Siccan an Outlaw in his degree
Sic favour get before a King
As the Outlaw Murray of the Forest free?"
Of right "Tamlany"--by far the finest of the Border fairy
ballads--belongs more to Ettrick than to Yarrow. The scene is laid in
Carterhaugh, at the confluence of the two streams, two miles above
Selkirk. The ballad (24 stanzas) is too long to quote, but may be read
in all good collections. For the same reason also we must pass over the
"Battle of Philiphaugh," commemorating Leslie's victory over Montrose in
1645; and the "Gay Goss-Hawk," the dramatic ending of which is laid at
St. Mary's Kirk, high upon the hillside overlooking the waters of the
Loch. Nothing is left now save the site, and a half-deserted
burying-ground where "Covenanter and Catholic, Scotts, and Kers and
Pringles--all sorts and conditions of men--sleep their long sleep at
peace together." Among the shrines of Yarrowdale, this is not the least
notable. Like the grave of Keats outside the walls of Rome, as some one
has said, "it would almost make one in love with death to be buried in
so sweet a spot among the heather and brackens, and the sighing of the
solitary mountain ash." St. Mary's Loch lies shimmering at our feet.
Scott's "Marmion" picture is still wonderfully correct:
"Oft in my mind such thoughts awake,
By lone Saint Mary's silent lake;
Thou know'st it well--nor fen, nor sedge
Pollute the pure lake's crystal edge;
Abrupt and sheer, the mountains sink
At once upon the level brink;
And just a trace of silver sand
Marks where the water meets the land.
Far in the mirror, bright and blue,
Each hill's huge outline you may view;
Shaggy with heath, but lonely bare,
Nor tree, nor bush, nor brake is there,
Save where, of land, yon slender line
Bears thwart the lake the scatter'd pine,
Yet even this nakedness has power,
And aids the feeling of the hour."
All this delightsome countryside is Hogg-land too, let us remember, as
well as Scott-land. For here, in ballad-haunted Yarrow, the immortal
James spent the best years of his life, failing so tantalizingly as
farmer, but as poet, "King of the Mountain and Fairy school," dreaming
so well of that most bewitching of all his conceptions--"Bonnie
Kilmeny." Yonder, overlooking Tibbie Shiel's "cosy beild"--a howff of
the Noctes coterie--stands the solitary white figure of the beloved
Shepherd as Christopher North's prophetic soul felt that it must be some
day. Hogg was born in the neighbouring Ettrick valley--in 1770
presumably. His birth-cottage is extinct now, but a handsome memorial
marks the spot. Most of his life, as has been said, was passed in the
sister vale, first at Blackhouse, then at Mount Benger, and at Altrive
(now Eldinhope), where he died three years after his truest of
friends--Sir Walter. The Ettrick homeland guards his dust. Close by is
the resting-place of Thomas Boston, that earlier "Ettrick Shepherd"
whose "Fourfold State" and "Crook in the Lot" are not yet forgotten. In
the sequestered Yarrow churchyard sleeps Scott's maternal
great-grandfather, John Rutherford, who was minister of the parish from
1691 to 1710. Scott spoke of Yarrow as the "shrine of his ancestors,"
and himself, like Hogg, and Willie Laidlaw, frequently worshipped within
its old grey walls. Further down the stream, the "shattered front of
Newark's towers" reminds us that here Scott placed the recital of the
"Lay." He would fain have fitted up the ancient fabric as a residence,
had it been possible. Almost opposite, the birthplace of Mungo Park, the
first of the knight-errantry of Africa, attracts attention, and a mile
or two nearer Selkirk, are Philiphaugh, and "sweet Bowhill," the two
finest domains in the Forest. The Covenanters' Monument within
Philiphaugh grounds is worthy of notice, and on the Ettrick side,
Kirkhope and Oakwood, both in fairly good repair, are excellent
specimens of the peel period. At Selkirk, the capital of Ettrickdale,
Scott's statue as "the Shirra"--a most admirable representation--looks
out at scenes upon which his eyes in life must often have feasted. Here
we read the lines that express his heart's deep love for a district
interwoven so closely with all the years of his working life:
"By Yarrow's streams still let me stray,
Though none should guide my feeble way;
Still feel the breeze down Ettrick break,
Although it chill my wither'd cheek."
PLATE 23
VIEW OF NEW ABBEY
AND CRIFFEL
FROM A WATER-COLOUR SKETCH
PAINTED BY
JAMES ORROCK, R.I.
