[Illustration:
ON THE WHARFE--BOLTON ABBEY.
W.H.J. BOOT R.B.A. DELT C.O. MURRAY SCULPT]
_THE WHARFE, FROM BOLTON ABBEY.--A few signed Artist's Proofs of
this Etching on India paper can be obtained, price £1 1s. each, on
application to the Publishers_,
CASSELL & COMPANY, LIMITED, Ludgate Hill, London.
THE
RIVERS OF GREAT BRITAIN
DESCRIPTIVE HISTORICAL PICTORIAL
_RIVERS OF THE EAST COAST_
[Illustration]
CASSELL & COMPANY LIMITED
_LONDON PARIS NEW YORK & MELBOURNE_
1889
[ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.]
[Illustration]
CONTENTS.
THE HIGHLAND DEE.--_By FRANCIS WATT._
PAGE
The Source: Larig and Garchary Burns--In the Heart of the
Cairngorm Mountains--Ben Macdhui and Braeriach--"A Fery Fulgar
Place"--A Highland Legend--The Linn of Dee--Byron's Narrow
Escape--The Floods of 1829--Lochnagar and Mary Duff--Influence
of the Dee on Byron--Braemar and the Rising of '15--Corriemulzie
and its Linn--Balmoral--The "Birks" of Abergeldie--Their
Transplantation by Burns--What is Collimankie?--Ballater: the
Slaying of "Brave Brackley"--Craigendarroch--The Reel of Tullich
and the Origin Thereof--The Legend of St. Nathdan--Mythological
Parallels--The Muich--Morven: the Centre of Highland Song and
Legend--Birse--Lunphanan Wood--The Battle of Corrichie--Queen Mary
and Sir John Gordon--At Aberdeen 1
THE TAY.--_By JOHN GEDDIE._
The Tiber and the Tay--History and Legend--Perthshire and the
Tay--The Moor of Rannoch--Blair--Pitlochrie--Killin--Kenmore--The
Lyon--The "Rock of Weem"--The "Birks" of Aberfeldy--Dunkeld
and Birnam--Invertuthil--The Loch of Clunie--The
Isla--Strathmore--Dunsinane Hill--Scone and the
Ruthvens--Perth--The Views from Moncrieffe and Kinnoull--Strathearn
and the Carse of Gowrie--Dundee--The Tay Bridge, New and Old--View
from the "Law"--"Men of Blood" and Men of Business 17
THE FORTH.--_By JOHN GEDDIE._
Comparative--Poetry, Romance, and History--Loch Ard
and Flora McIvor--The "Clachan of Aberfoyle"--Lake of
Menteith--The Trossachs and Loch Katrine--Ellen and
Helen--Loch Achray--Ben Ledi--The View from Stirling
Castle--Stirling Town--Bannockburn--The Ochils and the Devon
Valley--Alloa--Clackmannan--Kincardine-on-Forth--Tulliallan
Castle--Culross: Abbey and Burgh--The "Standard
Stone"--Torryburn--Rosyth Castle--"St. Margaret's
Hope"--Dunfermline: Tower, Palace, and Abbey--The New Forth
Bridge--Inch Garvie and its Castle--Inverkeithing Bay--Donibristle
House--Aberdour--Inchcolm, Cramond, Inchkeith, and May Islands--The
Bass Rock--Kirkcaldy Bay--Edinburgh--Leith--Seton--Aberlady--Round
to North Berwick--Tantallon Castle 41
THE TWEED.--_By W. W. HUTCHINGS._
CHAPTER I.--FROM BERWICK TO KELSO.--Leading Characteristics--The
View from Berwick--Lindisfarne--The History and Present State of
Berwick--Norham Castle and Marmion--Ladykirk--Tillmouth--Twisell
Castle and Bridge--Ford Castle and Flodden--Coldstream--Wark
Castle--Hadden Rig 72
CHAPTER II.--FROM KELSO TO TWEEDSWELL.--Kelso and
its Abbey--Roxburghe Castle--Floors Castle--The
Teviot--Ancrum--Carlenrig--The Ale--The Jed and
Jedburgh--Mertoun--Smailholm Tower and Sandyknowe--Eildon
and Sir Michael Scott--Dryburgh--The Leader and Thomas
the Rhymer--Melrose--Skirmish Hill--Abbotsford--The
Ettrick and the Yarrow--Ashestiel--Innerleithen--Horsburgh
Castle--Peebles--Neidpath--Manor--Drummelzier--The Crook
Inn--Tweedswell 90
THE COQUET.--_By AARON WATSON._
The Fisherman's River--"Awa' to the
Border"--Peat-Hags--Eel-Fishing--Alwinton and Harbottle--The
Village of Rothbury--Brinkburn Priory--Weldon Bridge and
Felton--Warkworth Hermitage and Castle--The Town of Amble--Coquet
Isle 113
THE TYNE.--_By AARON WATSON._
CHAPTER I.--THE NORTH TYNE.--Peel Fell--Deadwater Bog--Keilder
Castle and the Keilder Moors--The Border Peel--Border Feuds and
Friendships--The Charltons--Bellingham--The Reed--Tyne Salmon--The
Village of Wark--Chipchase Castle--Haughton Castle and the
Swinburnes--Chollerford and the Roman Wall--The Meeting of the
Waters 129
CHAPTER II.--THE SOUTH TYNE.--On the "Fiend's Fell"--Tyne
Springs--Garrigill--Alston and the Moors--Knaresdale Hall--The
Ridleys--Haltwhistle--Allendale--Haydon Bridge and John Martin--The
Arthurian Legends 143
CHAPTER III.--FROM HEXHAM TO NEWCASTLE.--Hexham and the Abbey
Church--Dilston Hall--The Derwentwater Rising--Corbridge--Bywell
Woods--Prudhoe and Ovingham--Stephenson's Birthplace--Ryton and
Newburn--The Approach to Newcastle 150
CHAPTER IV.--FROM NEWCASTLE TO THE SEA.--The Growth of
Tyneside--"The Coaly Tyne"--Newcastle Bridges--Local
Industries--Poetical Eulogies--Tyneside Landscapes--Sandgate
and the Keelmen--Wallsend--Jarrow and the Venerable Bede--The
Docks--Shields Harbour--North and South Shields--The Tyne
Commission--Tynemouth Priory--The Open Sea 157
THE WEAR.--_By JOHN GEDDIE._
William of Malmesbury on the Wear--Its Associations--Upper
Weardale and its Inhabitants--Stanhope--Hunting the
Scots--Wolsingham--Bollihope Fell and the "Lang
Man's Grave"--Hamsterley--Witton-le-Wear--Bishop
Auckland--Binchester--Brancepeth Castle--The View from
Merrington Church Tower--Wardenlaw--Durham--St. Cuthbert--His
Movements during Life and Afterwards--The Growth of his
Patrimony--Bishop Carilepho and his Successors--The Battle of
Neville's Cross--The Bishopric in Later Times--The Cathedral,
Without and Within--The Conventual Buildings--The Castle--Bear
Park--Ushaw--Finchale--Chester-le-Street--Lumley and Lambton
Castles--Biddick--Hylton--Sunderland and the Wearmouths--The North
Sea 173
THE TEES.--_By AARON WATSON._
Among the Fells--The Weel--Caldron Snout--High Force--Gibson's
Cave--Bow Leys--Middleton-in-Teesdale--The Lune and the
Balder--Scandinavian Names--Cotherstone Cheese--History
in Teesdale--Scott's Description of the Tees--Egliston
Abbey--Greta Bridge--Dickens and Mr. Squeers--Brignal Banks and
Rokeby--The Village of Ovington--Gainford--Pierce Bridge--High
and Low Coniscliffe--Croft--Yarm--The Industries of the
Tees--Stockton--Middlesbrough--The Sea 197
THE HUMBER AND ITS TRIBUTARIES.
_By the REV. CANON BONNEY, D.Sc., F.R.S._
CHAPTER I.--THE TRENT, FROM THE SOURCE TO NEWTON SOLNEY.--The
Course of the Trent--A Lowland Stream--Etymological--A
Fish-Stream--The Source--The Potteries--Burslem,
Etruria, and Josiah Wedgwood--Stoke-upon-Trent--Trentham
Hall--Stone--Sandon--Chartley Castle--Ingestre and its
Owners--The Sow--Tixall--Essex Bridge--Shugborough--Cannock
Chase--Rugeley--Beaudesert--Armitage--The Blyth--Alrewas--The
Tame--Burton-upon-Trent--Newton Solney 221
_By EDWARD BRADBURY._
CHAPTER II.--THE DOVE.--What's in the Name--Axe Edge and
Dove Head--The Monogram--Glutton Mill--Hartington--Beresford
Dale--Pike Pool--Izaak Walton and Charles Cotton--Beresford
Hall--Dove Dale--Its Associations--Ilam--The
Manifold--Ashbourne--Doveridge--Uttoxeter--Sudbury--Tutbury--The
Confluence 240
_By CANON BONNEY._
CHAPTER III.--THE TRENT, FROM NEWTON SOLNEY TO THE DERWENT.--Newton
Solney--Repton: the School and the Church--Swarkestone: its
Bridge and its Church--Chellaston--Donington Park and Castle
Donington--Cavendish Bridge 251
_By EDWARD BRADBURY._
CHAPTER IV.--THE DERWENT.--The Derwent in its Infancy--Derwent
Chapel and Hall--Hathersage--Eyam--Grindleford
Bridge--Chatsworth--The "Peacock" at Rowsley--Haddon Hall--The
Wye and the Lathkill--Darley Dale and its Yew-tree--The Sycamores
of Oker Hill--The Matlocks and High Tor--Cromford and Willersley
Castle--Ambergate--Belper--Derby--Elvaston 257
_By CANON BONNEY._
CHAPTER V.--THE TRENT, FROM THE DERWENT TO THE HUMBER.--The
Soar--Trent Junction--The Erewash--Gotham and its Wise Men--Clifton
Hall and Grove--Nottingham and its History--Colwich Hall and Mary
Chaworth--Sherwood Forest--Newark--Gainsborough--Axholme--The
Confluence with the Humber 277
_By W. S. CAMERON._
CHAPTER VI.--THE WHARFE.--General Characteristics--The
Skirfare--Langstrothdale--Kettlewell--Dowkabottom
Cave--Coniston and its Neighbourhood--Rylstone and the
Nortons--Burnsall--Appletreewick: an Eccentric Parson--Simon's
Seat--Barden Tower and the Cliffords--The "Strid"--Bolton Abbey and
Bolton Hall--The Bridge--Ilkley--Denton and the Fairfaxes--Farnley
Hall and Turner--Otley--Harewood--Towton Field--Kirkby
Wharfe--Bolton Percy 292
_By W. S. CAMERON._
CHAPTER VII.--THE OUSE.--The Ure and the Swale--Myton and
the "White Battle"--Nun Monckton, Overton, and Skelton--The
Nidd--York--Bishopthorpe--Selby--The Derwent--The
Aire--Howden--Goole--The Don 310
_By W. S. CAMERON._
CHAPTER VIII.--THE ESTUARY.--Drainage and Navigation--Dimensions
of the Humber--The Ferribys--Barton-upon-Humber--Hull--Paull--Sunk
Island--Spurn Point--Great Grimsby--Places of Call 320
THE RIVERS OF THE WASH.--_By CANON BONNEY._
THE WITHAM: Grantham--Lincoln--Boston.
THE NEN: Naseby--Northampton--Earls
Barton--Castle Ashby--Wellingborough--Higham
Ferrers--Thrapston--Oundle--Castor--Peterborough. THE WELLAND:
Market Harborough--Rockingham--Stamford. THE OUSE: Bedford--St.
Neots--Huntingdon--St. Ives. THE CAM: Cambridge--"Five Miles from
Anywhere"--Ely. FENS AND FENLAND TOWNS: Wisbeach--Spalding--King's
Lynn--Crowland 326
THE RIVERS OF EAST ANGLIA.--_By W. SENIOR._
THE CROUCH: Foulness--Little Barsted and
Langdon--Canewdon--Rayleigh--Hockley Spa. THE
BLACKWATER: Saffron Walden--Radwinter--Cadham Hall
and Butler--Bocking--Braintree--Felix Hall--Braxted
Lodge--Tiptree--Maldon. THE CHELMER: Thaxted--The Dunmows--Great
Waltham--Springfield--Chelmsford--Mersea Island. THE COLNE:
Great Yeldham--Castle Hedingham--Halstead--Colchester.
THE STOUR: Kedington--Sudbury--Flatford and John
Constable--Harwich. THE ORWELL: Stowmarket--Barham--Ipswich.
THE DEBEN: Debenham--Woodbridge--Felixstowe. THE
ALDE: Aldborough--Southwold--Halesworth. THE WAVENEY:
Diss--Bungay--Mettingham--Beccles--Breydon Water--Horsey Mere. THE
BURE: Hickling Broads--St. Benet's Abbey--Salhouse and Wroxham
Broads--Hoverton Great Broad--Horning Ferry--Fishing in the Broads.
THE YARE: Norwich--Yarmouth 350
[Illustration]
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS.
