If local tradition might be accepted as a guide, we should find that
Arthur the King lived there once on a time. But surely another Arthur
than him of whom Tennyson sang. One,
"Not like that Arthur, who, with lance in rest,
From spur to plume a star of tournament,
Shot through the lists at Camelot, and charged
Before the eyes of ladies and of kings,"
but a being even more mythical than that Arthur to whom, with his
knights, legend assigns so many last resting-places--in that vast hall
beneath the triple peak of Eildon, here in a cavern below the rocks at
Sewingshields, and in many a spot besides. This Arthur of Sewingshields
in his feats was indeed more akin to the old Norse gods and heroes. And
it is told that, as he talked with his Queen one day when they sat on
those great rocks to the north of the castle, which still bear as names
the King's and the Queen's Crag, Guinevere chanced to let fall a remark
which angered Arthur; whereupon he, snatching up a rock that lay ready
to his hand, hurled it at his royal consort. Now, Guinevere at the
moment was combing her long, fair locks; but she saw the stone come
hurtling through the air, and, with remarkable presence of mind and
dexterity, with her comb she fended off the missile, so that it fell
between them, doing no harm. And if anyone should presume to disbelieve
this tale, there lies the rock to this day, and the marks of the teeth
of the Queen's comb are on it still for all to see. The distance that
the King hurled this missile is not above a quarter of a mile, and the
pebble itself may weigh a trifle of twenty tons or so.
Local tradition tells also how once on a time there came to
Sewingshields, to visit Arthur, a great chieftain from the wild north,
one named Cumin. And when Cumin departed from the castle to go back to
his own land, he bore with him a certain gold cup that Arthur, in token
of friendship, had given to him. But sundry of the King's retainers,
having learned that the Scot was bearing away with him this cup, greatly
desired that they might themselves possess it, and they pursued Cumin,
and slew him ere he had gone many miles. Wherefore Arthur caused a cross
to be erected there on the spot where the slain man fell; and the place
is called Cumming's Cross to this day.
Of the building of the castle of Sewingshields, or Seven-shields, there
is the legend told in _Harold the Dauntless_:
"The Druid Urien had daughters seven,
Their skill could call the moon from heaven;
So fair their forms and so high their fame,
That seven proud kings for their suitors came.
King Mador and Rhys came from Powis and Wales,
Unshorn was their hair, and unpruned were their nails;
From Strath-Clywd came Ewain, and Ewain was lame,
And the red-bearded Donald from Galloway came.
Lot, King of Lodon, was hunchback'd from youth,
Dunmail of Cumbria had never a tooth;
But Adolph of Bambrough, Northumberland's heir;
Was gay and was gallant, was young and was fair.
There was strife 'mongst the sisters, for each one would have
For husband King Adolph, the gallant and brave;
And envy bred hate, and hate urged them to blows,
When the firm earth was cleft, and the Arch-fiend arose!
He swore to the maidens their wish to fulfil--
They swore to the foe they would work by his will,
A spindle and distaff to each hath he given,
'Now hearken my spell,' said the Outcast of Heaven.
'Ye shall ply these spindles at midnight hour,
And for every spindle shall rise a tower,
Where the right shall be feeble, the wrong shall have power,
And there shall ye dwell with your paramour.'
Beneath the pale moonlight they sate on the wold,
And the rhymes which they chaunted must never be told;
And as the black wool from the distaff they sped,
With blood from their bosom they moisten'd the thread.
As light danced the spindles beneath the cold gleam,
The castle arose like the birth of a dream--
The seven towers ascended like mist from the ground,
Seven portals defend them, seven ditches surround.
Within that dread castle seven monarchs were wed,
But six of the seven ere the morning lay dead;
With their eyes all on fire, and their daggers all red,
Seven damsels surround the Northumbrian's bed.
'Six kingly bridegrooms to death we have done,
Six gallant kingdoms King Adolf hath won;
Six lovely brides all his pleasure to do,
Or the bed of the seventh shall be husbandless too.'
Well chanced it that Adolf the night when he wed
Had confessed and had sain'd him ere boune to his bed;
He sprung from the couch, and his broadsword he drew,
And there the seven daughters of Urien he slew.
The gate of the castle he bolted and seal'd,
And hung o'er each arch-stone a crown and a shield;
To the cells of St. Dunstan then wended his way,
And died in his cloister an anchorite grey.