[Illustration]
VI. THE LEADER VALLEY.
To the present writer, the valley of the Leader, or Lauderdale, has
attractions and memories that are second to none in the Border. "Here,
first,"--to use Hogg's lines--
"He saw the rising morn,
Here, first, his infant mind unfurled
To ween the spot where he was born
The very centre of the world."
Lauderdale constitutes one of the "three parts" into which Berwickshire,
like Ancient Gaul, is divided. The others are the Merse, (_i.e._,
March-Land)--often a distinctive designation for the entire county, but
applicable especially to the low-lying lands beside the Tweed;
Lammermoor, so named from the Lammermoor Hills ranging across the county
from Soutra Edge and Lammer Law in the extreme north-west, to the
coastline at Fast Castle and St. Abbs. Lauderdale, the westernmost
division, running due north and south, embraces simply the basin of the
Leader and its tributaries so far as the basin is in Berwickshire. Its
total length is not more than twenty-one miles, from Kelphope Burn, the
real origin of the Leader, to Leaderfoot, about two miles below Melrose,
where it meets the waters of the Tweed. Leaderdale and Lauderdale are
but varieties of the name. A little off the beaten track, perhaps, it
can be easily reached by rail to St. Boswells and Earlston, or to Lauder
itself, from Fountainhall, on the Waverley Route, by the light railway
recently opened. Its upper course among the Lammermoors is through
bleak, monotonous hill scenery; but the middle and lower reaches pass
into a fine series of landscapes--the "Leader Haughs" of many an olden
strain--- flanked by graceful green hills and swells, and plains, that
are hardly surpassed in Scotland for agricultural wealth and beauty. Of
Berwickshire generally, it may be said that it has few industries and no
mineral wealth to speak of. Its business is chiefly in one
department--agriculture. For that the soil is particularly well adapted.
Especially is this true of the Merse and Lauderdale districts, where the
farmers take a high place in agricultural affairs, many of them being
recognised experts and authorities on the subject. Thousands of acres on
the once bald and featureless hill-lands of Lauderdale have been brought
within the benign influence of plough and harrow, and are choice
ornaments in a county famous for its agricultural triumphs all the world
over. But Romance, rather than agriculture, is the true glory of the
Leader Valley. It will be difficult to find a locality--Yarrow
excepted--which is more under the spell of the past. May not Lauderdale,
indeed, be claimed as the very birthplace of Scottish melody itself?
Robert Chambers styled it "the Arcadia of Scotland," and was not Thomas
of Ercildoune the "day-starre of Scottish poetry?"
This, too, is the country of St. Cuthbert. At Channelkirk, he was
probably born. At all events the first light of history falls upon him
here, as a shepherd lad, watching his flocks by the Leader, and striving
to think out the deep things of the divine life, with the most ardent
longings in his soul after it. The traditional meadow, whence he beheld
the vision which changed his career, is still pointed out, and his
reputed birthplace at Cuddy Ha' keeps his memory green amongst those
sweet refreshing solitudes. It is interesting to note Berwickshire's
connection with the three most famous Borderers of history--St.
Cuthbert, Thomas the Rhymer, and Walter Scott, of Merse extraction,
whose dust Berwickshire holds as its most sacred trust.
Lauder and Earlston are the only places of importance in the valley. The
former--it is, by the way, the only royal burgh in the shire--boasts a
considerable antiquity. It is still a quaint-looking but clean town,
with long straggling street, and one or two buildings--the parish kirk
and Tolbooth--offering decidedly Continental suggestions. Lauder's
old-worldness and isolation are at an end, however. After much
agitation, a railway-line now connects it with the rest of the world,
and already the signs of a new life are apparent. Within a very few
years the inevitable changes will be sure to have passed over this once
quiet and exclusive little town. It is the "Maitland blude," which
dominates Lauder, and Thirlestane Castle, built, or renovated rather, in
the time of Charles II., is still a place to see. Amongst Scottish
families, the Maitlands were first in place and power. Not a few of them
were greatly distinguished as statesmen and men of letters--the blind
poet and ballad-collector, Sir Richard; William Maitland, the celebrated
Secretary Lethington; Chancellor Maitland, author of the satirical
ballad, "Against Sklanderous Tongues;" Thomas, and Mary, Latin
versifiers both; and the infamous "Cabal" Duke, the only bearer of the
title. Within the well-kept policies of Thirlestane, tradition has
located the site of the historic Lauder Bridge, so fatal to James III.'s
favourites in 1482. Dr. John Wilson, of Bombay, Orientalist and scholar,
was born at Lauder in 1804, and James Guthrie, the first Scottish martyr
after the Reformation, was its minister for a short period.