ON THE WHARFE--BOLTON ABBEY _Frontispiece._
_THE HIGHLAND DEE_:--
PAGES
Ben Macdhui--The Highland Dee (_Map_)--Linn of Dee--Linn of
Corriemulzie--Lochnagar--Braemar--View from the Old Bridge,
Invercauld, Braemar--Balmoral--The Castle--Abergeldie
Castle--Ballater--Aberdeen 1-16
_THE TAY_:--
Bridge of Tay, Kenmore--The Tay (_Map_)--"Birks" of
Aberfeldy--Aberfeldy, from the West--Bridge of Garry--Birnam, from
Birnam Hill--Dunsinane Hill--Scone Palace, Perth--Perth, from the
West--Tay Street, Perth--On the Firth of Tay--The New Tay Viaduct,
from the South--Dundee, from Broughty Ferry--Dundee--Broughty Ferry
Castle 17-40
_THE FORTH_:--
Ben and Loch Lomond--The Forth (_Map_)--"Ellen's Isle"--The
Trossachs and Ben Venue--Old Bridge of Forth, Stirling--Stirling,
from Abbey Craig--Alloa Pier--Salmon Fishing near
Stirling--Culross, from the Pier--Culross Abbey--Dunfermline--Forth
Bridge, from the South-West--Shore Street, Leith--Edinburgh, from
the Fife Shore--Portobello--Kirkcaldy, from the South-East--The
Bass Rock, from North Berwick--Tantallon Castle, looking
East--North Berwick, from the Harbour 41-71
_THE TWEED_:--
Berwick-on-Tweed--High Street, Berwick, with the Town Hall--The
Royal Border Bridge, Berwick--The Course of the Tweed (_Map_)--View
from the Ramparts, Berwick--Norham Castle--Junction of the
Till and the Tweed--Tillmouth House, from the Banks of the
Till--Ford Castle--Flodden Field--Twisell Bridge--Junction of
the Till and the Glen--The Glen at Coupland--Coldstream Bridge,
from up-stream--Ruins of Wark Castle--Kelso, with Rennie's
Bridge--Dryburgh Abbey, from the East--Ruins of Roxburghe
Castle--Melrose Abbey, from the South-East--Melrose Abbey: the
East Window--Abbotsford--Galashiels--Peebles, from a little below
Neidpath--Neidpath Castle--Hart Fell 72-112
_THE COQUET_:--
Among the Fells--The Course of the Coquet
(_Map_)--Harbottle--Alwinton Bridge--The Coquet at Farnham--On the
Coquet, Brinkburn--At Felton--Morwick Mill, Acklington--Warkworth
Castle--The Village of Warkworth--Hunting on Coquetside 113-128
_THE TYNE_:--
Keilder Moors (with Peel Fell to the Right)--The Course of the Tyne
(_Map_)--Keilder Castle--Greystead Bridge--Dally Castle--Bellingham
Church--Chipchase Castle--Haughton Castle--At Warden--Alston
Moor--Featherstone Castle--Featherstone Bridge--Haltwhistle--Haydon
Bridge--Hexham Abbey--Prudhoe Castle--Corbridge--Bywell
Castle--Newburn--Ovingham--The High-level Bridge at Gateshead--Coal
Trimmers--A Coal Staithe--Newcastle-on-Tyne--Quay at
Newcastle--Shields Harbour: the High Lights--The River at Tynemouth
Castle--Jarrow Church: the Saxon Tower--Tynemouth, from the
Sea--Tynemouth, from Cullercoats 129-172
_THE WEAR_:--
In Weardale--The Course of the Wear (_Map_)--Stanhope
Bridge--Rogerley--Wolsingham--Harperley--Witton-le-Wear--Bishop
Auckland Palace and Park--Willington--Brancepeth
Castle--Distant View of Durham--Durham Cathedral and
Castle--Chester-le-Street--Distant View of Lambton
Castle--Monkwearmouth Church--Looking up the River, Sunderland 173-193
_THE TEES_:--
Cross Fell--The Course of the Tees (_Map_)--High Force--From York
Side--Barnard Castle--Barnard Castle: the Town--On the Greta at
Rokeby--Junction of the Greta and the Tees--Wycliffe--Gainford
Croft--Blackwell Bridge--Yarm--Stockton--High Street,
Stockton--Ferryboat Landing, Middlesbrough--Blast Furnaces, from
the River, Middlesbrough 197-220
_THE HUMBER AND ITS TRIBUTARIES_:--
THE TRENT, FROM THE SOURCE TO NEWTON SOLNEY.--In the
Potteries--The Trent, from the Source to Newton Solney
(_Map_)--Etruria--Josiah Wedgwood--Trentham--Ingestre
Hall--Wolseley Bridge--Shugborough--Rugeley, from the Stone
Quarry--Cannock Chase, from the Trent--From the Meadows near
Alrewas--Armitage--Burton-upon-Trent 221-237
THE DOVE.--Dove Head--Map of the Dove--The Monogram at Dove
Head--The Banks of the Dove--Ilam Hall--Ashbourne Church--The
Straits, Dovedale--John of Gaunt's Gateway, Tutbury Castle 240-250
THE TRENT, FROM NEWTON SOLNEY TO THE DERWENT.--Junction of the
Trent and the Dove--Repton--The "Crow Trees," Barrow-on-Trent--The
Trent, from Newton Solney to the Derwent (_Map_)--Trent Locks 251-256
THE DERWENT.--Junction of the Derwent and the Trent--The Course
of the Derwent (_Map_)--At Ashopton, Derwentdale--Chatsworth--The
"Peacock," Rowsley--The Terrace, Haddon Hall--Haddon Hall, from
the Wye--Derwent Terrace, Matlock--The High Tor, Matlock--Matlock
Bath--Markeaton Bridge--Allestree--Derby, from the Long
Bridge--Derby, from St. Mary's Bridge--In the South Gardens,
Elvaston 257-276
THE TRENT, FROM THE DERWENT TO THE HUMBER.--Trent Bridge,
Nottingham--The Trent, from the Derwent to the Humber
(_Map_)--Nottingham, from the Castle--Newark Castle--Carlton--On
the Trent at Gainsborough--Old Sluice Gate at Axholme--Meadow Land
at Axholme 277-290
THE WHARFE.--Bolton Bridge--The Course of the Wharfe
(_Map_)--Skipton Castle, from one of the Towers--Ilkley Bridge--The
Bridge, Otley--Farnley Hall--Ruins of Harewood Castle--At
Tadcaster--Kirkby Wharfe 292-309
THE OUSE.--The Ouse at York--The Course of the Ouse
(_Map_)--Bishopthorpe--Cawood--Selby 310-317
THE ESTUARY.--Barton-upon-Humber--The Course of the Humber--Queen's
Dock, Hull--Distant View of Great Grimsby 320-325
_THE RIVERS OF THE WASH_:--
A Bit of Fen--On the Fens in Winter--Map of the
Rivers of the Wash--Lincoln, from Canwick--Lincoln
Cathedral from the South-West--Boston Church: the
Tower--Northampton--Peterborough--Rockingham Village and
Castle--Gateway of the Castle--Stamford--Bedford Bridge--Huntingdon
Bridge--Old Bridge, St. Ives--Junction of the Cam and the
Ouse--Queen's Bridge, Cambridge--Ely Cathedral, from the
River--Among the Fens 326-349
_THE RIVERS OF EAST ANGLIA_:--
A Norfolk Broad--Cadham Hall--Portrait of Samuel
Butler--Maldon--Map of the East Anglian Rivers--The Shire Hall,
Chelmsford--Mill on the Colne--High Street, Colchester--On the
Orwell at Ipswich--Harwich: The Quay--The Beach, Yarmouth--Outward
Bound 350-370
_We are indebted for the use of Photographs on pages 1, 4, 8, 9,
12, 15, 17, 21, 24, 25, 29, 32, 33, 40, 45, 48, 57, 65, 71, 76, 77,
100, 108, and 109, to Messrs. J. Valentine and Sons, Dundee; on
pages 12, 13, 16, 20, 28, 44, 60, 69, 93, 125, 245, 329, and 334, to
Messrs. G. W. Wilson and Co., Aberdeen; on pages 53, 73, 74, 92, 96,
105, 193, 205, 217, 250, 300, 316, 317, and 324, to Messrs. Poulton
and Son, Lee; on pages 80 and 89, to Mr. T. Scott, Birmingham; on
pages 79 and 88, to Mr. T. Foster, Coldstream; on page 85, to Mr. W.
Green, Berwick-on-Tweed; on pages 82, 137, and 189, to Mr. H. Piper,
Gateshead; on pages 116, 140, 141, 145, 148, 152, 153, and 204, to
Mr. J. P. Gibson, Hexham; on pages 120 and 124, to Mr. J. Worsnop,
Rothbury; on page 121, to Rev. G. Smith, Bedlington; on pages 145, 200,
208, 209, 211, 213, and 308, to Mr. E. Yeoman, Barnard Castle; on page
150, to Mr. C. C. Hodges, Hexham; on pages 154 and 155, to Messrs. O.
M. Lairs and Son, Newcastle-on-Tyne; on pages 181, 184, 189, 265, 269,
277, and 296, to Messrs. Frith and Co., Reigate; on page 212, to Mr.
J. W. Cooper, Darlington; on page 224, to Mr. F. Pearson, Basford; on
pages 228, 248, 252, 253, 262, 272, 273, 276, 284, and 292, to Mr. R.
Keene, Derby; on pages 263 and 264, to Mr. J. W. Hilder, Matlock Bath;
on page 288, to Messrs. Allen and Sons, Nottingham; on page 304, to Mr.
M. Shuttleworth, Ilkley; on page 336, to Mr. G. A. Nicholls, Stamford;
on pages 340 and 341, to Mr. A. Hendrey, Godmanchester; on page 345,
to Messrs. Hills and Saunders, Cambridge; on page 353, to Mr. W. W.
Gladwin, Maldon; on page 360, to Mr. Gill, Colchester; on pages 350,
357, 360, 361, 364, and 370, to Mr. Payne Jennings, Ashtead._
RIVERS OF GREAT BRITAIN.
[Illustration: BEN MACDHUI.]
THE HIGHLAND DEE.
The Source: Larig and Garchary Burns--In the Heart of the
Cairngorm Mountains--Ben Macdhui and Braeriach--"A Fery Falgar
Place"--A Highland Legend--The Linn of Dee--Byron's Narrow
Escape--The Floods of 1829--Lochnagar and Mary Duff--Influence
of the Dee on Byron--Braemar and the Rising of '15--Corriemulzie
and its Linn--Balmoral--The "Birks" of Abergeldie--Their
Transplantation by Burns--What is Collimankie?--Ballater: The
Slaying of "Brave Brackley"--Craigendarroch--The Reel of Tullich
and the Origin Thereof--The Legend of St. Nathdan--Mythological
Parallels--The Muich--Morven: The Centre of Highland Song and
Legend--Birse--Lunphanan Wood--The Battle of Corrichie--Queen Mary
and Sir John Gordon--At Aberdeen.
Among the streams that meet together in the wild south-west of
Aberdeenshire to form the Dee, it is not easy to decide which is chief,
or where is the fountain, far up the dark mountain-side, where this
parent rill has birth. Dismissing minor pretenders, we can at once
state that the original is either the Larig or the Garchary Burn. The
first is more in the main line of the river, whilst it has also more
water; the second rises higher up, and has a longer course before it
reaches the meeting-place. Popularly, the source of the stream is a
place about the beginning of the Larig, called the Wells of Dee. Here
Nature has built a reservoir perfect in every part. The water escapes
from this fountain-head in considerable volume, so that it forms a
quite satisfactory source, which we may well adopt. Here, then, our
journey commences among
"The grizzly cliffs that guard
The infant rills of Highland Dee."
We are in the very heart of the Cairngorm Mountains, confronted on
every side by all that is most savage and grand in nature--frowning
precipices, mist-covered heights, sullen black lochs, an almost total
absence of vegetation, an almost unbroken solitude. Here rise Ben
Macdhui, Braeriach, and Cairntoul, whose streams, running down--often
hurled down--their weather-beaten sides, rapidly increase the volume
of our river. Braeriach fronts Ben Macdhui on the other side of the
infant Dee. It presents to the view a huge line of precipices, dark and
sombre, save when the hand of Winter, powdering them with snow, changes
them to masses of glittering white. Even at a good distance away you
hear the splash and dash of innumerable waterfalls, caused by the burns
leaping the cliffs. If you venture to wander among those wilds you must
know your ground well, for however bright the day may be one hour, the
next you may be shrouded in mist, or drenched with rain, or battered by
hail. The mist, indeed, is rarely absent. You see it clinging round the
heights and moving restlessly up and down the hillside like some uneasy
and malignant spirit. As you walk you are startled at a huge figure
striding along. It requires an effort to recognise a mist-picture of
yourself--a sort of Scotch Spectre of the Brocken.
It was of these wild regions that an old Highlander once remarked to
Hill Burton that it was "a fery fulgar place, and not fit for a young
shentleman to go to at all." Let us not scorn the ingenuous native;
Virgil has said, in the Eclogues (much more elegantly, 'tis true), very
much the same thing about very much the same kind of scenery. All our
way by Dee will not be among views like this. Indeed, at the mouth are
scenes of rich fertility. It is on the fat meadows near Aberdeen that
a portion of those innumerable flocks and droves are raised which have
so great a reputation in the London market. These are the two extremes,
but between them there is every variety of Highland scenery. He who has
seen the banks of Dee has seen, as in an epitome or abridgment, all
that the north of Scotland has to show. In the midst of variety one
thing is constant, whatever landscape you may be passing through: you
always have the great hill masses on the horizon. Thus the Dee is a
typical Highland river. Even with the sternest parts soft touches are
interwoven. Thus take the Lui, which, rising in Ben Macdhui, falls into
the Dee at an early point of its course. The lower part of Glen Lui is
remarkable for its gentle beauty. The grass is smooth as a lawn, the
water of the burn which moves gently along is transparently clear, the
regular slope is covered with weeping birches. The perfect solitude
of this sweet valley has its own charm, though it be the charm of
melancholy. Higher up, nearer Ben Macdhui, in Glen Lui Beg, the scenery
is wilder, and the water dashes down more swiftly, as if it longed to
be away from its wild source. We must go with it, and bid farewell
to Ben Macdhui and the sources of Dee. And for farewell, here is a
mountain legend.
[Illustration: THE HIGHLAND DEE.]
At some time or other a band of robbers who infested this region
had acquired a great store of gold. One of their number, named
Mackenzie, proved that there is not honour among thieves. He robbed
his companions and then hid the twice-cursed pelf in a remote and
well-nigh inaccessible spot far up the slope of Ben Macdhui. The work
of concealment took him the best part of a short summer night, for
the sun rose precisely as he finished. He noticed that as its first
beam fell over the ridge to the east, it marked a long burnished line
of light over the ground where the treasure lay. This seemed to him
to distinguish the spot beyond the possibility of error. Before his
death he confided to his sons the secret of his hidden treasure. They
were poor and greedy. The rest of their lives was devoted summer after
summer to the hunt; but the grim mountain kept its secret well. Often
the morning mist mocked their efforts, yet they succeeded no better
when, on the anniversary of the burial, the sun rose in a sky of
unclouded blue. One by one, prematurely aged, they passed away, till
the last died a madman, revealing in his ravings the secret and the
ruin of their lives. And still, somewhere on that mountain-side, the
gold hoard lies concealed.
For some time after we leave the Wells of Dee, we are still in the
midst of gloom. Dark black rocks rising on either side to a great
height still shut us in, whilst the stillness is only broken by the
roar of the wind, the rush of the water, or the (occasional) scream of
the eagle; but when we get to the Linn of Dee, near Inverary, we may
fairly consider ourselves back among our kind; nay, we are within the
very uncharmed circle of the tourist, whereat we may rejoice or grieve
as is our liking. This linn is caused by the river rushing through a
narrow channel in the rocks over into a pool very deep, and (according
to local tradition) unfathomable. Some hardy spirits have jumped across
the channel, but if you try, and miss, you will never come out alive.
Then your epitaph will be written in a guide-book paragraph, somewhat
after the fashion of the lines in Baedeker telling the horrible end
of that unfortunate officer who fell into the bear-pit at Berne. Lord
Byron, when a boy, had a narrow escape here. "Some heather caught in
his lame foot, and he fell. Already he was rolling downwards, when the
attendant luckily caught hold of him, and was but just in time to save
him from being killed."
[Illustration: LINN OF DEE.]
[Illustration: LINN OF CORRIEMULZIE.]
The great floods of 1829--those floods of which Sir Thomas Dick Lauder
is the chronicler--wrought sad havoc here. A bridge spanned the stream
at a height of thirty feet. The river, rising three feet higher, swept
it away. We must turn to the annals of Strathspey to test the full
havoc of the flood fiend, yet it wrought no mean ruin here. I pick out
one or two cases. Near Inverey the rising water attacked six houses,
destroying each in turn until all the inhabitants were huddled round
the hearthstone of the last. Here the water burst in, forcing the poor
people to take refuge on a knoll, where, without shelter, and in mortal
terror for their lives, they crouched shivering through the night.
There is a waterfall on the Quoich, near where it joins the larger
river. This was spanned by a bridge so firmly bound to the rocks as
to be (it was hoped) immovable. The flood struck it, and it was torn
away, with tons of the adjacent rocks. It seemed, indeed, to those
who lived through that terrible time, as if the very structure of the
earth was breaking in pieces. The days were black with the ever-falling
sheets of heavy rain; the nights were vivid with the ever-flashing
lightning; whilst day and night alike the wind roared with demoniacal
fury. The waters hidden in the bowels of hills and rocks burst forth,
leaving great fissures and scars, which remain as a monument of the
Titanic forces at work. Shocks of earthquake happened again and again.
"I felt the earth hobblin' under me," said a peasant graphically.
Many thought the end of all things was at hand. Yet it was in less
sensational ravages that the flood wrought its most cruel havoc. The
poor man's cottage left a hopeless ruin, the fertile field left a sandy
waste--such were the most lamentable signs of its power. Human effort
was powerless against it. What could be done with a flood which rose,
as was noted at Ballater, not less than one foot in ten minutes? The
ravages made have long ago been repaired. At Linn of Dee there is now
a handsome white granite bridge, which was opened by the Queen as long
ago as the year 1857.
[Illustration: LOCHNAGAR.]
It is odd that the poet of this essentially Highland river should
be an English bard; for if we turn to see what our literature has to
say of the Dee, we must turn to Byron. Yet Byron was, as he says,
"half a Scot by birth, and bred a whole one." If his ancestors on
the father's side "came over" (as he delighted to recall) with the
Conqueror, he was not less proud to remember that his mother was of
one of the best families of the "Gay Gordons," and that for over three
centuries her people had possessed Gight. He went to Aberdeen in 1790,
when but two years old; here he stayed till 1798, and during that
time he visited again and again most of the finest spots on the Dee.
Those mighty hills, those clear, flowing streams, were the earliest
things he remembered, and he never failed to acknowledge how deep was
the impression they made on him. "From this period I date my love of
mountainous countries." Near the end of his life he sings, in "The
Island"--
"The infant rapture still survived the boy,
And Lochnagar with Ida look'd o'er Troy."