Seven monarchs' wealth in that castle lies stow'd,
The foul fiends brood o'er them like raven and toad.
Whoever shall questen these chambers within,
From curfew to matins, that treasure shall win.
But manhood grows faint as the world waxes old!
There lives not in Britain a champion so bold,
So dauntless of heart, and so prudent of brain,
As to dare the adventure that treasure to gain.
The waste ridge of Cheviot shall wave with the rye,
Before the rude Scots shall Northumberland fly,
And the flint cliffs of Bambro' shall melt in the sun
Before that adventure be perill'd and won."
Long afterwards, when Harold the Dauntless entered the castle, the seven
shields still hung where Adolf had placed them, each blazoned with its
coat of arms:
"A wolf North Wales had on his armour coat,
And Rhys of Powis-land a couchant stag;
Strath Clwyd's strange emblem was a stranded boat;
Donald of Galloway's a trotting nag;
A corn-sheaf gilt was fertile Lodon's brag;
A dudgeon-dagger was by Dunmail worn;
Northumbrian Adolf gave a sea-beat crag;
Surmounted by a cross,--such signs were borne
Upon these antique shields, all wasted now and worn."
And within the castle, in that chamber where Adolf repelled the
embarrassing advances of that most unmaidenly band of sisters, and did
"a slaughter grim and great":
"There of the witch brides lay each skeleton,
Still in the posture as to death when dight;
For this lay prone, by one blow slain outright;
And that, as one who struggles long in dying;
One bony hand held knife, as if to smite;
One bent on fleshless knees, as mercy crying;
One lay across the floor, as kill'd in act of flying."
Perhaps it is part of the wealth of those "seven monarchs" that now lies
sunken in Broomlee Lough. Did some one, greatly daring, "adventure that
treasure to win," and succeed in his attempt? Tradition tells that a
dweller in Sewingshields Castle, long ago, being compelled to flee the
country, and unable to bear away with him his hoard of gold, resolved
to sink it in the lough. Rowing, therefore, far out into deep water, he
hove overboard a chest containing all his treasure, putting on it a
spell that never should it be again seen till brought to land by aid of
"Twa twin yauds, twa twin oxen, twa twin lads, and a chain forged by a
smith of kind."
Long centuries the treasure remained unsought; yet all men might know
exactly where lay the chest beneath the waves, for it mattered not how
fierce blew the gale, above the gold the surface of the water was ever
unbroken. At last there came one who heard the tradition, and set about
the task of recovering the sunken chest. The twin horses, twin oxen, and
twin lads he procured readily enough, but to find a smith of kind was
not so easy--"a smith of kind" being a blacksmith whose ancestors for
six generations have been smiths, he himself being the seventh
generation. But this, too, at length was found, and the smith forged the
necessary length of chain. Then, taking advantage of a favourable day,
when breeze sufficient blew to reveal the tell-tale spot of calm water,
the treasure-hunter started in his boat, leaving one end of the chain on
shore and paying out fathom after fathom as his boat swept round the
calm and again reached shore. Now hitching the yauds to one end and the
oxen to the other, the animals were cautiously started by the twin
drivers. Slowly the chain swept over the bed of the lough, and
tightened, fast in something heavy that gave and came shoreward in the
bight of the chain. Cannily the drivers drove, and ever came the weight
nearer to dry land. Already the treasure-seeker in his boat, peering
eagerly down into the quiet water, fancied that he was a made man; he
could almost _see_ that box. But a few more yards and it was his. Alas!
In his eagerness to secure "a smith of kind" he had made insufficient
inquiries into that smith's ancestry. There was (as he discovered when
too late) a flaw in his pedigree! Some ancestress, it was said, could
not show her marriage lines, or something else was wrong. At any rate,
there was a flaw, and that was sufficient to upset the whole thing, for
the chain, not being made by a smith of kind, was of course not of the
true temper. Hence, just when success was about to crown their efforts,
the horses made a violent plunge forward--and the chain parted at a
weak link! No further attempts to ascertain the exact bearings of that
box have ever been successful. It is, as of old, at the bottom of the
lough--at least so says tradition.
And Sewingshields Castle is now no longer a castle; its very vaults and
its walls have disappeared.
"No towers are seen
On the wild heath, but those that Fancy builds,
And save a fosse that tracks the moor with green,
Is nought remains to tell of what may there have been."