Earlston is seven miles down stream from Lauder. Before reaching the
town of the Rhymer some spots of interest call for notice. At St.
Leonard's--a little way out--a hospital off-shoot of Dryburgh, lived
Burne the Violer, the last of the minstrel fraternity, a supposed
prototype of the Minstrel of the "Lay," and author of the fine pastoral
poem, "Leader Haughs and Yarrow," the verse-model for Wordsworth's
"Three Yarrows." One verse was a great favourite with Scott and Carlyle,
both of whom were known to repeat it frequently:--
"But Minstrel Burne can not assuage
His grief, while life endureth,
To see the changes of this age,
Which fleeting time procureth;
For mony a place stands in hard case,
Where blythe folk ken'd nae sorrow,
With Humes that dwelt on Leader-side,
And Scotts that dwelt on Yarrow."
Blainslie, famous for its oats ("There's corn enough in the
Blainslies"), and Whitslaid Tower, a long ago holding of the Lauder
family, are passed a mile or two on. At Birkhill and Birkenside the road
forks leftwards to Legerwood, where Grizel Cochrane of Ochiltree
(afterwards Mrs. Ker of Morriston), heroine of the stirring mail-bag
adventure narrated in the "Border Tales," sleeps in its lately
restored kirk chancel. Chapel, and Carolside with a fine deer park,
and most charming of country residences--at the latter of which Kinglake
wrote part of his "Crimean War"--sit snugly to the right, in the bosky
glen below.
PLATE 24
CRIFFEL AND LOCH
KINDAR
FROM A WATER-COLOUR SKETCH
PAINTED BY
JAMES ORROCK, R.I.
[Illustration]
Earlston, the Ercildoune of olden time--name much better suited to the
quiet beauty of its charming situation--has no unimportant place both in
Scottish history and romance. It has been honoured by many royal visits.
Here David the Sair Sanct subscribed the Foundation Charter of Melrose
Abbey in 1136, and his son the Confirmatory Charter in 1143. Other royal
visitors followed; there James IV. encamped for a night on his way from
Edinburgh to Flodden; Queen Mary made a brief stay at Cowdenknowes as
she passed from Craigmillar to Jedburgh; and lastly came Prince Charlie
(unwelcome) on his march to Berwick-on-Tweed. But above all it is
renowned as having been the residence (and birthplace probably) of
Thomas the Rhymer, or True Thomas, or simply, as literary history
prefers to call him, Thomas of Ercildoune. The Rhymer's Tower,
associated with this remarkable personage, stands close to the Leader.
Only a mere ivy-clad fragment remains (some 30 feet in height), but the
memories of the place stretch back to more than six centuries, when
Thomas was at the height of his fame as his country's great soothsayer
and bard--the _vates sacer_ of the people. His rhymes are still quoted,
and many of them have been realised in a manner which Thomas himself
could scarcely have anticipated. Scott makes him the author of the
metrical romance "Sir Tristrem," published from the Auchinleck _MS._ in
1804, but the Rhymer is unlikely to have been the original compiler.
With his Fairyland adventures and return to that mysterious region,
everybody is familiar. A quaint stone in the church wall carries the
inscription:
Auld Rymr's Race
Lyes in this place,
and the probability is that Thomas sleeps somewhere amidst its dark
dust, unless, indeed, he be still spell-bound in some as yet
undiscovered cavern underneath the Eildons, waiting with Arthur, and
Merlin, the blast of that irresistible horn which is to "peal their
proud march from Fairyland."
Mellerstain in Earlston Parish, is the burial-place of Grisell Baillie,
the Polwarth heroine and songstress, and author of the plaintive "Werena
My Heart Licht I wad Dee." Cowdenknowes, "where Homes had ance
commanding," one of the really classical names in Border minstrelsy is
the scene of that sweetest of love lyrics, the "Broom o' the
Cowdenknowes":--
"How blithe, ilk morn, was I to see
My swain come o'er the hill!
He skipt the burn and flew to me:
I met him with good-will."
Sandyknowe, Scott's cradling-ground in romance, and Bemersyde, one of
the oldest inhabited houses in the Tweed Valley (partly peel), still
evidencing the Rhymer's couplet:--
"Tyde what may betyde,
Haig shall be Haig of Bemersyde,--"
are both in the near neighbourhood.