His mention of Lochnagar--"dark Lochnagar"--reminds us how peculiarly
his name is connected with that Deeside mountain of which he is the
laureate. Here, too, sprang the strange child-love of the precocious
boy for Mary Duff, with whose beauty the beauty of the country where
he came to know her was indissolubly linked in his mind. The scenes in
Greece, he says, carried him back to Morven (his own "Morven of snow"),
and many a dark hill in that classic land made him "think of the rocks
that o'ershadow Colbeen;" whilst the very mention of "Auld Lang Syne"
brings to his mind the river Dee and
"Scotland one and all,
Scotch plaids, Scotch snoods, the blue hills and clear streams."
In Moore's biography there are needlessly ingenious arguments to prove
that it was not the Dee scenery that made Byron a poet. Of course
not. _Poeta nascitur non fit_, to quote the old Latin saying, which
puts the matter much more pithily than Moore. But scenery and early
impressions determine the course of a poet's genius as surely as the
nature of the ground determines the course of the stream. How much
Celtic magic there is in all Byron's verses--the love of the wild and
terrible and impressive in scenery, as in life! Byron's poetry is
before all romantic, and so is Deeside scenery. In his revolt against
conventionalities, and even (it must be said) against the proprieties
and decencies, we can clearly trace a true Celtic revolt against the
dull, hard, prosaic facts of life. Can it be said that if Byron had
passed his early years among the Lincolnshire fens or the muddy flats
of Essex, "Don Juan" or "Childe Harold" would have been what they
are--if, indeed, they had ever existed?
Moore under-estimated the influence of such scenes on Byron because
he under-estimated the scenes themselves. "A small bleak valley, not
at all worthy of being associated with the memory of a poet," says
he. At this the local historian, good Mr. James Brown, who, having
first driven a coach till he knew every inch of a large stretch of
the country, then wrote an excellent Deeside guide, waxes very wroth.
"It is really to be wished that Mr. Thomas Moore would not write upon
subjects which he knows nothing about. Deeside a small bleak valley!
Who ever heard tell of such nonsense!" Moore, however, did after his
kind. He who sang the "sweet vale of Avoca" cared little for "dark
Lochnagar." Indeed, there are some northern folk very much of Moore's
opinion. Does not the old proverb tell us that
"A mile of Don's worth two of Dee,
Except for salmon, stone, and tree"?
But it is for those who love the stone and tree, the wild forests, the
wilder hills, that Dee has its surpassing attraction. It adds a fine
charm to the enthusiast's enjoyment of such scenery to know it is not
everyone who can appreciate it.
But we turn now to interest of another kind, for at Castleton of
Braemar we touch successive strata of historical events. There is
Craig-Koynoch, where Kenneth II., too old for hunting himself, used
to watch his dogs as they chased some noble stag, whilst his ears
drank in the music of horn and hound. Here, too, in the old castle of
Braemar, of which but a few remains are left, Malcolm Canmore, last of
Scotland's Celtic kings, had a hunting seat in the midst of the mighty
forest of which we still see the remains. There are still great herds
of deer to be hunted, though the wolves and wild boars have long since
vanished. Here, too, were the great possessions of the Mar family. It
was to this place that John Erskine, thirty-ninth Earl of Mar, summoned
the Highland clans under pretence of a great hunting party in Braemar
forest, and began the rebellion of 1715. The standard was formally set
up on the 6th of September, when the gilt ball which ornamented the top
fell down, much to the consternation of the superstitious Celts.
A famous Jacobite song gives us the names of the leaders and the
clans:--
"I saw our chief come up the glen
Wi' Drummond and Glengarry,
Macgregor, Murray, Rollo, Keith,
Panmure and gallant Harry;
Macdonald's men, Clan Ronald's men,
Mackenzie's men, Macgillivray's men,
Strathallan's men, the Lowlan' men,
O'Callander and Airly."
The hunting party, it should be noted, was not all a pretence. It took
place on a magnificent scale, as Taylor the Water Poet, who was there
(how or why it would take too long to explain), tells us. After he
lost sight of the old castle, he was twelve days before he saw either
house, or cornfield, or habitation for any creature but deer, wild
horses, wolves, and such-like creatures. Taylor goes on to describe how
a great body of beaters, setting out at early morning, drove the deer,
"their heads making a show like a wood," to the place where the hunters
shot them down. As we all know, the '15 was a disastrous failure--less
terrible, it is true, but less glorious, than the '45. Mar turned out
to be neither statesman nor soldier ("Oh for one hour of Dundee!" said
the old officer at Sheriffmuir). He escaped with the Pretender to
France, his vast estates were forfeited, and for a time there was no
Earldom of Mar. His poor followers suffered more than their lord. All
the houses in Braemar were burnt, save one at Corriemulzie. It was only
the seclusion of that narrow glen, so beautiful with its birch-trees
and its linn, that saved the lonely habitation. There are memories of
the '45 about the district too. For instance, a little way down the
river from Castleton is Craig Clunie, where Farquharson of Invercauld
lay hid for ten months after Culloden, safe in the devotion of his
clan, though his enemies were hunting for him far and near.
[Illustration: BRAEMAR.]
Ten miles or so below Castleton, we come upon another royal residence,
which we all know as Balmoral, the Highland home of Queen Victoria.
This place is now one of the most famous spots in Britain, and though
its celebrity is of recent date, yet it has an old history of its own.
As far back as 1451 it was royal property. In 1592 James V. gave it to
the then Earl of Huntly. In 1652, on the downfall of the family, it
came into the possession of the Earl of Moray. Enough of these dull
details, which are best left in the congenial seclusion of the charter
chest. In 1852 the Crown again--and let us hope finally--acquired
Balmoral.
[Illustration: VIEW FROM THE OLD BRIDGE, INVERCAULD, BRAEMAR.]
If anyone wonders why the Queen is so fond of her Highland home, it
must be because the questioner has never seen it, since of all the
dwelling-places of men it is surely the most desirable. It stands on
a slight eminence near the Dee, which winds round it in a great bend.
Swiftly the beautifully clear water rolls past. The low ground, richly
fertile, is green in summer-time with various leafage. Behind the
castle rises the graceful height of Craig-na-gow-an, clothed with the
slender birch-tree. The cairn on the top, to the memory of Albert the
Good, reminds us of the great sorrow of Victoria's life. The castle
lies at the foot of the hill, protected from the wild winter winds. In
both near and remote distance we have the ever-beautiful background
of the everlasting hills, immovable, and yet ever changing in place
and appearance with each change of light and shade. Ben Macdhui in one
direction is most prominent, dark Lochnagar in another. The scenery is
"wild, and yet not desolate," as the Queen simply, yet truly, puts it.
Its varied aspects give, from one point of view or another, examples
of all Deeside views. The castle itself is built of very fine granite.
It has a noble appearance, yet the architecture is of the simplest
baronial Scotch style. It has all the traditional comfort of our island
dwellings. It is, in a word, a genuine English home amidst the finest
Highland scenery. What combination could be more attractive?
Two miles farther down is Abergeldie, of which the castle is occupied
by the Prince of Wales when in these parts. Between the two is Crathie
Kirk, where the royal household and their visitors worship in simple
Presbyterian fashion in the autumn months. Abergeldie has an old
reputation for its birks. There used to be a quaint old song in two
verses which told their praise. In the first verse an ardent wooer
entreats one of those innumerable "bonnie lassies" of Scotch popular
poetry to hie thither under his escort. She is to have all sorts of
fine things--
"Ye sall get a gown o' silk
And coat o' collimankie."
What on earth is collimankie? asks the reader. In truth I cannot tell,
and I fear to look up the word in Jamieson lest it turn out to be
something commonplace. The second verse is the young lady's reply. It
is deliciously arch and simple:--
"Na, kind sir, I dare nae gang,
My minny will be angry.
Sair, sair wad she flyte,
Wad she flyte, wad she flyte,
Sair, sair, wad she flyte,
And sair wad she ban me!"
"Methinks the lady doth protest too much," and the probability is that
she went after all. At any rate, the picture is perfect. You almost see
the peasant girl mincing her words, biting her finger, with a blush
on her young face. And what has become of this song, then? Why, Burns
laid violent hands on the birks, and transferred them to Aberfeldy;
which, thenceforth, was glorified with a most shady grove; in poetry,
that is, for in fact there was not a single birk in the place for
long afterwards, if, indeed, there is one even now; and, as far as my
recollection goes, there is not. But we have still something to relate
regarding those famous birks. It seems that the juice of the trees is
carefully extracted, and the skilled natives, "by a curious process,
ferment the same and make wine of it--which wine is very pleasant
to taste, and thought by some to be little inferior to the wine of
Champagne and other outlandish countries." So far the local chronicler.
We can only toss off a goblet (in imagination) of this extraordinary
_vin du pays_ to the prosperity of the birks ere the bend of the Dee
hides them from our view.
Ballater is the next important place we come to. It is the terminus
of the Deeside Extension Railway, and what is for us at present much
more important, the centre of the most interesting part of Deeside. One
mile south of it is an almost vanished ruin, the scene of a terrible
tragedy, the memory of which--though it happened three centuries
ago--is still preserved by a poem of a very different sort from the
simple peasant idyll just quoted. One of the old tragic ballads which
with such profound yet unconscious insight deal with the stormier
human passions, tells the story of how Farquharson of Inverey slew, in
shameful fashion, Gordon, Baron of Brackley. With what pithy expression
the first two lines place you in the very heart of the subject!
"Inverey came down Deeside whistlin' and playin',
He was at brave Brackley's yetts ere it was dawin'."
And then comes the proud, insolent challenge of the murderer--
"Are ye sleepin', Baronne, or are ye waukin'?
There's sharp swords at your yett will gar your blood spin."
Gordon is brave, but he will not go forth almost alone against so many
to meet certain death till his fair, but false, young wife taunts him
bitterly with his cowardice. Then he gets ready, though he knows how
certain is his doom.
"An' he stooped low, and said, as he kissed his proud dame,
'There's a Gordon rides out that will never ride hame.'"
There is a narrow glen near by which popular tradition still points out
as the spot where they "pierced bonny Brackley wi' mony a woun'." The
ballad closes in darkness and sadness, but one is glad to learn from
contemporary history that the Earl of Huntly made a foray and avenged
the death of his kinsman.
Hereby is the hill of Craigendarroch, which we cannot pause to climb,
though from it we have a grand view a long way down the Dee Valley.
Tullich I can only mention. Have you ever seen, by-the-bye, that
extraordinary Highland tarantula called the reel of Tullich? It is
perhaps the wildest, maddest dance ever invented. The legend of its
origin is this:--One tempestuous Sabbath, about a century and a half
ago, the congregation at the parish kirk there were without a minister.
The manse was some way off, the roads were rough, and the parson got it
into his head that nobody would be at church that day, so _he_ need not
go either. The people got tired of waiting; they began to stamp with
their feet, then hidden bottles were produced, and then they danced and
shouted till at last the whole thing degenerated into a wild orgie,
during which the wind roared round the kirk and the sleet beat on the
windows in vain. Then they invented and danced the reel of Tullich.
Before the year was out all were dead, and by the dance alone are they
now remembered. It is worth while quoting this strange story, for it
is an example of the rare Presbyterian legend. A place on the river
called the King's Pool reminds one of a Catholic myth. St. Nathdan,
who once lived here, did penance for some sin by locking a heavy iron
chain round his waist. He then threw the key into this pool, saying he
should know he was forgiven when he found it again. Long afterwards he
went a pilgrimage to Rome, and on the Italian coast some fishermen, in
return for his blessing, gave him a fish. Need I add that in the belly
he found the key?
[Illustration: BALMORAL.]
[Illustration: THE CASTLE.]
The legends which hang like the mist round every rock and ruin have
a weird fascination, but I must stop repeating them, or there will be
room for nothing else. I cannot help noting, however, that there is a
Deeside version of nearly every ancient myth. Thus one story tells how
a Macdonald was suckled by a wolf quite after the fashion of Romulus.
Another is of a giant injured by an individual calling himself Mysel,
so that when the stupid monster was asked who hurt him, he could only
say "Mysel" (myself). This is almost exactly the tale of the giant
in the "Odyssey." But more curious than all is a reproduction of the
famous apple legend, with Malcolm Canmore for Geisler and one called
Hardy for William Tell. The resemblance is exact even down to the two
additional arrows; but I can scarcely go so far as the old Deeside
lady, who affirmed that since Malcolm Canmore flourished about the time
of the Norman Conquest, and William Tell was contemporary with Robert
Bruce, the Swiss legend was borrowed from the Scotch!
[Illustration: ABERGELDIE CASTLE.]
It is difficult to get away from a neighbourhood like Ballater, where
there is so much worth seeing. The Muich here, running from the south,
falls into the Dee. About five miles up is the Linn of Muich--linns
and waterfalls are the peculiar glory of Deeside, I need scarcely say.
A great mass of water finds here but one narrow outlet, over which it
foams and struggles, and then falls fifty feet with a great splash
into a deep pool. The heights of the precipice are clothed with old
fir-trees, which also stick out of the crevasses of the rocks. The
Muich rises away up at the foot of Lochnagar in Loch Muich, which
means, they say, the Lake of Sorrow--so gloomy and sombre is that
far-off recess in the hill. To the west of Lochnagar are the Loch
and Glen of Callater--wild enough, too; and beyond is the Breakneck
Waterfall, which is positively the last fall I shall mention. A stream
makes a bold dart over a precipice. It seems like a thread of silver
in the sunlight. Down it falls, with a thundering sound on the rock,
scattering its spray around in a perpetual shower. A British admiral,
some few years ago, slipped over a precipice near here. His hammer (he
was specimen hunting) stuck in a crack, and there he held on for two
awful days, and still more awful nights. The whole neighbourhood hunted
for him, and at last, the black speck being seen on the cliff, he was
rescued. Not a man of the rescuers would accept a farthing for what he
had done. The Highlander has his faults, but there is always something
of the gentleman about him.
[Illustration: BALLATER.]
Nearly due north of Ballater is Morven--the Morven of Byron, and
(perhaps) of Ossian, though there are other places and districts in
Scotland bearing the name. Morven is the centre of Highland song and
legend. But if it is enchanted, it is also uncertain, ground, and must
here be left untraced. We are still forty-three miles from Aberdeen;
so we glide through Aboyne and Glentanner, leaving the beautiful
castle of the one, and the equally, though differently, beautiful
valley of the other, unvisited. Then in many a devious turn we wind
round the northern boundary of the parish of Birse. "As auld as the
hills o' Birse," says a local proverb, which shows that even in this
land of hills the district is considered hilly. Here are some of their
names: Torquhandallachy, Lamawhillis, Carmaferg, Lamahip, Duchery,
Craigmahandle, Gannoch, Creaganducy. Grand words those, if you can give
them their proper sound. Otherwise leave them "unhonoured and unsung,"
and unpronounced. The local chronicler is much perplexed by another
somewhat inelegant Aberdeenshire witticism--"Gang to Birse and bottle
skate." With absolute logical correctness he proves that in that inland
and hilly parish there are no skate; and that, if there were, to bottle
them would be contrary to the principles and practice of any recorded
system of fish-curing. We shall not discuss with him this dark saying.
On the other side of the Dee is Lunphanan parish, in the "wood"
of which Macbeth--according to Wyntoun, though not according to
Shakespeare--met his death. His "cairn" is still to be seen on a bare
hill in this district, though another tradition tells us that his
dust mingles with the dust of "gracious Duncan" in the sacred soil of
Iona. The Dee, now leaving its native county, flows for a few miles
through the Mearns or Kincardineshire. It returns to Aberdeenshire in
the parish of Drumoak, forming for the remaining fourteen miles of its
course the boundary between the two counties.
[Illustration: ABERDEEN.]
It is here we come across the most interesting historical memory
connected with Deeside, for it is a memory of Queen Mary. On the
south side of the Hill of Fare there is a hollow, where the battle of
Corrichie was fought in 1562. I do not wish to enter into the history
of that troubled time. Suffice it to say that the Earl of Huntly, chief
of the Gordons, and head of the Catholics, was intriguing to secure
the power which Murray was determined he should not have. The Queen
was with Murray, though her heart, they said, was with the Gordons.
