castles and peel-towers, the numerous ruins of which still form a
distinctive feature in Border scenery, although from times much earlier
the castles and strongholds were characteristic elements in the old
Scottish landscape. Alexander Hume, of Polwarth, the poet-preacher of
Logie, near Stirling, in his fine description of a "Summer's Day," thus
refers to them:--
"The rayons of the sunne we see
Diminish in their strength;
The shade of everie tower and tree,
Extended is in length.
Great is the calm for everie quhair
The wind is settlin' downe;
The reik thrawes right up in the air,
From everie tower and towne."
Generally these towers were planted on heights overlooking the
river-valleys, and, as a rule, within sight of one another, in order
that the signals of invasion or alarm--flashed by means of the bale
fire--might be the more rapidly spread from point to point. Very few of
them are now entire--the best-preserved on the Scottish side being,
perhaps, Barns, at the entrance to the Manor valley; Bemersyde, still
inhabited; and Oakwood on the Ettrick, incorporated in the present farm
buildings; and on the English side, Corbridge and Doddington and
Whittingham. From a return made in 1460 we find that Northumberland
alone possessed 37 castles and 78 towers, and the Scottish side was
equally well strengthened and defended. Amongst the larger and more
important fortresses on the English side were the Castles of Alnwick,
Bothal, Carlisle, Cockermouth, Coupland, Dilston, Elsdon, Etal, Ford,
Naworth, Norham, Prudhoe, Wark, Warkworth; and on the Scottish side,
Berwick, Branxholme, Caerlaverock (the true Ellangowan of "Guy
Mannering"), Cessford, Ferniherst, Hermitage, Hume, Jedburgh, Neidpath,
Peebles, Roxburgh, Threave, Traquair, besides, as has been said,
hundreds of peel and bastle-houses scattered all over the country.