I. Wat of Harden. Harden means 'the ravine of hares.' It is a glen
down which a little brook flows to join the river Borthwick, itself a
tributary of the Teviot, six miles west of Hawick, and just opposite
Branxholm. So long as Sir Walter retained his vigorous habits, he
made a yearly pilgrimage to it, with whatever friend happened to be
his guest at the time. [44]
Wat's wife, Mary, the Flower of Yarrow, is said to have chiefly
owed her celebrity to the love of an English captive,--a beautiful
child whom she had rescued from the tender mercies [45] of Wat's
moss-troopers, on their return from a Cumberland foray. The youth
grew up under her protection, and is believed to have written both
the words and music of many of the best songs of the Border. [46]
This story is evidently the germ of that of the 'Lay of the last
Minstrel,' only the captivity is there of a Scottish boy to the
English. The lines describing Wat of Harden are in the 4th canto,--
"Marauding chief; his sole delight
The moonlight raid, the morning fight.
Not even the Flower of Yarrow's charms,
In youth, might tame his rage for arms;
And still in age he spurned at rest,
And still his brows the helmet pressed,
Albeit the blanchèd locks below
Were white as Dinlay's spotless snow." [47]
With these, read also the answer of the lady of Branksome, 23rd and
24th stanzas,--
"'Say to your lords of high emprize,
Who war on women and on boys,--
For the young heir of Branksome's line,
God be his aid; and God be mine:
Through me no friend shall meet his doom;
Here, while I live, no foe finds room.'
Proud she looked round, applause to claim;
Then lightened Thirlstane's eye of flame;
His bugle Watt of Harden blew.
Pensils [48] and pennons wide were flung,
To heaven the Border slogan rung,
'St. Mary, for the young Buccleugh.'"
Let us stop here to consider what good there may be in all this for
us. The last line, "St. Mary for the young Buccleugh," probably sounds
absurd enough to you. You have nothing whatever to do, you think,
with either of these personages. You don't care for any St. Mary;
and still less for any, either young or old, Buccleugh?
Well, I'm sorry for you:--but if you don't care for St. Mary, the
wife of Joseph, do you care at all for St. Mary-Anne, the wife of
Joe? Have you any faith in the holiness of your own wives, who are
here, in flesh and blood? or do you verily wish them, as Mr. Mill
[49] would have it--sacrifice all pretence to saintship, as to holy
days--to follow "some more lucrative occupation than that of nursing
the baby"? And you don't care for the young Buccleugh? Cut away the
cleugh, then, and read the Buc backwards. Do you care for your own
cub as much as Sir Walter would have cared for his own beast? (see,
farther on, how he takes care of his wire-haired terrier, Spice,)
or as any beast cares for its cub? Or do you send your poor little
brat to make money for you, like your wife; as though a cock should
send his hen and chickens to pick up what they could for him; and it
were the usual law of nature that nestlings should feed the parent
birds? If that be your way of liberal modern life, believe me, the
Border faith in its Mary and its master, however servile, was not
benighted in comparison.
But the Border morals? "Marauding chief, whose sole delight," etc. Just
look for the passages indicated under the word 'theft' in my fine new
index to the first two volumes of 'Fors.' I will come back to this
point: for the present, in order to get it more clearly into your
minds, remember that the Flower of Yarrow was the chieftainess to
whom the invention of serving the empty dish with two spurs in it,
for hint to her husband that he must ride for his next dinner, is
first ascribed. Also, for comparison of the English customs of the
same time, read this little bit of a letter of Lord Northumberland's
to Henry VIII. in 1533. [50]
"Please it your most gracious Highness to be advertised that my
comptroller, with Raynold Carnaby, desired licence of me to invade
the realm of Scotland, to the annoyance of your Highness's enemies,
and so they did meet upon Monday before night, at Warhope, upon North
Tyne water, to the number of 1500 men: and so invaded Scotland, at the
hour of eight of the clock at night, and actively did set upon a town
[51] called Branxholm, where the Lord of Buccleugh dwelleth, albeit
that knight he was not at home. And so they burnt the said Branxholm,
and other towns, and had ordered themselves so that sundry of the
said Lord Buccleugh's servants, who did issue forth of his gates,
were taken prisoners. They did not leave one house, one stack of corn,
nor one sheaf without the gate of the said Lord Buccleugh unburnt;
and so in the breaking of the day receded homeward. And thus, thanks
be to God, your Highness's subjects, about the hour of twelve of the
clock the same day, came into this, your Highness's realm, bringing
with them above forty Scotsmen prisoners, one of them named Scott,
of the surname and kin of the said Lord of Buccleugh. And of his
household they brought also three hundred nowte" (cattle), "and above
sixty horses and mares, keeping in safety from loss or hurt all your
said Highness's subjects."