Anyhow, she dashed northward gaily enough on a horse that would have
thrown an ordinary rider. Murray's diplomacy forced the Gordons into
a position of open hostility, and his superior generalship easily
secured him the victory at Corrichie. The old Earl of Huntly was taken,
it seemed, unhurt, but he suddenly fell down dead--heart-broken at
the ruin of himself and his house, said some; crushed by the weight
of his armour, said others. They took the body to the Tolbooth in
Aberdeen. Knox tells us that the Countess had consulted a witch before
the fight, and was comforted by the assurance that her husband would
lie _unwounded_ that night in the Tolbooth. The remains, embalmed in
some rude fashion, were carried to Edinburgh; for a strange ceremony
yet remained ere the Gordon lands were divided among the victors. A
Parliament in due time met in Holyrood, and the dead man was brought
before his peers to answer for his treasons. A mere formality, perhaps,
but an awfully gruesome one. His attainder, and that of his family,
together with the forfeiture of his lands, was then pronounced. The
battle was a great triumph for the Protestant lords; even the sneering,
sceptical Maitland, says Knox, with one of those direct, forcible
touches of his, "remembered that there was a God in heaven." There
was one who looked on the matter with other eyes. "The Queen took no
pleasure in the victory, and gloomed at the messenger who told of it."
Indeed, there was a tragedy within this tragedy. Among the prisoners
taken at Corrichie was Sir John Gordon, Huntly's second son, "a comely
young gentleman," wild and daring, and, though then an outlaw, one
who had ventured to hope for the Queen's hand. It was whispered that
she was not unfavourable to him; some ventured to say "she loved him
entirely." For such a man there was but one fate possible, and that
was death. He was executed in the market-place of Aberdeen. Murray
looked on at the death of his foe with that inscrutable calm which
he preserved in victory and defeat--at his own death, as well as at
the death of others. The Queen, too, was forced to be there. Before
the axe fell, Gordon professed his unalterable devotion to her. Her
presence, he said, was a solace to him, though she had brought him
to destruction. The sight was too fearful for Mary, who, in a deadly
swoon, was carried to her chamber. Even in her strange life-story
there is nothing more terrible. Fotheringay itself is not so tragic.
The last four miles of our well-nigh eighty miles' journey are, as
noted, on the border of Aberdeen and Kincardine. Here the river enjoys
a peaceful old age, after the wild turmoil of its youth. The water,
still beautifully clear, moves placidly along amidst rich meadows; the
near hills are low, with soft rounded summits. The dwellings of men
give a cheerfulness to the scene. It is the very perfection of pastoral
landscape. And then, at last, we come to Aberdeen and the sea. But on
the wonders of that famous town I cannot here enter. Suffice it to say
that our record of the Highland Dee is finished.
FRANCIS WATT.
[Illustration: BRIDGE OF TAY, KENMORE.]
THE TAY.
The Tiber and the Tay--History and Legend--Perthshire and the
Tay--The Moor of Rannoch--Blair--Pitlochrie--Killin--Kenmore--The
Lyon--The "Rock of Weem"--The "Birks" of Aberfeldy--Dunkeld
and Birnam--Invertuthil--The Loch of Clunie--The
Isla--Strathmore--Dunsinane Hill--Scone and the
Ruthvens--Perth--The Views from Moncrieffe and Kinnoull--Strathearn
and the Carse of Gowrie--Dundee--The Tay Bridge, New and Old--View
from the "Law"--"Men of Blood" and Men of Business.
"Behold the Tiber!" said the conquering Roman, when from one of the
many 'vantage-grounds commanding the noble stream that sweeps past
Perth, the Imperial eagles first saw as fair a scene as they had yet
reached in their flight. The ardent lovers of the river--meaning
all who know its banks well--have ever since felt, with Scott,
half flattered by the traditional compliment, half scornful of the
comparison of the puny and "drumlie" Roman stream with the broad,
clear, and brimming Tay--the dusty Campus Martius with the green
"Inches" of Perth--the featureless and desolate Campagna with the
glorious stretch of hill and plain, water and woodland, overlooked from
Kinnoull Hill or the "Wicks of Baiglie."
It is true that when this pioneer of countless hosts of Southern
invaders and sightseers came hither, to admire and covet, the Tay
flowed through a savage and shaggy land. There might have been a
handful of the skin or wicker-work wigwams of the "dwellers in the
forest" on the site of Perth, or at Forteviot or Abernethy, afterwards
the capitals of the Picts, and a sprinkling of Caledonian coracles on
the neighbouring waters. But if Perthshire and the Tay had a history
before the coming of Agricola and the building of the lines of Roman
roads and stations that converged upon their great camp, dedicated to
Mars, near the meeting-place of this prince of Scottish streams with
the tributary waters of the Almond and the Earn, it is utterly lost in
the mists of antiquity.
History of the most stirring kind the Tay has known enough of since.
Every glen and hillside is thronged with memories and legends of the
days of romance, which, in Perthshire and on the banks of the Tay, came
to an end only about a century ago, when some of the Jacobite lairds
were still in exile for being "out" in the '45, and had not utterly
given up hope of the "lost cause." Every old castle and little township
has played its part in the strange, eventful drama of the national
history; and by their record, not less than by its position, Perthshire
can lay claim to be the heart, and the Tay to be the heart's blood, of
the northern kingdom.
Perthshire is the Tay, almost as truly as Egypt is the Nile. It is the
case that some of the head-waters of this many-fountained stream rise
in other counties--that its furthest, if not its most important, source
is in the desolate Moor of Rannoch--"a world before chaos," crudely
compounded of bog and rock, where Loch Lydoch trails its black and
sinuous length out of Argyllshire into Perth; that, further north, Loch
Ericht, straight as a sword-blade, thrusts its sharper end miles deep
into the mountains of Laggan, in Inverness-shire, hiding, as tradition
tells us, the ruins of submerged fields and houses under its gleaming
surface; and that the Isla draws from Forfarshire that portion of its
waters which murmurs under the haunted old walls of Airlie and Glamis.
True, also, a choice and lovely portion of Perthshire--many deem it
the choicest and loveliest of all--drains through the Trossachs to the
Forth; and that the Tay itself, after it has ceased to be a river, and
has become an arm of the sea, overpasses the bounds of the "central
county," and meets the ocean between the Braes of Angus and the hills
of Fife--between the clustering spires and chimneys of busy Dundee
and the crumbling towers that watch over the secluded dignity of St.
Andrews.
All this notwithstanding, the periphery of Perthshire may roughly be
said to embrace all the wealth of beauty reflected in the Tay, and
all the wealth of memories that mingles with its flowing current. And
richly endowed is this prince of highland and lowland streams, both
with beauty and associations.
The centre of the basin of the Tay is somewhere in Glenalmond, between
the sweet woodland shades of the "burn-brae" of Lynedoch, under which
"Bessie Bell and Mary Gray" rest, with their lover at their feet, and
the bare and stilly place where "sleeps Ossian in the Narrow Glen," and
where murmurs along
"But one meek streamlet, only one,
The Song of Battles, and the breath
Of stormy war and violent death;"
while above, on the summits of the hills, the grey stones and cairns
still keep watch, and, interpreted by tradition, point out to us the
place where Fingal once held sway in the very heart of Perthshire and
of the Caledonian Forest.
[Illustration:
_Walker & Boutall sc._
THE TAY.]
Of the ancient woods that are supposed once to have clothed the
country, remains may yet, perhaps, be seen in those glorious sylvan
demesnes that surround Taymouth in Breadalbane and Blair in Athole;
Dupplin, and Drummond Castle, in Strathearn, and Rossie Priory in the
Carse of Gowrie; Scone Palace and Dunkeld, Moncrieffe and Kinnoull,
overlooking the central and lower reaches of the Tay. Traces of them
may also be found in the Woods of Methven, that once gave friendly
shelter to Wallace, and in those ragged and giant pines that thinly dot
the hillsides in Rannoch and Glenlyon, over which Bruce was once chased
by the Lord of the Isles and the English invaders.
But a new forest has grown up within a century, to shade once more
the waters of the Tay. Whatever may have been the case in Macbeth's
or Shakespeare's time, "great Birnam Wood" can no longer be seen from
"high Dunsinane Hill" for the growth of trees--the "moving grove"--that
has risen up between. The Bruar Water and its falls are now shaded from
the sun and the northern blasts, as Burns longed to see them, by "lofty
firs and fragrant birks," as well as by their craggy cliffs; and not
content with thus fulfilling the poet's wish, the Lords of Athole, from
the "Planting Duke" downward, have been nobly ambitious of clothing
their once bare hills with forest to the summits. Beside the pillars of
ruined Dunkeld Cathedral--almost as worthy of reverence as they--stand
the two "Parent Larches," the first trees of their kind introduced into
Scotland. Planted only a century and a half ago, millions of their
seed and kin have now overrun Perthshire and the Highlands, proving
themselves thoroughly at home in the soil and air of the Tay.
[Illustration: "BIRKS" OF ABERFELDY.]
[Illustration: ABERFELDY, FROM THE WEST.]
In the bleak Moor of Rannoch--the "furthest Thule" of Perthshire
and of the more northern Tay sources--there are great blank spaces
where the heather itself will scarce grow. There are only grey rock
and black marsh--"bogs of Styx and waters of Cocytus," with scarce a
sign of human habitation or even of animal life. But the logs of oak
found embedded in the peat, and the hoary fir trunks that still keep a
stubborn stand by Loch Lydoch and the banks of the Guar and the Ericht,
show that even in this dreary region a great forest once waved. The
"Black Wood of Rannoch" still clothes the southern side of the fine
loch of the name; and here, indeed, the Scots fir is to be seen in all
its pride and strength, rising above the beautiful growth of oak and
birch coppice, and of heather of almost arboreal proportions. Escaping
from Loch Rannoch, the Tummel roars down its rocky bed under the piny
slopes and crags of Dunalastair, with a halt by the way in Loch Tummel,
where, from the "Queen's View," looking back, a magnificent prospect
is had of the lovely lake embosomed in woods and hills, dominated by
the lofty shape of Schiehallion, with the lonely Black Mount and the
more distant Grampians closing the background. Further down, opposite
Faskally, the Garry joins it, mingling the streams of Athole with the
waters of Rannoch. Before the meeting, the Garry, leaving its parent
lake high up near the borders of Inverness, has tumbled in white foam
through leagues of the "Struan country," between banks thinly sprinkled
with birchwood and edging great tracts of moorland. Then the Erichdie,
the Bruar, and the Tilt bring down their contributions from remote
mountain corries visited only by the deer-stalker, through deep wild
glens, gloriously wooded at their lower extremity. Where the Tilt runs
into the Garry stands Blair, the Highland seat of the ducal family of
Athole.
[Illustration: BRIDGE OF GARRY.]
The date when "Blair in Athole" was first occupied as a stronghold of
a powerful Highland chieftain is not told in the eventful annals of the
Castle. Strategic considerations, from the points of view of war and of
the chase, no doubt determined the selection of the site, inside the
rugged jaws of the Pass of Killiecrankie, and on a shelf commanding the
routes leading across the Grampians from the basin of the Tay to the
valleys of the Spey and the Dee. The choice thus made in ruder days is
thoroughly pleasing in these "piping times of peace," when the line of
the Highland Railway threads its way through the narrow defile, and
keeping the main valley of the Garry, skirts the miles of woodland,
opening at intervals to afford peeps of the plain, massive white front
of the Castle and the broad spaces of its surrounding parks. The way
through Glentilt, traversed by the clans to join the Stuart standard
at Blair or on the Braes of Mar, is free now only to the deer and the
gillies.
Without going back to the Athole lines of the Comyns and the Stewarts,
or to the joyous hunting scenes in which Queen Mary and other of the
old line of Scottish Sovereigns bore a part, Blair has been a centre of
historical and social interest ever since it became the chief seat of
the Murrays. Montrose assembled the Royalist clans here, and set out
upon the campaign which began with the defeat of the Covenanters at
Tibbermore and the capture of Perth, and ended at Philiphaugh, where,
in one day, the fruits of six brilliant victories were lost. Another
darling of cavalier legend, Graham of Claverhouse, Viscount Dundee,
lies buried in the old church near by. In the year of the Revolution
he had relieved Blair Castle, where the clansmen of Athole had held
out for the Jacobite cause against their titular chief, and having
enticed General Mackay through the Pass, he rushed down upon him with
all his force from the slopes of the Hill of Urrard, utterly routing
and sweeping back the enemy through the narrow gorge of the Garry, and
himself falling, shot through the heart, at the moment the Sassenachs
turned to run.
Notable events happened here also in the "'15" and in the "'45;"
and, to come to the recent memories which are cherished with pride
in Blair-Athole, Queen Victoria has paid repeated visits to the
locality, and was entranced by the magnificent prospects of wood and
stream, rugged mountain and fertile strath, that are unfolded from
the top of the Hill of Tulloch, and from other points of view in this
beautiful district. It is a kind of "holy ground" to fervid Jacobites,
one or two of whom are supposed still to linger in Perthshire, if
extinct elsewhere. It is also a favourite resort of the increasing
host of pilgrims in search of Highland sport and scenery, who invade
Athole through the Pass of Killiecrankie, and gaze, with a delight in
which there is no longer any tempering of fear of consequences, upon
the lofty and impending banks, pine-clad to their summits, and the
wilderness of rock and boulder below, through which the Garry glooms
and flashes in alternate pool and fall.
Pitlochrie is a charming place to halt at before, or after, clearing
this "gateway of the Highlands." The Tummel has now joined the Garry,
and under the latter name the united streams have but a short way to
go before they fall, at Ballinluig, into the stream which, from the
place where it issues from Loch Tay, takes the name of the Tay. Were
we to seek it still nearer to its sources, we should find ourselves in
a district which, before the railway came to disturb its solitude, was
as lone and wild as the lochans of the Black Mount or those corries of
Ben Alder and Ben-y-Gloe whence the Tummel, the Ericht, and Tilt draw
their springs. The line from Oban breaks into Perthshire and the basin
of the Tay at Tyndrum, near the head of Strathfillan, not far from the
scene of Bruce's defeat at the hands of the Lord of Lorn. Following,
from near the base of Ben Lui, the infant Tay--here, however, bearing
the names successively of the Fillan and the Dochart--the way leads
past the sites of ruined castles and chapels, by cairns yet haunted by
memories of the bloody feuds of former days, and wells to which legend
still assigns wonderful healing virtues. On the left are bare mountain
sides stretching away northward towards the hills that enclose the head
of Glen Lochay and Glen Lyon; and to the right the range of alpine
heights that culminate in Ben More and impend over Loch Dochart, its
old castle, and its "floating island." St. Fillan lived and laboured in
Strathfillan; Fingal is said to be buried in Glen Dochart; a hundred
traditions cling to the rocks and waters here, and in Glen Ogle, and in
the Glen of the Lochay, which, pouring over its pretty "linn," joins
the Dochart just before the united stream falls into the head of Loch
Tay.
Where the waters meet at Killin, a rich feast is spread for the eye of
the lover of Highland scenery. Killin, with its wonderful mingling of
wild mountain outlines, and the gentle, infinitely varied charms of the
lake and running streams and wooded shores, is a painter's paradise.
Fifteen miles of the finest salmon-angling water in Scotland, overhung
on the north by the vast bulk of Ben Lawers, and bountifully fringed
by birch and other wood, separates Killin from Kenmore, at the lower
end of the great Loch, whence issues, under its proper name, the Tay.
The ruins on the little island near the outlet are those of the Priory
erected by King Alexander I. beside the remains of his Queen, Sibylla,
daughter of Henry I. of England--a quiet retreat for centuries of the
company of nuns from whom the Fair at the neighbouring Kenmore takes
the name of the "Holy Women's Market." Kenmore is as lovely in its own
way as Killin; but here it is no longer wild Highland landscape, but
Nature half-submissive to the embellishing hand of man. It is
"A piece of England ramparted around
With strength of Highland Ben and heather brae;"
and in the centre of the scene, set among ample lawns and magnificent
walks and avenues, backed by the high, dark curtain of Drummond Hill,
and looking towards the pine-clad heights opposite, stands Taymouth
Castle, the princely seat of the Breadalbane family. Famous even
among their sept for their politic ability and acquisitiveness, the
Campbells, Lords of Glenorchy, who became Lords of Breadalbane, are
said to have chosen this site, at the eastern limit of their vast
possessions, with the hope of "birzing yont" into richer lands further
down the Tay. To this day, the Breadalbane estates extend for a hundred
miles westward of Taymouth, to the Atlantic Ocean.