THE KIDNAPPING OF LORD DURIE
"It is commonly reported that some party, in a considerable action
before the Session, finding that Lord Durie could not be persuaded to
think his plea good, fell upon a stratagem to prevent the influence and
weight which his lordship might have to his prejudice, by causing some
strong masked men to kidnap him, in the Links of Leith, at his diversion
on a Saturday afternoon, and transport him to some blind and obscure
room in the country, where he was detained captive, without the benefit
of daylight, a matter of three months (though otherwise civilly and well
entertained); during which time his lady and children went in mourning
for him as dead. But after the cause aforesaid was decided, the Lord
Durie was carried back by incognitos, and dropt in the same place where
he had been taken up." (Forbes's _Journal of the Session_, Edinburgh,
1714.)
With the early part of the seventeenth century, moss-trooping in the
Border country had not yet come to an end. Its glory, no doubt, and its
glamour, had begun to fade before even the sixteenth century was far
spent, and where were now to be found heroes such as the far-famed
Johnnie Armstrong of Gilnockie? Yet, as a few stout-hearted leaves,
defiant of autumn's fury, will cling to the uttermost branches of a
forest tree, so, in spite of King or Court, there were even now some
reckless souls, scornful of new-fangled modern ways and more than
content to follow in the footsteps of their grandsires, who still held
fast to precept and practice of what seemed to them "the good old days."
It is true their reiving partook now somewhat more of the nature of
horse-stealing pure and simple. No longer were fierce raids over the
English Border permissible; not now could they, practically with
impunity, "drive" the cattle of those with whom they were at feud, and
live on the stolen beeves of England till such time as the larder again
grew bare. The times were sadly degenerate; Border men all too quickly
were becoming soft and effeminate.
Yet in Eskdale there was one patriot, at least, who boasted himself that
as his fathers had been, so was he. Willie Armstrong of Gilnockie was
that man--"Christie's Will," he was commonly called, a great-grandson of
the famous Johnnie, and not unworthy of his descent. Had he lived when
Johnnie flourished, there might indeed have been two Armstrongs equally
famous. As it was, Willie spent his days at constant feud with the law,
and even the strong walls of Gilnockie were not for him always a secure
shelter. Once it befell that the Lord High Treasurer of Scotland, the
Earl of Traquair, visiting Jedburgh, there found Willie lying in the
"tolbooth."
"Now, what's broucht ye to this, Gilnockie?" the Earl inquired.
"Oh, nocht but having twa bit tethers in my hand, my lord," said Willie.
But: "Weel, I wadna say but there micht mebbes hae been twa cowt at the
tae end o' the tethers," he admitted, on being pressed by the Earl.
Now, it happened that Willie was well known to Lord Traquair--had, in
fact, more than once been of considerable service to his lordship; and
it was no failing of the Earl to desert a friend in trouble, if help
might be given quietly and judiciously. So it came about that the prison
gates swung back for Christie's Will, the halter no longer threatened
his neck, and Lord Traquair acquired a follower who to repay his debt of
gratitude would stick at nothing.
Some little time later it chanced that a great lawsuit fell to be
decided in the Court of Session. In this lawsuit Lord Traquair was
deeply concerned. A verdict in his favour was of vital importance to
him, but he very well knew that the opinion of the presiding judge was
likely to be unfavourable to his claim, and that should Lord Durie
preside, the case in that event would almost certainly go against him.
Could that judge, however, by any means be quietly spirited away from
Edinburgh before the date fixed for the trial, with almost equal
certainty he might count on a favourable verdict. In this predicament
Lord Traquair turned his thoughts to Christie's Will; if anyone could
aid him it must be the bold Borderer.
"'Bethink how ye sware, by the salt and the bread,
By the lightning, the wind, and the rain,
That if ever of Christie's Will I had need,
He would pay me my service again.'"
And Lord Traquair did not plead in vain. It was a little thing to do,
Will thought, for one who had saved him from the gallows tree.
"'O mony a time, my lord,' he said,
'I've stown the horse frae the sleeping loon;
But for you I'll steal a beast as braid,
For I'll steal Lord Durie frae Edinboro toon.'"
* * * * *
A light northerly breeze piped shrill through the long bent grass beyond
Leith Links, sweeping thin and nippingly across shining sands left bare
by a receding tide; down by the rippling water-line, as the sun of a
late spring day neared his setting, clamouring gulls bickered noisily
over the possession of some fishy dainty. Out from near-lying patches of
whin, and from the low, wind-blown sand-hills, rabbits stole warily,
nibbling the short herbage now and then, but ever with an air of
suspicion and manifest unease, for behind a big clump of whin, during
half the day there had lain hid a thick-set, powerfully built man.