They had met the evening before on the North Tyne, under Carter Fell;
(you will find the place partly marked as "Plashett's coal-fields"
in modern atlases;) rode and marched their twenty miles to Branxholm;
busied themselves there, as we hear, till dawn, and so back thirty
miles down Liddesdale,--a fifty miles' ride and walk altogether,
all finished before twelve on Tuesday: besides what pillaging and
burning had to be done.
Now, but one more point is to be noticed, and we will get on with
our genealogy.
After this bit of the Earl's letter, you will better understand
the speech of the Lady of Buccleugh, defending her castle in the
absence of her lord, and with her boy taken prisoner. And now
look back to my 25th letter, for I want you not to forget Alice of
Salisbury. King Edward's first sight of her was just after she had
held her castle exactly in this way, against a raid of the Scots
in Lord Salisbury's absence. Edward rode night and day to help her;
and the Scots besiegers, breaking up at his approach, this is what
follows, which you may receive on Froissart's telling as the vital
and effectual truth of the matter. A modern English critic will
indeed always and instantly extinguish this vital truth; there is
in it something inherently detestable to him; thus the editor of
Johnes' Froissart prefaces this very story with "the romance--for it
is nothing more." Now the labyrinth of Crete, and the labyrinth of
Woodstock, are indeed out of sight; and of a real Ariadne or Rosamond,
a blockhead might be excused for doubting; but St. George's Chapel
at Windsor--(or Winde-Rose, as Froissart prettily transposes it,
like Adriane for Ariadne) is a very visible piece of romance; and the
stones of it were laid, and the blue riband which your queen wears on
her breast is fastened, to this day, by the hand of Alice of Salisbury.
"So the King came at noon; and angry he was to find the Scots gone;
for he had come in such haste that all his people and horses were
dead-tired and toiled. So every one went to rest; and the King, as
soon as he was disarmed, took ten or twelve knights with him, and went
towards the castle to salute the Countess, and see how the defence had
been made. So soon as the Lady of Salisbury knew of the King's coming,
she made all the gates be opened," (inmost and outmost at once,) "and
came out, so richly dressed that every one was wonderstruck at her, and
no one could cease looking at her, nor from receiving, as if they had
been her mirrors, the reflection of her great nobleness, and her great
beauty, and her gracious speaking and bearing herself. When she came to
the King, she bowed down to the earth, over against him, in thanking
him for his help, and brought him to the castle, to delight him and
honour him--as she who well knew how to do it. Every one looked at her,
even to amazement, and the King himself could not stop looking at her,
for it seemed to him that in the world never was lady who was so much
to be loved as she. So they went hand in hand into the castle, and the
Lady led him first into the great hall, and then into her own chamber,
(what the French now call a pouting-room, but the ladies of that day
either smiled or frowned, but did not pout,) which was nobly furnished,
as befitted such lady. And always the King looked at the gentle Lady,
so hard that she became all ashamed. When he had looked at her a long
while, he went away to a window, to lean upon it, and began to think
deeply. The Lady went to cheer the other knights and squires; then
ordered the dinner to be got ready, and the room to be dressed. When
she had devised all, and commanded her people what seemed good to her,
she returned with a gladsome face before the King,"--in whose presence
we must leave her yet awhile, having other matters to attend to.
So much for Wat of Harden's life then, and his wife's. We shall get
a little faster on with the genealogy after this fair start.