Behind Drummond Hill is Glen Lyon, and a vista of its
mountains--Schiehallion lording it over the minor heights--opens up at
the Vale of Appin, where the Lyon falls into the Tay. A long journey
this tributary makes, among savage and solitary hills, and past haunts
of Ossian's heroes and of the "Wolf of Badenoch," before it reaches the
sylvan beauties assembled round Glenlyon House and Sir Donald Currie's
Castle of Garth. But the most venerable of all the objects on the banks
of the Lyon--not excluding the reputed birthplace of Pontius Pilate--is
the "Old Yew of Fortingal," perhaps "the oldest authentic specimen of
vegetation in Europe."
[Illustration: BIRNAM, FROM BIRNAM HILL.]
[Illustration: DUNSINANE HILL.]
On nothing quite so venerable as this does the next outstanding
eminence by the Tay--the "Rock of Weem"--look down. But Castle Menzies,
for four centuries the home of the Menzies of that ilk, lies surrounded
by fine woods at its base; further off is the site of the old Abbey
of Dull; and beyond the Bridge of Tay--first place of assembly of the
gallant "Black Watch," or 42nd Highlanders--are the Falls of Moness and
the "Birks" of Aberfeldy. Mountain ash and pine have to some extent
replaced the hazels and birches about which Burns so sweetly sings; but
tourists come in larger flocks every season to Urlar Burn and to the
pretty village near by. Grandtully Woods, and the old Castle of the
Stewarts, which has been said to resemble more closely than any other
baronial seat the picture drawn by Scott of Tully-veolan, attract many
admiring eyes. Balleichan recalls memories of "Sir James the Rose;" and
all down Strathtay, before and after the junction with the Tummel--at
Logierait and Kinnaird, Dowally and Dalguise--the enchantments of a
romantic past and of superb scenery combine to induce the traveller to
linger over every mile of the valley.
Dunkeld and Birnam are ahead, however, and the temptations to delay
must be foregone. There is no nook of Scotland more gloriously
apparelled and richly endowed. Grand forests stretch for miles around,
clothing the river-banks, filling the glens, and crowning to their
crests Birnam Hill, Newtyle, Craig Vinean, Craig-y-Barns, and other
heights that gather round the old cathedral town. Through the centre
of the scene the Tay sweeps in smooth and spacious curves and long,
bright-rippled reaches. All this loveliness is concentrated around the
Palace and Cathedral of Dunkeld. Opposite is Birnam, and, a little
above the line of arches of the fine bridge, the "mossy Braan," coming
from Loch Freuchie and "lone Amulree," tumbles through the romantic
dell of the Rumbling Bridge and the "Hermitage," and over its upper and
lower Falls, before entering the Tay.
[Illustration: SCONE PALACE, PERTH.]
A single gnarled and wide-branched oak represents all that remains of
the original Birnam Wood. The glory of the ancient Cathedral has also
departed, or undergone a change. For some fifteen hundred years, it
is reckoned, there has been a Christian house on this spot; and at as
early a date Dunkeld ("Dun-Caledon") had a royal residence, probably
on the site of the "dun" or fort on the "King's Seat." St. Columba is
thought to have founded the church, and to have preached here to the
natives of "Atholl, Caledon, and Angus;" and he is said to have found
burial at Dunkeld. Adamnan and Crinan were among its Culdee abbots;
and in the long line of its Roman Catholic bishops, whose diocese
extended over the greater part of the basin of the Tay, Gawin Douglas,
the poet and translator of the "Æneid," is not the only eminent
name. Very stately without and beautiful within, the edifice of the
Cathedral Church must have looked in its prime, before the Lords of
the Congregation sent word to "purge the kyrk of all kynd of monuments
of idolatrye," but to "tak guid heid that neither the windocks nor
dooris be onywise hurt or broken"--a saving clause to which the zealous
Reforming mob paid scant attention.
The main portion of the Cathedral--the nave--has long been roofless,
but the tower, in which the "Cameronian Regiment" of 1689 offered their
brilliant and successful resistance to the victors of Killiecrankie,
and stemmed the Highland tide rushing down on the Lowlands, still
stands, and the choir has been restored and is used as the parish
church. Within the walls, the "Wolf of Badenoch," Alexander Stewart,
Earl of Buchan--that type of a savage and ruthless Highland
chieftain--is buried; here also are the vaults of the Athole family,
and a monument recording the deeds of the "Black Watch." Without, the
beautiful lawns, gardens, and woods of Dunkeld Palace, one of the seats
of the Duke of Athole, surround the Cathedral ruins, and come down to
the river's edge. Fine villa residences are ranged along the hillside,
and the town of Dunkeld offers every evidence of prosperity.
At Dunkeld, the Tay takes a long sweep eastward, until at the meeting
with the Isla at Meikleour it forms a great elbow and resumes its
southward flow. The Murthly estate, which belongs to the owner of
Grandtully, occupies the south bank of the river along this portion of
its course. From the earliest times royalty, like romance and poetry,
has had the good taste to frequent these scenes. The wraiths of Neil
Gow, the famous fiddler, and of the Highland caterans hanged in the
"eerie hollow" of the Stare Dam, dispute with the ghost of Macbeth
the honour of being the familiar spirits of Birnam Hill, once again
magnificently clothed with wood. In Auchtergaven is the birthplace of
Robert Nicol, the "Peasant Poet;" and here also stood the "Auld House
of Nairne," which recalls the name of Caroline Oliphant, Baroness
Nairne, the laureate of Jacobite song, and which, like her ancestral
home in Strathearn--the "Auld House of Gask"--gave shelter to Prince
Charlie. At the Royal Castle of Kinclaven, now a neglected ruin, many
a Scottish Sovereign, from the time of Malcolm Ceanmohr and Queen
Margaret, had solaced themselves after the chase or battle, before it
was captured and recaptured, rebuilt and demolished, in the days of
Wallace and Bruce.
The northern bank of the Tay is equally rich in scenic beauty and
historical associations. Between the grounds of Delvine and Meikleour,
and opposite the "Bloody Inches"--believed to preserve the memory
of the spot where Redner Lodbrog, the Norse viking and skald, was
beaten back to his ships--the important Roman station of Tulina, now
Invertuthil, is supposed to have stood. Meikleour the Marchioness of
Lansdowne has inherited from her ancestors the Mercers, descendants of
a warlike Provost of Perth in the fourteenth century. The village is
one of the quaintest and most charming of Scottish hamlets; and the
great "beech hedge," ninety feet high, is among the many arboricultural
marvels in the valley of the Tay. Hidden from sight among hills and
woods, like many other lakes and famous sites of this district, is
the Loch of Clunie, with its island castle, the hunting seat of kings
and place of rest and retirement of bishops in the old days. The
Lunan drains from it into the Isla; but to trace the Isla would be
to write pages of description and history concerning Glenardle and
Glenshee, Stormont and Strathmore, the slopes of the Sidlaws and the
passes through the Grampians into Braemar. We should have to give some
idea of the beauties collected about Bridge of Cally, Craighall, and
Blairgowrie on the Ericht; to visit the "Reekie Linn," the "Slugs of
Auchrannie," and Lintrathen on the Isla; to seek the sites, mythical or
otherwise, of Agricola's victory over Galgacus and of Macbeth's defeat
by Macduff near Dunsinane Hill; and to speak of what makes Glamis and
Airlie and Inverqueich, Alyth and Meigle and Coupar, and the rest of
the country lying along the borders of Perth and Angus, memorable and
attractive. It would even lead us as far as Forfar and its loch and
castles, and the rival little burgh of Kirriemuir--the "Thrums" of
recent delightful sketches of old-world Scottish "wabster" and kirk
life in Angus--and detain us to the end of the chapter.
We resume, instead, the line of the Tay below Meikleour and Kinclaven,
and beyond the "Coble o' Cargill," replaced by the more prosaic bridge
carrying the railway line from Perth to Aberdeen. This is the heart
of Strathmore--the "great valley." Ballathy, Stobhall, Muckersy, and
Stanley maintain the repute of the Tay for noble prospects of hill,
wood, and stream. Stobhall was the seat of the Drummond family--still
a power in Perthshire--before they removed to Drummond Castle on the
Earn; and near by, at the Campsie Linn, beside an ancient cell of the
monks of Coupar-Angus Abbey, is the waterfall over which--_teste_ the
author of the "Fair Maid of Perth"--Conacher, the refugee from the
battle on the North Inch, flung himself to hide his shame. Macbeth's
Castle, on Dunsinane Hill, and the field of Luncarty--where, nine
centuries ago, the peasant ancestor of the Hays of Tweeddale, Errol,
and Kinnoull is said to have turned the battle for the Scots against
the Danes with his plough-yoke--might detain us. But now, close ahead,
the explorer of Tayside views, fringing the right bank of the river for
miles opposite the mouth of the Almond, and extending to the environs
of the Royal City of Perth, the woods of Scone--
"Towers and battlements he sees,
Bosomed high on tufted trees."
This is Scone Palace, the magnificent mansion of the Earls of
Mansfield, standing almost on the site of the ancient Abbey and royal
residence of Scone. Modern Scone and all its surroundings are stately
and spacious, but the relics of its early grandeur have disappeared
from the landscape, and almost the only memorials of the days when it
was the meeting-place of parliaments and councils, the crowning-place
of kings, "the Windsor of Scotland," are the mound of the "Motehill,"
the sycamore tree planted by Queen Mary, and the cross which marks
the place where stood the old "City of Scone." In its neighbourhood
was fought the last battle that decided the supremacy of the Scots
over the Picts and the amalgamation of the two nations in one. On the
Motehill, Kenneth Macalpine proclaimed the "Macalpine Laws." Hither,
according to tradition, the "Stone of Destiny" was brought, more than a
thousand years ago, from the old capital of the Dalriadic Scots in the
west--from Dunstaffnage or Beregonium--and the Sovereigns of Scotland
continued to be crowned on it until it was carried off to England, as
the trophy of conquest, by Edward I. It forms part of the Coronation
Chair at Westminster; and patriotic Scots declare that the prophecy
bound up in the fateful stone is still being fulfilled, and that where
it is, the Sovereigns of a Scottish house rule the land. Though the
Coronation Stone was taken away, kings continued to be crowned here.
Robert the Bruce was enthroned, and received the homage of his vassals,
at Scone; and--to make a wide leap in history--Charles II. was crowned
King of Scotland at the spot where his ancestors had been anointed and
installed, before he set out on the unlucky expedition which ended
at Worcester. Similar preparations were made for the coronation of
the Old Pretender; but on the very eve of the event dissensions among
his followers, and the approach of Argyll's army, caused him to take
flight back to the Continent, leaving his adherents to their fate--an
inglorious end to "an auld sang!"
[Illustration: PERTH, FROM THE WEST.]
Before Kenneth Macalpine's day, Scone was a place where councils of
the Early Church met; and nearly eight centuries ago a monastery was
founded there, and richly endowed by Alexander I., in gratitude for his
escape from an attempt made by insurgent "men of Moray and the Mearns"
to capture him at Invergowrie Castle, or "Hurley Hawkin," where two
burns meet near the Church of Liff. The Abbots and the Abbey of Scone
played a prominent part in the civil and ecclesiastical affairs of
Scotland; and we find the patronage and lands of the High Church of
St. Giles, in Edinburgh, bestowed upon it, on account of the expenses
incurred by the monks at the funeral of Robert II. and coronation
of Robert III., when the prelates and nobles encamped on the fields
between the Abbey and the Tay trampled down the standing corn, besides
eating and drinking their victuals, and also, as the deed of gift
runs, "because, at similar times of unction and coronation, through
the many and frequent great gatherings of the people, the monastery
has sustained great damage in their buildings, and been burdened with
heavy expenses." All cares and burdens came to an end in 1559, when the
Reforming mob, having destroyed the Blackfriars' and other religious
houses in the "City of St. Johnstoun," stormed out of Perth, and burned
the Abbey of Scone. Its lands, after remaining a brief time in the
hands of the unfortunate House of Gowrie, fell to the branch of the
Murrays that became illustrious in law, statecraft, and literature,
in the person of William, first Earl of Mansfield. The Abbey site is
a clump of trees; and the "Royal City of Scone," expelled outside the
park gates, has nothing to represent it but the prosaic village of New
Scone.
[Illustration: TAY STREET, PERTH.]
The Ruthvens have no longer part or lot in this district, where they
once lorded it over the stout citizens of Perth, and dared to put
their Sovereigns in thrall. Their old home of Ruthven, or Huntingtower
Castle, is opposite Scone, and not far from the junction of the Almond
with the Tay, where, if we could believe tradition, stood the original
Perth--Rath-Inveralmon--until it was visited by one of the many floods
that have vexed its burghers, and was removed a mile or two downward
to its present site, more close to the shelter of Moncrieffe and
Kinnoull Hills and the tide-water of the Tay. All around are historical
scenes--among them Methven and Tibbermore, made memorable by stirring
passages in the careers of Wallace, Bruce, and Montrose. But at few
spots has more history been made, or contrived, than at the Castle of
the Ruthvens. Four or five generations of its lords made themselves
illustrious or notorious in the annals of the "troublous times" that
preceded the Union of the Crowns. Above all, they were zealous, not
to say unscrupulous, partisans of the Reformation. It was the third
lord who rose from a sick-bed, and, clad in armour, and "haggard and
terrific" in visage, took a foremost share in the murder of David
Rizzio. His son, the fourth Lord Ruthven, grandfather of the "great
Marquis" of Montrose, had a hand in the same bloody business, and he
it was who conducted Mary to Lochleven, and extorted from her the
renouncement of her right to rule.
The year after this same fourth lord had been made first Earl of Gowrie
was enacted the "Raid of Ruthven." The young King James was invited to
visit Huntingtower Castle, on his way from Athole to Edinburgh, and
was there detained by force by the Gowrie faction, whose professed
object was to preserve him from evil counsel and wicked favourites.
Here, when he wept, he was bluntly told, "Better bairns greet than
bearded men." He never forgave the affront, and as soon as he got the
power in his hands the ruin of the Ruthvens was decreed. Lingering at
Dundee to plot, Gowrie was captured and beheaded, and this event, in
the time of the second and last earl, led to the still more mysterious
and tragic episode of the "Gowrie Conspiracy," which gave the Stuarts
the desired opportunity to "root out the whole name and race." Every
reader of Scottish history remembers the strange story--how, in the
autumn of 1600, the King was summoned by the Master of Ruthven, at
early morning, while buckhunting at Falkland, to ride to Perth to see a
"pot of gold" discovered there; how, by his own tale, he found in the
turret chamber to which he was led, not a treasure but an armed man,
and a portrait on the wall, covered by a curtain, which, being drawn
aside, revealed the features of the slain earl; how James shrieked for
help, and his attendants, bursting in from the courtyard, found him
struggling in the hands of Gowrie and his brother, both of whom were
instantly despatched. But the scene of this was not Ruthven Castle, but
old Gowrie House, the town residence of the doomed family, which stood
on the site of the present County Buildings of Perth, close by the
Tay; and the episode belongs to the annals of the "good city of Sanct
Johnstoun."
Thanks to the civil and religious broils of former days, and to the
spirit of modern improvement, nearly all the antiquities of Perth--the
relics of days when it was the seat of the Court, the centre of trade
and religious life, and the great "objective" of warlike operations and
political intrigue--have disappeared from the face of the earth. Of its
Castle, which stood near the north end of what is now the Skinnergate,
not a trace now remains; of its ancient walls, besieged and breached
so often in the wars between Scots and English, scarcely a vestige.
Four monasteries, and numerous other religious houses, once existed
here; and according to information that reached Erasmus, their inmates
led a specially delicate and lazy life. All disappeared--monks and
monasteries together--at the Reformation, and the "rascall multitude,"
who had perhaps seen too much of their cowled and cloistered neighbours
to cherish a deep respect for them, showed little scruple in spoiling
"the monuments of idolatry," and in making free with the meat and drink
with which buttery and cellar were found well stored, and bore in
triumph through the streets the great dinner-pot of the Blackfriars,
thus spreading abroad the last savour of the mediæval religious life
of Perth. Blackfriars Wynd and Street indicate the position of this
Dominican convent, and King James VI.'s Hospital serves to mark the
site of the only Carthusian foundation that existed in Scotland. In
the former, James I. was done to death, and in the latter, richly
endowed by him, the murdered poet-king was buried. The dark tale--the
portents and warnings vouchsafed to the victim, the midnight clash of
arms and flare of torches in the Monastery gardens, while James was
gaily chatting with the Queen and her ladies before retiring to rest;
the heroism of Catherine Douglas, who thrust her arm through the staple
of the door as a bar against the traitors; the temporary escape of the
king into the vault below the floor; his discovery, the savage struggle
before he was despatched, and the terrible revenge that was wreaked by
the widowed Joanna--is as familiar as the Gowrie tragedy itself.