"De'il tak' the body!" he grumbled, sitting up and stretching himself as
he glanced along the beach; "he's lang o' comin'."
As he gazed, the sight of a distant horseman riding westward brought him
sharply to his feet, and snatching up a long cloak that lay by his side,
he walked leisurely through the yielding sand till he reached the firm
beach within tide mark, along which the horseman was now quietly
cantering.
"Ye'll be Lord Durie, I'm thinkin'," he cried, raising his hand to stay
the rider, a middle-aged, legal-faced man, who sat his sober steed none
too confidently, with thighs but lightly wed to the saddle.
"Yes, I'm Lord Durie. What can I do for you?"
"Weel, my lord, I've come far to see ye. They say there's no' a lawyer
leevin' or deid that kens mair nor you on a' thing. It's jist a bit plea
that I've gotten," said the man, laying a hand on the horse's neck and
sidling along close to his rider's knee.
"For onny advice on kittle points o' law, ye maun go to counsel, my
friend. I'm a judge, no' an advocate. Gude e'en to ye."
"Ay, but, my lord," said the man, laying a detaining left hand on the
near rein, "it's this way it is; ye see--" and at that, with a sudden
powerful upward push of the unskilled rider's leg, Lord Durie was hurled
from the saddle and lay sprawling on his back on the wet sand, as the
horse sprang forward with a startled bound.
"Goad's sake! what's this o't?" cried the poor judge, already tangled in
the folds of the long cloak, and struggling to rise. "Wad ye murder are
o' his Majesty's judges!"
"Lie still, my lord, lie still! There's no skaith will come to ye 'gin
ye but lie still. De'il's i' the body; wull the auld lurdane no hand
sae!"
Of small avail were the judge's struggles; as well might an infant
struggle in the folds of a python. Ere even an elderly man's scant
breath was quite spent, he lay among the whins, bound hand and foot,
trussed like a fowl, and with the upper part of his body and his head
wrapped in the stifling folds of the great cloak.
That was the last of the outer world that Lord Durie knew or saw for
many a long day. His horse, with muddied saddle, and broken reins
trailing on the ground (muddied and broken, no doubt, by the horse
rolling), was found next day grazing on the links. But of the judge, no
trace. He might--as some, with the superstition of the day, were
disposed to believe[1]--have been spirited away by a warlock; or,
perhaps, even like Thomas the Rhymer, he had vanished into Fairyland.
Tidings of him there were none. The flowing waters of the Forth had
effectually wiped out his horse's tracks along the shore, and during the
night a rising wind had effaced the footsteps of his captor in the dry
loose sand between tide-mark and links. Thus every trace of him was
lost. His body, maybe, might have drifted out to sea; perhaps it lay now
by the rocks of some lonely shore, or on the sands, with mouth a-wash
and dead hands playing idly with the lapping water. Wife and family
mourned as for one dead. And after the first nine days' wonder, even in
Parliament House and Law Courts, for lack of food speculation as to his
fate languished and died. A successor filled his office.
[1: In the seventeenth century belief in witchcraft was almost at its
height over the whole of Europe, and in Scotland the hunt after witches
and warlocks was peculiarly vindictive. To obtain confession, the most
incredible tortures--as cruel as anything practised by Red Indians on
their prisoners--were inflicted on accused persons, men and women, and
escape was seldom possible for these poor creatures. Nor were such
beliefs and practices confined to the benighted times of the seventeenth
century. Even as late as 1722, in Sutherlandshire, a woman was burned
for witchcraft. Her crime was that she had transformed her own daughter
into a pony, and had ridden her throughout an entire night. Conclusive
proof of the charge was found in the fact that the poor woman's daughter
was lame afterwards both in hands and feet.
Nothing was too absurd, no charge too wicked or too childish, to obtain
universal belief in those times.]