A charming bit of country road lies between Earlston and Dryburgh,
passing Redpath, the Park, Gladswood, and round by Bemersyde Hill, from
which Scott had his favourite view of the Tweed--the "beautiful bend"
shrining the site of the original Melrose, and the graceful Eildons--and
by which his funeral procession wended its mournful way just
seventy-four years ago. Half-way between Earlston and Melrose (by road
4-1/2 miles), and close to
"Drygrange with the milk-white yowes,
Twixt Tweed and Leader standing,"
the latter stream blends its waters with those of the Tweed, where the
foliage is ever at its thickest and greenest; and looking up the glen
towards Newstead and Melrose, another vision of rare beauty meets the
eye. Framed in the tall piers of the railway viaduct (150 feet
high)--not at all a disfigurement--the gracefully-bending Tweed, no more
fair than here, with the smoke rising above the Abbeyed town, Eildon in
the foreground, and the blue barrier of the hills beyond, make up a
picture such as may come to us in dreams.
VII. LIDDESDALE
_From the Author's chapter in Cassell's "British Isles."_ (_By
permission._)
The Liddel rises in the Cheviot range, close to Jedhead, at an altitude
of six hundred and fifty feet above sea level, and after a course of
seven-and-twenty miles, with a fall of five hundred and forty-five feet,
it joins the Esk at the Moat of Liddel, below Canonbie, near the famous
Netherby Hall, twelve miles north of Carlisle and about eight from
Langholm. It is fed by a score of affluents, of which the chief are the
Hermitage and Kershope Waters, the latter constituting for nine miles or
so the immediate boundary between the two countries. From its
geographical position as cut off from the main division of the county,
Liddesdale has little in common with the valleys of the Tweed and
Teviot. A Liddesdaler, for instance, seldom crosses over to Tweedside,
nor can a Tweedsider be said to have other than a comparatively slight
acquaintanceship with his southern neighbour of the shire. Indeed,
Liddesdale has been described as belonging in some respects more to
England than to Scotland, and in a sense, it may be said to be the very
centre of the Border Country itself.
PLATE 25
CAERLAVEROCK CASTLE
FROM A WATER-COLOUR SKETCH
PAINTED BY
JAMES ORROCK, R.I.
[Illustration]
If now-a-days one may roam through Liddesdale with some degree of
comfort, it was a very different matter for Scott and Shortreed little
more than a hundred years since. They knew scarcely anything of the
district, which lay to them, as was said, "like some unkenned-of isle
ayont New Holland." But Scott was bent on his Minstrelsy
ballad-huntings. And it was the very inaccessibility of the Liddel glens
which inspired him with the hope of treasure. For seven autumns in
succession they "raided" Liddesdale, as Scott phrased it, and, as he
anticipated, some of the finest specimens in the Minstrelsy were the
outcome of these excursions. Evidence of the utter solitariness and
roadlessness of the region is found in the fact that no wheeled vehicle
had been seen in Liddesdale till the advent of Scott's gig about 1798.
Nor was there a single inn or public-house to be met with in the whole
valley. Lockhart describes how the travellers passed "from the
shepherd's hut to the minister's manse, and again from the cheerful
hospitality of the manse to the rough and jolly welcome of the
homestead, gathering wherever they went songs and tunes and occasionally
more tangible relics of antiquity." But a hundred years have wrought
wondrous transformation on the wild wastes of the Liddel. The
"impenetrable savage land" of Scott's day, trackless and bridgeless, is
now singularly well opened up to civilisation and the modern tripper.
The Waverley Route of the North British Railway passes down the valley
within a few miles of its best-known landmarks. The Road Committees are
careful as to their duty, and a well-developed series of coaching tours
has proved exceedingly popular. From a miserable expanse of bleak moors
and quaking moss-hags, the greater portion of lower Liddesdale, at
least, has passed into a picturesque combination of moor and woodland
with rich pastoral holms and fields in the highest state of cultivation.
But the main glory of Liddesdale is the romance that hangs over it.