The Church of St. John is still a venerable and venerated object
in Perth; although it also has suffered from the hard usage of time
and the Reformers, and its roof now covers, in place of the numerous
shrines and chapels of Roman Catholic days, three Presbyterian places
of worship. It was in St. John's that Knox preached his iconoclastic
sermon; and many other conspicuous events in the civil and religious
history of Scotland--and more particularly during the long struggle
between Protestantism and Papacy, and between Episcopacy and the
Covenant--were transacted within a stone-throw of its time-worn walls.
Fourteen Scottish Parliaments, and a still larger number of Councils
of Churchmen, are reckoned to have met in Perth previous to the
Reformation. Here schism and martyrdom had begun a century and a half
before Knox. Girdings and gibings at priestly ways crept even into
the "Miracle Plays" annually performed on Corpus Christi Day; and the
town and country around were "more infested with heresy than any other
part of the nation." Cardinal Beaton watched from the Spey Tower while
example was made of heretics by hanging and drowning them "for the
encouragement of others:" to such good effect that in a few years the
monasteries were in ashes, and the Lords of the Congregation, assembled
at Perth, had proclaimed their resolution to spend goods and lives
in the cause of the "true worship of God, the public welfare of the
nation, and the common liberty," in token whereof the burghers set out
on their southward march with ropes--"St. Johnston's ribands"--about
their necks. Mary Queen of Scots and her son had small reason to
remember with pleasure their visits to Perth; and after the Gowrie
incident King James did all in his power to humiliate the town. It was
here that the Assemblies of the Kirk and Parliaments, or Conventions
of Estates, alternately proclaimed and disowned the authority of the
bishops; the town was the centre of fighting in the long battle between
Prelacy and Presbytery. Perth loyally entertained Charles I., and
thirteen brethren of the Craft of Glovers--fateful number!--danced the
sword-dance before him; and soon after, these selfsame swords were
girded to oppose the King at Duns. Montrose captured and pillaged the
town, after defeating the Covenanting troops outside at Tibbermore;
the young Charles II. lodged in the Gowrie House, and after vainly
attempting to run away from the ministers and their long prayers and
exhortations, signed the Solemn League and Covenant, and professed,
as King of Scots, penitence for the sins and follies of himself and
his House. Then came Cromwell and his Ironsides, and built a citadel
on the South Inch and a pier on the Tay with the stones of the ruined
convents; and Claverhouse, Mar, and Prince Charlie have helped since
then to "make history" at Perth and in its neighbourhood.
[Illustration: ON THE FIRTH OF TAY.]
For nearly a century and a half the annals have been comparatively
peaceful and prosaic; even inundation and plague do not trouble
the townsmen as of yore. The Tay no longer makes trysts with its
tributaries to meet "at the bonny cross of St. Johnstoun." Except in
rare times of spate, it sweeps smoothly and sedately under the arches
of the bridge, and past the green "Inches," with their spreading trees
and spacious walks--the fields of pastime and of strife since long
before the memorable battle of the North Inch, when the blade of Hal o'
the Wynd, fighting "for his own hand," turned the scale in favour of
the champions of Clan Chattan--to meet tide-water and commerce below
the town. It is the benefactor and the crowning ornament of Perth,
which has considerably grown and beautified itself of recent years, not
the least of its sources of wealth being the amenities and romantic
associations of the ancient city, and the glorious scenery of the Tay,
of which it may be described as at once the gateway and the centre.
[Illustration: THE NEW TAY VIADUCT, FROM THE SOUTH.]
Within short walking distance of Perth are the Hills of Kinnoull and
Moncrieffe. Tay, after leaving the town, turns sharply to the left
between these two grand wooded heights--each of them rising over 700
feet above the river--and pursues its way, widening as it goes, between
the rich low expanse of the Carse of Gowrie and the opposing shores of
Fife. It were hard to decide which of these sentinel hills commands
the more magnificent prospect. Each view might challenge comparison
with any scene outside of the basin of the Tay for extent and for the
mingling of all the elements of beauty in Highland and Lowland scenery.
Yet, close as they stand to each other and to Perth, distinctly
different panoramas, in foreground and in perspective, are unfolded
from the summits of the two heights. They offer companion pictures, and
not merely landscapes in duplicate, of the Tay from its sources in the
distant blue ranges of the Grampians to the sea.
The top of Moncrieffe--or Moredun--beside the foundations of the old
Pict fort or _dun_, is the right station whence to survey Strathearn--a
valley that rivals that of the Tay itself in the place it holds in the
national history and in the affections of the lovers of scenic beauty.
Directly below the steep pine-covered crest of Moredun runs the winding
Earn, separating the park and woods of Moncrieffe from the pleasant
watering-place of Bridge of Earn. Near the confluence with the Tay is
Abernethy, its "Round Tower" coeval, perhaps, with the introduction
of Christianity to this part of the Tay, and its Castle Law on which,
says tradition, Nechtan and other Pictish kings held their state during
the two centuries and a half when this decayed little burgh was the
capital of the land. Beyond, in the same direction, are the waters of
the Firth; Mugdrum Island, long and low; Newburgh, and Norman Law,
the Norsemen's look-out, rising on one side above old Ballenbriech
Castle and the Fife shores, and on the other commanding the "Howe o'
Fife" and the Loch of Lindores. Beside the venerable ruins of Lindores
Abbey, close to Newburgh and the Firth, are buried the murdered "heir
of Scotland," David, Duke of Rothesay, and James of Douglas--the
"grey monk of Lindores"--the last of the ambitious race of the Black
Douglases. In the same vicinity, in a glen or pass of the Ochils, stood
another grim memorial of feudal or pre-feudal times, "Cross Macduff,"
now represented only by its pedestal, where the taker of life, if he
could "count kin," within nine degrees, with the Thane of Fife, the
head of Clan Macduff, could find refuge, and proffer the "blood-penny"
in atonement.
Over against Moredun are the crests of the Lomonds and the green,
smooth, wavy lines of the Ochils; and through Glenfarg to its foot
comes the new main line of railway to the North by the Forth Bridge.
Right opposite, behind Pitkeathly Wells, Kilgraston, the old kirk and
"rocking stone" of Dron, and the ruins of Balmanno Castle, are the
"Wicks of Baiglie," whence Scott asserted that the Romans and he could
descry the site of Perth. But the eye is carried irresistibly westward
along the skirts of the hills and the broad and teeming valley below,
towards the Highland mountains that surround the sources of the Earn.
Near at hand are Forteviot and its Holyhill--a Scoto-Pictish capital
before Perth; Dunning and other villages and hamlets lying along the
hill-foots, proud to this day of the memories of the martyrs for "Crown
and Covenant," their sufferings at the hands of Montrose and Mar, and
the former prosperity of their weaving crafts; and standing on rich
flats by the waterside, or in picturesque glens running up into the
Ochils, many a mansion and castle of the fighting and grasping Jacobite
lairds of Strathearn, ill neighbours of yore to the Whiggish villagers.
Over against the "Birks o' Invermay" lies Dupplin Castle (now the seat
of Lord Kinnoull), with its loch, its grand woods, and the site of its
battlefield, so disastrous to the Scots; and opposite Lord Rollo's
park of Duncrub is Gask, still a home of the Oliphants, though the
"Auld House" has disappeared. Further west, the Ruthven water comes
down through Gleneagles and the lovely wooded "Den" of Kincardine,
past the old castle and the single long street of Auchterarder,
famous in ecclesiastical history. The Machany flows by Culdees and
Strathallan Castles, and not far from Tullibardine, cradle of the noble
House of Athole, and burying-place of the great race of Montrose. At
Innerpeffray, where the old line of Roman roads and stations crossed
the Earn, comes in the Pow, flowing by the ruins of Inchaffray Abbey
and the woods of Balgowan and Abercairney; and further on, around
Crieff, and thence upwards by Comrie and St. Fillan's, to Loch Earn,
lies one of the most glorious districts, not alone of Earnside, but of
Scotland. Drummond and Monzie Castles, Ochtertyre and Dunira, Lawers
and Aberuchil, are among its grandly wooded demesnes; Glenturret, Glen
Lednoch, and Glen Artney contribute each their charms of crag and
waterfall, bosky dell and lone hillside, and there are innumerable
remains of former days in the form of standing or ruined chapel and
castle, and the sites of ancient feud and battle. Little of all this
can, of course, be descried from the top of Moncrieffe Hill; but Ben
Chonzie, and the Braes of Doune, and the Forest of Glen Artney, and
behind them the shapely head of Ben Voirlich and other mountains that
mirror themselves in Loch Earn or guard Glen Ogle and Lochearnhead, are
full in view.
The abrupt front of Kinnoull Hill, on the other hand, commands more
directly the lower course of the Tay and its estuary, widening out
between the level expanse of the Carse of Gowrie, thickly sprinkled
with farms and mansions, and the opposing shores of Fife, onward
to where it is closed by the smoke of Dundee and the line of the
Tay Bridge. From the pathway below the tower crowning the hill, one
looks down--one almost fancies he might leap down--upon the woods
and sward surrounding Kinfauns Castle, the residence of the family
of Gray. Visible, too, from Kinnoull, or sheltering under the folds
of the "Braes o' the Carse," which rise from the flat champaign to
the heights of the Sidlaws, are innumerable sites and scenes, equally
rich in beauty and in memories of days when Gowrie was busier making
history than in raising grain. Among them are St. Madoes' Church and
its sculptured Runic stones; Errol and Megginch, ancient heritages
of the Hays; Kilspindie, where Wallace spent his schooldays, when he
"in Gowrie dwelt, and had gude living there," and the seat, later, of
Archibald of Douglas--"Auld Graysteel;" Fingask, the home of the stout
old Jacobite family of Murray Thriepland and of the "Lass o' Gowrie"
of Scottish song; Kinnaird and Rossie Priory, the earlier and later
possessions of the noble House of Kinnaird, champions in these parts,
for generations, of the cause of Reform.
[Illustration: DUNDEE, FROM BROUGHTY FERRY.]
From Rossie Hill, or from the battlements of the fine old baronial
tower of Castle Huntly, a nearer view can be had of the beautiful
cultivated Carse and its surroundings of firth and hills; or from near
the remains of the ancient Church of Invergowrie and the boundary line
of the shires of Perth and Stirling you can look across the widest part
of the great tidal stream--three miles of shining water or sandbank--to
another famous old ivy-clad ruin, Balmerino Abbey, on the opposite and
bolder shore of Fife. But as Kinnoull commands the grandest view of the
upper part of the Firth of Tay, so Balgay Hill and Dundee Law are the
stations to take up for a survey of its lower reaches and its meeting
with the North Sea. Round the bases of these eminences the northern
coast of the estuary curves outward, leaving a comparatively narrow
platform on which, for a space of three miles or more, are grouped
the forest of chimneys, spires, and masts of the city and harbour of
Dundee. The passage between the sea front of esplanade and docks, and
Newport and the line of handsome villas surmounting the rocky bank on
the other side, is reduced to less than two miles; and still bending
and narrowing, as the Fife shore, in turn, approaches, as if to meet
Angus and seal the mouth of the Tay, the waters of the Firth measure
only a mile across from Broughty Castle to Ferryport-on-Craig, where,
skirted on either hand by broad stretches of sand and "links," they
finally open, trumpet-shaped, to meet the German Ocean. Directly under
the Law, from Magdalen Point to St. Fort, where begin the narrows and
the busier part of Dundee, the line of arches of the new Tay Bridge
spans the Firth. The width from bank to bank is 3,440 yards--a little
under two miles--including the curve which the long double file of
piers makes in approaching the Dundee side. Slight as the structure
looks, when first seen from the Law or the river, and compared with the
wide expanse of water over which it is carried, it conveys, on more
attentive view, an impression of security as well as gracefulness; it
is not only a triumph of engineering skill, but a beautiful object in a
striking and noble picture.
[Illustration: DUNDEE.]
Far other are the impressions produced by the appearance, above the
water level, and running for part of the way alongside its successor,
of the foundations of the first Tay Bridge. This ill-fated undertaking
had only been eighteen months open for traffic, when, on a wild night
at the close of 1879, the whole of the central portion collapsed and
fell into the raging Firth, carrying along with it a train, with
its freight of seventy or eighty passengers, which was crossing
at the time. Not a soul survived to tell the circumstances of the
catastrophe--the most dramatic and one of the most disastrous in the
annals of railway accidents in this country. But subsequent inquiry
left no doubt that, in the original scheme of the structure, sufficient
allowance had not been made for the tremendous pressure put upon it
by the currents of air scouring through this funnel of the Firth;
and that much of the work, both in the brick foundations and steel
superstructure, had been "scamped" and left without proper inspection,
so that the first occasion of maximum strain--a passing train, while a
tempest was at its height--brought the inevitable result.
Dundonians love to survey their city and its surroundings from the
"Law." The spectacle is one they may well be proud of. Marvellous has
been the change here since Dundee consisted of only four straggling
streets, meeting at the central "place" of the "Market Gait," and a
congeries of narrow lanes running from these down to the harbour,
consisting, as the local historian tells us, of rude jetties added to
the natural haven opening between the headlands of the Chapel Craig and
the Castle Rock. Even then, however--four centuries ago and more--it
had an interesting history; even then the energy of its burgesses and
its favourable position at the mouth of the Tay enabled it to carry
on a brisk trade with the ports of Holland and the Baltic. Already
its Castle, near the head of the Seagate, had suffered sieges; its
Constables, the Scrymgeours, were the standard-bearers of Scotland in
the national war, and the town disputed with Perth which was the more
ancient and honourable. Its situation at the foot and on the slope of
the fine acclivity facing the sun and the Tay, got for it from its
Lowland and Highland neighbours its name of "Bonny Dundee" and the
"pleasant town." It has vastly increased its trade and importance
since; but it has also increased its amenities; and even the casual
eye overlooking it can see, by the handsome spires and towers rising
beside the forest of masts and factory stalks that stretch along the
shore, and by the open spaces--Albert Square, and the Baxter and Balgay
Parks--that the town is mindful of art and air and beauty, as well as
of business. The castles--the early building on the Castle Hill, and
the later fortalice of the Constables at Dudhope--have disappeared to
the foundations. But the fine old square tower of St. Mary's, in the
Nethergate, is still a handsome and conspicuous landmark of Dundee,
spite of all the competition of its modern buildings. Although it can
hardly be part of the original structure erected by David, Earl of
Huntingdon--the hero of the "Talisman"--in gratitude for his escape
from manifold perils while serving under Richard Coeur-de-Lion in
Palestine, it is a venerable and stately object, and the Dundonians
have had this their chief antiquity carefully restored.
That Dundee has not more remnants left of its early consequence is due
to the march of modern improvement, and to the hard knocks it suffered
in times of civil war and invasion. After Pinkie, the English troops
seized upon the Castle of Broughty Craig--which, like the Tower of St.
Mary's, has been restored, and now guards the entrance to the Firth,
with the pleasant backing of marine villa residences and stretches of
links and sands much frequented by the good folks of the burgh--and
Broughty besieged Dundee, and Dundee Broughty, for two or three years
before the intruders were expelled. A hundred years later Montrose
and his Irish and Highland kernes swooped suddenly down upon it from
the upper valley of the Tay, and plundered and sacked the Covenanting
place, the leader looking on from the "Corbie Hill," while the
followers burned, slew, and wasted in the streets below. The townsmen
magnanimously forgot this when, a few years later, the "Great Marquis"
was brought into it, a captive in the hands of his enemies; and "though
Dundee," says Wishart, "had suffered more by his army than any other
within the kingdom, yet were they so far from insulting him, that
the whole town testified very great sorrow for his woful condition."
Next year--1651--Dundee had again to endure sack and capture, at the
hands of General Monk, when the garrison was put to the sword, the
town burned, and, as Carlyle says, "there was once more a grim scene
of flames, blood, and rage and despair transacted upon this earth."