Meantime, bound to the saddle in front of his captor, by little-known
hill paths the judge had been borne swiftly through the night. The long,
melancholy wail of a whaup, the eerie hoot of an owl, at times smote
dully on his ear; but to all his entreaties and his questions no human
voice made answer; in stony silence his abductor rode steadily on. Over
hill and dale, over rough ground and smooth, splashing through marshy
soil where the hoofs of the heavily laden horse sucked juicily, through
burns, and across sodden peaty moor where the smell of swamp rose rank
on the night air, they floundered; and once the homely smell of peat
reek told the unhappy judge that they passed within hail of some human
dwelling. But throughout the night he saw nothing, and gradually the
long strain, the discomfort of being pitched forward or back as the
horse scrambled up or down where the ground was extra rough and broken,
the pain of sitting half in, half out, of a saddle, told upon a frame
unaccustomed to much exercise, and at intervals he wholly or partially
lost consciousness. Thus unutterably distressed in body and broken in
spirit, in one of these partial lapses it seemed to the judge--as it
might be in some disordered nightmare--that there came a respite from
the torment of ceaseless motion, and that by means of some unknown
agency he lay in heavenly peace, stretched full length on a couch or
bed. He thought--or did he dream?--that he had heard, as it were far
off, the muffled trairip of feet and the murmur of low voices; and it
seemed almost as if his body, after falling from some vast height, had
been lifted and gently swung in the air. But exhaustion of mind and body
was so great that the problem of what might be happening was quite
beyond solution; let him only rest and sleep.
Then, later, it seemed to him that he woke from broken, tossing
slumber. But it was dark, and he fell again into an uneasy doze, in
which every muscle and bone in his harassed old body ached pitifully,
every spot of sorely chafed skin stung and burned, till the multitude of
pains put an end to sleep. Where was he, and how had he got there? On a
low couch, free and unbound, he lay; by his side, on a rude table, was
food and a jack of small-beer. Whether the time was morning or evening
he could not tell, but it was very dark; what little light entered the
room came through a narrow slit, high up in the wall, and all things
smelled strangely of damp. Somewhere he could hear faintly a slow,
shuffling step and the rustle of a dress; then the mew of a cat. Where
was he?
Few, very few, persons at that day were above the weakness of a firm
belief in witchcraft; even a judge of the Court of Session would not
dare openly to question the justice and humanity of the Mosaical law:
"Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live." Superstition was rampant, and
to Lord Durie there had ever seemed nothing incongruous in accepting
belief in the undoubted existence of both witches and warlocks. Could it
be that he was now actually in the power of such beings? His mind was
yet in a whirl, and he could form to himself no connected account of
yesterday's happenings, if indeed it was really yesterday, and not in
some remote, far-away time, that he had last ridden along the sands of
Leith. Thirst consumed him, but he hesitated to drink; if he were now in
the hands of those wretches who, it was well known, that they might work
evil sold themselves to the Prince of Darkness, then might it not be
that by voluntarily drinking, his soul would be delivered into the
clutches of the Evil One? The thought brought him painfully to his feet
with many a groan, and roused him to a careful examination of his gloomy
prison. Rough stone walls, oozing damp, an earthen floor, three stone
steps leading up to a heavy iron-studded door in a corner of the room;
and nothing else. The one small window was far out of his reach. A
feeling of faintness crept over him; it might be a wile of Satan, or a
spell cast over him by supernatural powers, but the time was past for
hesitation, and he drank a great draught from the jack, sank feebly on
the couch, and slept profoundly.
When the judge again awoke it was in a prison somewhat less gloomy, for
a thin splash of pale sunlight now struck the wall, and gave light
sufficient to show every corner of the room. Again Lord Durie went
through his fruitless search, and then, feeling hungry, and having
suffered no visible ill effects from his first incautious draught of
small-beer, he ate and drank heartily. From the way in which the patch
of sunlight crept up the wall, it was easy to tell that the time was
evening. Could it indeed be that no more than twenty-four hours back he
had ridden, secure and free from this horrible care, along the shining
sands by the crisp salt wavelets of the Forth?
What was that voice that he now heard, thin and hollow, on the evening
air? "Far yaud! far yaud!" and then, with eldritch scream, "_Bauty_," it
cried. Such sounds, coming from he knew not where, fell disturbingly on
the unaccustomed ears of a seventeenth-century Judge of Session, and
Lord Durie's sleep that night was broken by grim dreams.
Day followed day, week pressed on the heels of week, and still never a
human face smiled on the unhappy judge. Each morning he found on his
little table a supply of food and drink, all good of their kind and
plenty--boiled beef or mutton, oaten cakes, pease bannocks, and always
the jack of small-beer--but never did he see human hand place them
there, never did human form cheer him by its presence.