There is probably no parish in Scotland--for be it remembered that
Liddesdale is virtually one parish--which could show such an
extraordinary number of peel-houses to its credit. Their ruins, or where
these have disappeared, the sites are pointed out with surprising
frequency. A distinctively Border district, this was to be expected, and
the like is true of the English side also. A Liddesdale Keep, still in
excellent preservation--"four-square to all the winds that blow"--and
far and away the strongest and the most massive pile on the Border
frontier is Hermitage, in the pretty vale of that name, within easy
reach from Steele Road or Riccarton stations, three and four miles
respectively. Built by the Comyns in the thirteenth century, it passed
to the Soulises, the Angus Douglases, to "Bell-the-Cat" himself, the
Hepburn Bothwells, and the "bold Buccleuch," whose successor still holds
it. Legend may almost be said to be indigenous to the soil of Hermitage,
and one wonders not that Scott found his happy hunting-ground here. The
youngest child will tell us about that "Ogre" Soulis, who was so hated
by his vassals for his awful oppression of them, that at last they
boiled him alive--horrible vengeance--on the Nine-Stane Rig, a Druidic
circle near by. In part confirmation of the tragedy it is asserted that
the actual cauldron may still be seen at Dalkeith Palace. Scott was
constantly quoting the verses from Leyden's ballad:
"On a circle of stones they placed the pot,
On a circle of stones but barely nine;
They heated it red and fiery hot
Till the burnish'd brass did glimmer and shine
They rolled him up in a sheet of lead,
A sheet of lead for a funeral pall;
They plunged him in the cauldron red,
And melted him, lead, and bones, and all."
The Nine-Stane Rig is the scene also of the fragmentary "Barthram's
Dirge"--a clever Surtees forgery undetected by Scott. Leyden's second
Hermitage ballad--two of the best in the "Minstrelsy"--deals with the
Cout or Chief of Keeldar, in Northumberland, done to death by the "Ogre"
in the Cout's Pool close to the Castle. In the little God's-acre at
Hermitage the Cout's grave is pointed out (Keeldar also shows what
purports to be the Cout's resting-place). Memories of Mary and Bothwell
come to us, too, at Hermitage. Here the wounded Warden of the Marches
was visited by the infatuated Queen, who rode over from Jedburgh to see
him, returning the same day--a rough roundabout of fifty miles--which
all but cost her life. Dalhousie's Dungeon, in the north-east tower,
recalls the tragic end of one of the bravest and best men of his
time--Sir Alexander Ramsay, of Dalhousie, who was starved to death at
the instance of Liddesdale's Black Knight, here anything but the "Flower
of Chivalry." One may wander all over the Hermitage and Liddel valleys
without ever being free from the romance-feeling which haunts them.
Relics of the Roman occupation are in abundance on every hillside--
"Many a cairn's grey pyramid,
Where urns of mighty chiefs lie hid."
This was the homeland of the Elliots, "lions of Liddesdale," and the
sturdy Armstrongs, of the crafty Nixons and Croziers--"thieves all":
"Fierce as the wolf they rushed to seize their prey:
The day was all their night, the night their day."
It is to be regretted that so few of the dozens of clan-strengths which
at one time studded the district are any longer in evidence. Hartsgarth,
Roan, (so named from the French Rouen), Redheugh, Mangerton--"Kinmont
Willie's" Keep--Syde--"He is weel kenned Jock o' the Syde," Copshaw
Park--the abode of "little Jock Elliot"--Westburnflat--an "Old
Mortality" name--Whithaugh, Clintwood, Hillhouse, Peel, and
Thorlieshope, have mostly all disappeared since Scott's day. A
generation more utilitarian in its tastes has arisen, and the stones
taken to set up dykes and fill drains. Near the junction of the Liddel
and Hermitage stood the strongly posted Castle of the "Lords of Lydal,"
and the important township of Castleton--not unlike the Roxburghs
between Tweed and Teviot; and, like them also, both have long since
passed from the things that are. Only the worn pedestal of its
"mercat-cross" and a lone kirkyard have been left to tell the tale. Two
miles farther down is the village of Newcastleton, formerly Copshawholm,
planned by the "good Duke Henry" in 1793, a rising summer resort with a
population of about a thousand.
We cannot quit Liddesdale without recalling that this is "Dandie
Dinmont's" Country. In writing "Guy Mannering" Scott drew largely from
his earlier experiences amongst the honest-souled store-farmers and
poetry-loving peasants of Liddelside. At Millburn, on the Hermitage, he
enjoyed the hospitality of kindly Willie Elliot, who stood for the
"great original" of "Dandie Dinmont."
THE END.
PRINTED AND BOUND BY PERCY LUND, HUMPHRIES AND CO., LTD., THE COUNTRY
PRESS, BRADFORD; AND 3, AMEN CORNER, LONDON, E.C.
* * * * *
Transcriber's note:
Minor spelling and typographical errors have been corrected without
note. The missing Plate number for Plate 11 has been re-instated.