Claverhouse is close by the town, and John Graham--that other "evil
genius of the Covenant"--was Constable of Dudhope, and took his title
from "Bonny Dundee."
The "bloody Mackenzie" was another of its sons or neighbours;
Camperdown House, the home of the valiant Admiral Duncan, is behind
Balgay and the busy suburb of Lochee. But, if it has reared many "men
of blood," Dundee has been still more prolific in historians and poets,
reformers and inventors, of whom Boece and Wedderburn, Halyburton and
Carmichael, are representative names. Yet longer is the list of its
merchant princes, and its munificent patrons of art and benefactors of
the town, of whom the Baxter family are types. They have made of Dundee
a great and busy centre of maritime commerce, and placed it first among
the trading places of the kingdom in the importation and manufacture
of jute; and they have not forgotten generous aid in endowing the town
with public parks, museums, libraries, educational institutions, and
other resources of civilisation, such as few seats of industry of its
size can boast.
Dundee has spread over the green slopes and orchard grounds below
the Law; but it has only increased the circumference of its fine
environment of land and sea. Westward, the view extends over the
fertile Carse, and range on range of the Grampians, amid which may be
descried Ben Lomond and Schiehallion, and many a Highland peak besides.
Behind the Law, the eye rises from the rich valley of the Dichty,
flowing by Strathmartine and Claverhouse towards the sea at Monifieth
Sands, to the Hill of Auchterhouse, Craig Owl, and other extensions
of the Sidlaws, with glimpses of the heads of the loftier hills of
Strathmore peeping over their shoulders; and, ridge behind ridge,
these uplands subside as they stretch eastward, past many a storied
and beautiful scene, towards Arbroath and the sea. Southward, beyond
the Firth and the bridge, the rocky northern shores and hilly backbone
of Fife are spread out like a map; and behind Newport and Tayport and
the waste expanse of Tents Moor shimmer the waters of St. Andrew's Bay
and the Eden Estuary, and rise the grey, weather-beaten towers of St.
Rule's Cathedral and of Cardinal Beaton's Castle, beside the green
links and white sand of St. Andrews.
JOHN GEDDIE.
[Illustration: BROUGHTY FERRY CASTLE.]
[Illustration: BEN AND LOCH LOMOND.]
THE FORTH.
Comparative--Poetry, Romance, and History--Loch Ard
and Flora McIvor--The "Clachan of Aberfoyle"--Lake of
Menteith--The Trossachs and Loch Katrine--Ellen and
Helen--Loch Achray--Ben Ledi--The View from Stirling
Castle--Stirling Town--Bannockburn--The Ochils and the Devon
Valley--Alloa--Clackmannan--Kincardine-on-Forth--Tulliallan
Castle--Culross: Abbey and Burgh--The "Standard
Stone"--Torryburn--Rosyth Castle--"St. Margaret's
Hope"--Dunfermline: Tower, Palace, and Abbey--The New Forth
Bridge--Inch Garvie and its Castle--Inverkeithing Bay--Donibristle
House--Aberdour--Inchcolm, Cramond, Inchkeith, and May Islands--The
Bass Rock--Kirkcaldy Bay--Edinburgh--Leith--Seton--Aberlady--Round
to North Berwick--Tantallon Castle.
Other Scottish streams may dispute with the Forth the prize of beauty,
and excel it in length of course and in wealth of commerce. There
is none that can contend with it for the palm of historic interest.
Nature herself has marked out its valley as the scene of the strife
and of the reconciliation of races and creeds. Half the important
events in Scottish annals have taken place on or near the banks of the
river, and of the Firth--around Doune, and Stirling, and Edinburgh,
and Dunfermline; under the shadow of the Campsie and the Ochil Hills;
along the margins of the Teith and Allan, Devon and Esk; by the folds
of the Forth, or by the shores of Fife and the Lothians. Its course
forms no inapt emblem and epitome of the fortunes of Scotland and of
the Scottish nation. Drawn from the strength of the hills, and cradled
amid scenes of wild and solitary beauty, its deep, dark, winding waters
flow through the "Debatable Land" of Roman and Caledonian, of Pict and
Scot, of Saxon and Gael. The fords and bridges which Highlander and
Lowlander, Whig and Jacobite, have crossed so often on raid or for
reprisal, have become bonds of union. The fertile carse-lands wave
with the richer harvests for the blood shed in the battles of national
independence, and in many a feud now ended and forgotten. The Forth,
that "bridled the wild Highlandman," has become the symbol of peace and
the highway of intercourse between South and North.
Poetry and Romance, as well as History, have made the Forth their
favourite haunt. The genius of Scottish Romance, or of Scottish
History, could nowhere find a prouder seat than Ben Lomond. At its feet
are the waters of Loch Lomond, losing themselves to the north among the
enclosing folds of the hills, and broadening out southwards to embrace
their beautiful islands; while beyond, like a map, lie the mountains of
the West, from Skye to Kintyre, touched here and there with gleams of
loch and sea, and with blurs of smoke from factory stalk or steamer.
From the other flank of the mountain issues the infant Forth. Ben
Lomond presides over all its devious wanderings, from the source to
the sea. It looks directly down upon "Rob Roy's country;" and close
at hand, and within the basin of the Forth, are Loch Katrine and the
Trossachs. The towers of Stirling, and even the "reek" of Edinburgh,
may be descried on a clear day. Following the broad valley of the
Forth, the eye can take in the sites to which cling most closely the
heroic or pathetic memories of "the days of other years;" and over the
whole glorious landscape Walter Scott has thrown the glamour of his
genius.
Romance works with a charm more powerful than that of History itself in
attracting visitors to the head-waters of the Forth and Teith, and in
enhancing the marvellous natural beauties of their lake and mountain
scenery. True, few except stout pedestrians and ardent anglers follow
up the Duchray Water, past ivied Duchray Castle, to the corries that
seam the base of Ben Lomond. But the path from Inversnaid, that skirts
Loch Chon and the more famous and more beautiful northern head-stream
of the Forth that issues from it, is not so unfrequented. Further
down, Loch Ard opens again, and yet again, a lovely mirror in which
are reflected the changeful outlines and rich colours of its girdling
hills and woods. Oak coppice, interspersed with the shining trunks of
the birch and the dark green of the pines, climbs over every knoll, and
clings to every crag, and even covers the little island on the lake,
where Duke Robert of Albany hoped to find a refuge from his enemies.
Above copse-wood and lake rise the brown slopes and grey precipices of
Ben Vogrieh and of Craigmore; while the conical head and broad flanks
of Ben Lomond shoulder themselves into view, and close the top of the
glen.
But the enchantment of Loch Ard would not be complete did not the
form of Flora McIvor yet haunt the Linn of Ledeart, in the guise of
the Highland Muse, as when first she startled and threw a spell over
Edward Waverley; and did not her voice--wild and plaintive as the
legends of the land and the genius of its race--mingle, as of yore,
with the murmur of the stream. The pass by the lake-side still seems
to have the commanding figure of Helen MacGregor presiding over it,
and eyeing menacingly Saxon intrusion into this refuge of a proscribed
clan. The "Clachan of Aberfoyle," now unexceptionable as a place
of travellers' entertainment, can never be disassociated from the
memorable experiences of a night's quarters at "Jeanie MacAlpine's." At
the "Fords of Frew," we think, more than of anything else, of Rob Roy
slipping the belt-buckle in midstream, and of the moving and mysterious
night interview on the neighbouring moor between Francis Osbaldistone
and Di Vernon.
[Illustration:
_Walker & Boutall sc._
THE FORTH.]
The "Clachan" is now all spick and span; but its surroundings are
the same. The brawling waters tumble in white foam from Loch Ard,
and, mixing with the Duchray, pour their deep sombre current--the
Avondhu, or "Black River"--on past Gartmore to wind in labyrinthine
folds through the level mosslands towards Stirling. And the natives
of the Upper Forth, while they have forgotten the real history of
their district, will show you, chained to the tree in front of the inn
windows, the veritable "coulter" with which Bailie Nicol Jarvie did
such credit to his Highland blood, and the selfsame oak-stump from
which he hung suspended over the lake; nor have they wholly lost faith
in the Fairy People--the _Daoine Shi_, or "Men of Peace"--with whom
these hills and valleys have from time immemorial been favoured haunts.
From Aberfoyle, the direct road to Stirling, leaving the Forth, winds
round the margin of the Lake of Menteith, overlooked by the outposts
of the Grampians, and overlooking the rich beauty of a plain which
rises on its southern side behind Bucklyvie and Kippen, to the lower
heights and smoother outlines of the Campsie and Fintry Hills. Here,
in the heart of Menteith, we are in the country of "the Graemes,"
and many legends of the great House of Montrose linger about this,
as about other spots in the basin of the Forth. But the Lake of
Menteith has still earlier and prouder memories. The Comyns and the
Stewarts--the old lords of Menteith--wielded almost regal power from
their island-castle of Talla; and within bowshot is the larger isle
of Inchmahone, where part of the ancient Priory still stands in the
shadow of its planes and orchard trees. Mary Stuart spent part of her
childhood in the "Isle of Rest"--perhaps the quietest and sweetest
period of her troubled life--when it was thought wise, after the battle
of Pinkie, to remove the young Queen of Scots to a place of safety.
[Illustration: "ELLEN'S ISLE."]
The Trossachs and Loch Katrine can be reached in a couple of hours, on
foot, from Aberfoyle. More even than the Upper Forth and the banks of
Lochs Ard and Menteith, these scenes at the head-waters of the Teith,
immortalised in "The Lady of the Lake," are the abodes of the spirit
of Highland romance and the shrines of tourist pilgrimage. Once this
"fastness of the North" was the impregnable retreat of the proscribed
clan of the MacGregors, whence they issued to harry the shores of Loch
Lomond with fire and sword, and levy black-mail and empty byres in
the Lennox. A century and a half ago it was still thought unsafe for
peaceably disposed folk to approach the district, and in the memory of
men still alive it had hardly acquired more than local fame for its
beauty.
Walter Scott and his metrical and prose romances have changed all
that. A stream of tourists flows steadily through the passes all the
summer and autumn, and more fitfully at other seasons; and steamers,
stage-coaches, and hotels have strangely altered the aspect of this
"Scottish Lake Country." But the "everlasting hills" look down on it
unchanged. The crest of Ben Lomond still dominates the western end of
Loch Katrine, girt in by hillsides, or opening into glens as stern and
almost as solitary as when they echoed back the slogan of Roderick Dhu.
Round the lower extremity of the lake the mountains take closer rank
and more varied forms; and the broken and impending precipices, the
winding and opening waters, the wooded shores and islands, fringed with
grey rock or "silver strand," seem, as when Fitz-James first set his
foot here, an "enchanted land" over which Ben Venue and Ben An stand
sentinels:--
"High on the south huge Ben Venue
Down on the lake in masses threw
Crags, knolls, and mounds confusedly hurled,
The fragments of an earlier world;
A wildering forest feathered o'er
His ruined sides and summit hoar;
While on the north through middle air
Ben An lifts up his forehead bare."
[Illustration: THE TROSSACHS AND BEN VENUE.]
On the cloven side of Ben Venue is the "Coir-nan-Uriskin"--the
Goblin's Cave or Hollow--deserted of its unearthly denizens since it
has become an object of interest to the tourist. "Ellen's Isle," clad
with wood to the water's edge, seems to shelter in the shadow of the
northern shore. Cromwell's men, clambering up the pass, found that the
women and children of the clan had sought refuge here; and one bold
soldier swam out to the island to bring away a boat. Hardly had he
touched ground when a woman--Helen Stuart--drew a dagger from below
her apron and slew him. A minstrel's music has slightly changed the
name and wholly changed the associations, and the spot is dedicated to
another Ellen and to the gentler fancies, not the rude facts, of the
days of old.
From the "Silver Strand" opposite Ellen's Isle you wind for a couple
of miles through the "bristled territory" of the Trossachs before you
reach Loch Achray, and "the copse-wood grey that waves and weeps" above
the second of the chain of lakes. Ben An and Ben Venue hold the place
of sentries to left and to right, and seem to have tumbled down into
the narrow pass huge fragments from their splintered sides, to block
the way against intruders into this old sanctuary of the Gael. In vain;
their very efforts have but added to the wild impressiveness of the
scene, and to the crowds that come to wonder and admire. It would be
"to gild refinèd gold" to describe the beauties of the Trossachs--the
scene where Nature seems to have tried to produce, within the narrowest
compass, the most bewildering effects by mingling her materials of rock
and foliage and falling waters. Their praises have been sung in words
that linger in every memory.
Toilsome indeed must the path have been to trace when the wandering
James V. came hither in pursuit of game. But a fine road now threads
the depths of the ravine, and skirting Loch Achray, and passing the
Trossachs Hotel and Church, brings us to Brig of Turk and the opening
of "lone Glenfinlas," the haunt of Highland deer and of Highland
legend. Every green nook and cranny, every glimpse of copse-wood and
tumbling water, moss-grown hut and lichened rock, is a temptation to
linger by the way. But Duncraggan must be passed; then Lanrick Mead, at
the west end of Loch Vennachar, the meeting-place of the Clan Alpine,
summoned by the "Fiery Cross;" and by-and-bye the sounding torrent of
Carchonzie, where the Vennachar "breaks in silver" from its lake, and
near it Coilantogle Ford, the scene of the deadly strife between James
Fitz-James and Roderick Dhu. By this time the form of Ben Ledi--the
"Hill of God," the high altar of the old Druidical worship--has lifted
itself up mightily upon the left, and, furthest outpost in this
direction of the higher Grampians, keeps watch over the "mouldering
lines" of the Roman encampment on Bochastle, the Pass of Leny, and the
modern village of Callander. It looks across to Ben Voirlich and the
heathy solitudes of Uam-Var, where the "noble stag" was first started
upon the eventful Chase, and abroad on a prospect which may compare,
for richness, variety, and extent, with that from Ben Lomond.
Not less magnificent in its own way, and far more accessible, is
the view from the bridge of Callander, where the most impressive
features of the scene are Ben Ledi itself, the high crag that forms
the background of the village, and the deeply wooded flanks of the
pass, down which foam the waters of the Leny, coming from the "Braes
of Balquhidder" and Loch Lubnaig, to hold romantic tryst here with the
stream from Loch Vennachar, and between them to form the Teith. But
we must downward with the Teith towards Stirling, only glancing at
a few of the scenes on its banks--at the wooded glen of the Keltie,
embosoming the far-famed Falls of Bracklinn; at Cambusmore, where Scott
began his "Lady of the Lake;" and above all at the "bannered towers of
Doune," its huge feudal walls rising above the Teith--walls saturated
from dungeon to turret with memories of grim or pathetic events in
the histories of the Stewarts of Menteith and Moray, and in the lives
of Mary Stuart of Montrose, and of Charles Edward. Murdoch, Duke of
Albany, is thought to have built Doune, and may have planted its "Dool
Tree." When Murdoch was executed, along with his sons and adherents, on
the "Heading Hill" at Stirling, it was on a spot where his eyes might
fall upon the strong new castle upon which he had built his hopes of
safety.
At Stirling Castle it will be convenient to take our next stand, and
see "the mazy Forth unravelled." No baronial castle on the Rhine or
Danube is more romantically and commandingly placed than these "towers
of Snowdoun," or surveys a fairer scene. One can imagine the time--but
yesterday in the geologist's record--when the broad valley of the
river was filled with the sea, back to the roots of the Grampians, and
when Stirling Rock, with its neighbour bluffs, the Abbey Craig and
Craigforth, rose as islands or peninsulas over the waters, each with
its slope towards the east and its front to the west. The sea has long
receded, and Stirling now dominates the green and level floor of its
fertile carse. Through the middle of the landscape meanders the Forth,
in immense loops and folds--"a foiled circuitous wanderer"--
"Forgetting the bright speed he had
In his high mountain cradle,"
and using, as it would seem, every circumvolution and chance of
tarrying or turning back, to avoid meeting with the Teith, the Allan,
and the Bannock, at the base of Stirling Rock. From where the stream
debouches from the hills into Flanders Moss, to where it meets the
tide-water at Stirling Bridge, there is said to be a fall of only
eighteen feet in some eighteen miles, measured "as the crow flies"--a
distance increased fourfold by following the intricate gyres of the
dark still waters. Below the Bridge, to which vessels are able to come
up from the sea, the river still continues to double and turn as far as
Alloa, in those "links o' Forth," each of which, according to the old
rhyme, is "worth an Earldom in the North."
Flat and tame as are the immediate banks of the river, draining
through ancient mosses, now turned for the most part into rich
corn-bearing land, goodly sites are close at hand in the plain, on
the slopes of the enclosing hills, or in the tributary valleys--among
them Cardross, and Blair-Drummond, and Keir, all famous in the annals
of Scottish law, agriculture, and literature; and Airth and Airthrey
Castles, which carry the mind from the doughty deeds of Sir John the
Graeme to those of Sir Ralph Abercromby. Of what lies within the
valley of the Teith we have seen something. But the banks of Allan
Water, behind the favourite Spa of Bridge of Allan and its embosoming
woods and hills, are almost as well worth exploring; for they lead, to
mention but a few of their attractions, to Dunblane and its beautiful
old Cathedral, to Sheriffmuir, and to the Roman Camp at Ardoch.
The tide of Scottish history long flowed towards and around Stirling
Castle. The time when it was not a place of strength and of strife
is lost in the mists of antiquity. Early, too, it became the seat of
kings; and the Castle, and the little burgh upon the slope behind, have
witnessed many a stirring sight. Scottish Parliaments were held here,
or in the Abbey of Cambuskenneth, whose ruined tower rises, on a "link
of Forth," opposite what is now the railway station. Sovereigns were
born and baptised, were wedded and buried, held joyous jousts, and
committed foul deeds of blood and shame, on Stirling Rock or under its
shadow.
[Illustration: OLD BRIDGE OF FORTH, STIRLING.]
The buildings on the highest platform of the Rock--still a fortified
and garrisoned place--surround the "Upper Square." What is the Armoury
was the Chapel, erected on the site of an older Chapel Royal, by the
"Scottish Solomon," to celebrate, with pomp till then unheard of, the
baptism of Prince Henry. Opposite is the Palace of James V., its front
still embossed with the remains of rich carvings and uncouth sculpture.
The Parliament House, built by James III. (now put to barrack
purposes), and the building within which James II. stained his name and
race with blood, by stabbing to the heart the Earl of Douglas, complete
a group of buildings upon which have been indelibly impressed the
character and the fate of the Sovereigns of the House of Stuart. The
visitor to Stirling Castle can view Highlands and Lowlands from "Queen
Mary's Lookout;" and then, for change of sympathy and impression,
inspect the pulpit and communion-table of John Knox; or, if his faith
be great, the dungeon where Roderick Dhu drew his latest breath. The
windy hollow between the Castle and the "Gowling Hills," he is told,
is Ballengeich, of which that hero of ballad adventure, James V., was
"Gudeman." The most distant of these braes was the "Mote" or "Heading
Hill," the old place of execution, where many a noble and guilty head
has fallen--the Albany faction and the murderers of James I. among the
number. Below the Castle, on the other side, are the King's Garden and
King's Park, the scenes of the sports and diversions in the olden time,
where James II. held tournaments, and James IV. delighted in his "Table
Round."
[Illustration: STIRLING, FROM ABBEY CRAIG.]
Nor are the history and aspect of the town of Stirling unworthy of its
noble station. It, also, is crammed with memories and antiquities--from
the square tower of the West Church, grouping so well with the
buildings on the Castle, and surmounting the hall where Knox preached
and the infant James VI. was crowned, down to the burial-place of the
murdered James III., under the tower of Cambuskenneth and close by the
winding Forth.
But the historical fame and interest of Stirling rest perhaps more
upon the bloody and decisive battles fought in its neighbourhood,
than upon anything else. From the Castle ramparts one can look down
upon Stirling Bridge, Bannockburn, and Sauchie; and Falkirk, Kilsyth,
Sheriffmuir, and other stricken fields, reaching from the '45 back to
Pictish and Roman times, are not far off. In memory of the Struggle
for Independence, but especially of William Wallace, the presentment
of a feudal tower, surmounted by a mural crown, rises to a height of
over 200 feet on the summit of the Abbey Craig, the most commanding
site, next to Stirling Rock itself, in the valley. The Bridges--the old
and the new--lie midway between these two bold bluffs. But the former
venerable edifice, though it could also tell its strange stories of
civil broil, and, among others, of how an Archbishop was hung on its
parapet three centuries ago, is by no means the structure where the
"Protector of Scotland," watching the passage of the Forth (probably
from the slopes of the Abbey Craig), taught so terrible a lesson to
Cressingham and the English invaders. This, by all accounts, was a
wooden structure placed half a mile above the moss-grown buttresses of
the present Old Bridge of Stirling.
The fame of the battle fought at Stirling Bridge in 1297, and of the
other fight, so disastrous to the Scottish cause, that took place
a year later at Falkirk, has been quite obscured by the Bruce's
great victory at Bannockburn. One never thinks of Stirling without
remembering that near by is the field where was decided, for three
centuries, and indeed for all time, the history and fortunes of
Scotland. The banks of the Bannock are now peaceful enough, and the
people of the village of that name, and of the neighbouring hamlet of
St. Ninians, lying still nearer Stirling and the battle-ground, are
occupied with nothing more warlike than the weaving of tartans. The
slough in which the English chivalry sank, and were overpowered, is now
drained and cultivated land. But a fragment of the "Bore Stone," where
Bruce set up his standard, is still preserved; and the "Gillies' Hill,"
behind, commemorates the opportune appearance of the camp-followers of
the Scottish army, when they hoisted their blankets on their tent-poles,
"And like a bannered host afar
Bore down on England's wearied war,"
putting a finish to the rout of Edward II.'s troops.
Leaving Stirling and Bannockburn and all their memories behind us, we
can now embark upon the Forth, and follow its broadening stream towards
the open sea. The fat carse-lands are still on either hand, rimmed
in on one side by the furrowed flanks of Dunmyatt and the Ochils,
and bounded on the other by the Campsie Fells, crowned, far off, by
Earl's Seat; while beyond, on a clear day such as we have bespoken
for our readers, the Bens grouped around the sources of the Forth and
Teith lift themselves into view, fronted effectively by the towers of
Stirling and the Abbey Craig. As we face now east, now west, now north,
now south, on our devious way, these objects shift place bewilderingly,
and more and more the "foot-hills" of the Ochils come down to take
their place and give a bolder character to the foreground scenery of
the Forth.
[Illustration: ALLOA PIER.]
Very beautiful, at all seasons and in all lights, is this historic
range, with its wonderful variety of form and play of shadows. As tales
of wild Highland foray and _stieve_ Lowland endurance are mingled
in its annals, so the pastoral and mountainous combine in this its
southern aspect; and the result is harmony. From the summit of Ben
Clench, the highest of the Ochils, and from other coigns of 'vantage,
you can gaze down into peaceful, secluded glens, familiar only to the
sheep and the curlew, or into busy valleys lined by thriving villages
and factory stalks, from which arises the smoke of the bleaching,
spinning, and other manufacturing industries that have long had a home
in the heart of these hills. Or you can look abroad and take in at
one sweeping glance the whole breadth of the country from Glasgow to
Dundee--from the Lammermoors and the North Sea to Ben Nevis and the
hills of Arran.
But the greatest of the glens of the Ochils is that followed by the
"clear-winding Devon," over many a rocky scaur and past many a busy
mill-wheel, on its way to join the Forth at Cambus. It would take a
volume to do justice to the beauties, wild and soft, of the Devon
Valley, and to the associations, warlike and peaceful, that have
gathered around its noted places; to attempt to describe Crook o'
Devon and Rumbling Bridge, the "Devil's Mill" and the "Cauldron Linn,"
and Dollar and Alva Glens; to collect the memories that cluster about
Tillycoultry and Alva, and Menstry and Tullibody; to dwell upon the
attractions of its excellent trouting streams; or to peer among the
shadows that appropriately shroud the ruins of Castle Campbell--the
"Castle of Gloom"--overlooking the "Burn of Sorrow," harried in revenge
against Argyll for the burning of the "Bonnie House o' Airlie."
[Illustration: SALMON-FISHING NEAR STIRLING.]
Unless one has a few days to spare that cannot well be better spent
than in exploring Glen Devon and the nooks of the Ochils, he can only
glance at the charming wooded valley and blue inviting heights as he
follows the windings of the Forth, past the flat green "inches" of
Tullibody and Alloa, under the North British Railway Bridge crossing
the river between these two islands, to the busy town of Alloa.
[Illustration: CULROSS, FROM THE PIER.]
More than Alloa itself, with its fame for the brewing of ale, and signs
of active shipping and manufacturing trade, the eye will be attracted
by Alloa Tower and Park, now the seat of the Earl of Mar and Kellie;
for here once ruled the old line of the Erskines, Earls of Mar; here
Queen Mary paid repeated visits, sailing up the Forth to meet Darnley,
under the conduct of Bothwell as High Admiral; and here her son, King
James, spent part of his boyhood, under the eye of the Regent Mar and
the strict disciplinary rod of George Buchanan.
[Illustration: CULROSS ABBEY.]
Below Alloa the river straightens and widens, taking more and more
the character of an estuary. One should not miss noting the scattered
houses of the old town of Clackmannan, scrambling up the slope to its
church and the ancient tower of the Bruces. Clackmannan is the place
which Aytoun's recluse thought of selecting for rural retirement,
because, "though he had often heard of it, he had never heard of
anybody who had been there." It is more out of the world than ever, now
that county business has flitted to Alloa. Its visage is not, however,
so forlorn as that of Kincardine-on-Forth, the pier of which we now
approach; for Kincardine has plainly seen better days, and has little
expectation of seeing their return. It was once a busy shipbuilding
and shipowning port; and close by was distilled the famous Kilbagie
whisky, by which the tinkler in the "Jolly Beggars" swore. Now there is
no Kilbagie, and no shipping business to speak of; and Kincardine is a
"dead-and-alive" place, and more dead than alive. There are many places
like it all along the shores of the Forth--places favoured by special
times and special circumstances of trade, which has since drifted or
been drawn elsewhere.
The massive grey ruins of Tulliallan Castle are in the woods close
behind Kincardine. This also was once a stronghold of the Bruces--in
fact, it is "Bruce Country" all the way along this northern shore of
the Forth, until we come to the last constriction of the estuary, over
which the great railway bridge is being thrown at Queensferry. The
spidery red limbs of this new giant bestriding the sea begin to come in
sight after passing Kincardine Ferry and rounding Longannet Point. For
now, especially when the broad mudbanks of the foreshore are covered at
high water, the river takes a truly spacious expansion; the salt water
begins to assert dominion over the fresh, and the line of the southern
bank retires to the distance of three or four miles. It is no great
loss; for Grangemouth and Bo'ness are little other than ports for the
shipment of coal and pig-iron. The Carron Works show like pillars of
fire by night and pillars of smoke by day, hiding Falkirk and Camelon
and other spots of historic note. Further east the low shore-line is
backed by a monotonous ridge that shuts us out from sight of the valley
of which Linlithgow, with its loch and royal palace, is the centre; and
even the woods of Kinneil, and the knowledge that along this crest,
starting on the shore near the old Roman station of Carriden, run the
remains of "Grime's Dyke"--the Wall of Antonine--fail to make the
southern side a joy to the eye. There is metal more attractive near at
hand, within the sweep of the Bay of Culross.
Culross--Koo'ross, as the name sounds familiarly to the ears of those
who know it--cherishes a fond tradition that Turner the painter,
who visited Sir Robert Preston at the Abbey in the beginning of
the century, compared its bay with that of Naples, rather to the
disadvantage of the latter. Local partiality is doubtless the father
of the legend. Yet there are wonderful charms embraced by the curve
of coast facing the south and the Firth, betwixt "Dunimarle and
Duniquarle," with Preston Island and its ruined buildings in the string
of the arc; the grey and white walls and red roofs of the little
royal burgh, following the sinuosity of the shore, or struggling up
the wooded slopes; the "corniced" roads and "hanging gardens" behind;
crowning the near foreground, the Norman tower of the Abbey Church,
the ruins of the ancient monastery, and the stately façade of the
mansion of Culross Abbey (the design, it is said, of Inigo Jones); and
behind, the forest, moorland, and cultivated tracts, rising towards
the wavy green lines, fading into blue in the distance, of the Ochils
and of the Cleish and Saline Hills. With the fresh light of morning
or the soft colours of evening upon the waters and upon the hills,
the scene may well be deemed lovely. Circumscribed as is the space,
and few and insignificant as are the remaining actors, Culross and
its vicinity have been the theatre of famous events, and have reared
many men prominent in the civil and religious history of the country.
Here St. Serf, the Apostle of Fife, is supposed to have been born,
and to have died. Here St. Thenew, daughter of "King Lot of Lothian,"
landed from the rotten shallop in which she had been cast adrift at
Aberlady, far down the coast, and gave birth to the more famous St.
Kentigern, or Mungo, patron saint of Glasgow. From Culross downward,
both shores of the Firth, and the islands in its midst, are strewn
with the memorials and traditions of the early Culdee missionaries,
whose humble cells later became the sites of the wealthier and more
imposing religious houses of Catholic times. Besides St. Serf and St.
Mungo, Fillan, Palladius, Adamnan, Adrian, Monans, and Columba himself,
set their imprint upon these curving coasts and solitary islets; and
Inverkeithing, Dysart, and Pittenweem; Abercorn, Inchcolm, Inchkeith,
the May, and the Bass, are among the places sanctified by memories of
the Early Church.
It was not till 1217 that the Monastery of Culross, of which only
some fragments remain, was founded by Malcolm, Earl of Fife. At
the Reformation the Abbey lands passed chiefly into the hands of
the Colvilles of Culross, and this family, with the Erskines, the
Cochranes, the Prestons, and the Bruces, have since successively had
"the guidin' o't" in the burgh and the surrounding district. So far
from the ecclesiastical eminence of Culross terminating with St. Serf,
it has continued almost down to our own day; for the town, and the
district back from it--at Carnock, and eastward along the hill-skirts
to Hill of Beath and beyond--have witnessed the keenest struggles
between Conformity and Schism--have been special scenes of the labours
of Bishop Blackadder and Bishop Leighton the "Saintly;" of John Row,
and of John Blackadder the Covenanter, who held his Conventicles under
the wakeful and vengeful eye of Dalzell of Binns--him with the "vowed
beard," whose hill-top for "glowering owre" Fife is on the opposite
side of the Firth; and in later times, of Boston, of Ralph and Ebenezer
Erskine, of Gillespie, and of other founders of the "Relief Church."
Culrossians might adopt the Bruce motto, "Fuimus," to describe
their industrial as well as their religious past. More than once the
burgh has been a spot favoured by trade, as well as by history. The
celebrated Sir George Bruce, of Carnock, made its fortunes, as well
as his own, by coal-mining and salt-making in the days of James I.
of England. Remains, in the shape of a heap of stones, uncovered at
low water, are seen of the "Moat"--an "unfellowed and unmatchable
work; a darke, light, pleasant, profitable hell," as John Taylor,
the "Water Poet" described it in the early years of the seventeenth
century--constructed to work the minerals lying under the bed of
the sea. But Culross's prosperity did not come to an end with them.
Throughout Scotland its "girdles"--iron plates for baking the oaten
bread of the "Land o' Cakes"--were also "unfellowed and unmatchable"
for many a day. The first of note among the ancestors of the Earl of
Rosebery was of the honest guild of the girdlesmiths of the burgh. A
"Cu'ross girdle" will soon only be found in an archæological museum;
their glory is departing, their use will soon be forgotten.
[Illustration: DUNFERMLINE.]
A lingering look may be cast in the direction of the "Standard Stone,"
at Bordie, where Duncan and Macbeth withstood the Danes; and of the
Castlehill, or Dunimarle, near by, which lays claim to be the scene of
the murder of Lady Macduff and her "pretty chickens" by the Usurper--a
claim, however, disputed by the "Thane's Castle," near East Wemyss, by
Rhives, and by other sites in the East of Fife. To this famous Whig
shire we eventually come at Torryburn, for thus far, since leaving
Stirling, we have been skirting on the left the shores of Clackmannan
and of a sporadic fragment of Perthshire projected upon the Forth. In
its scenic, social, and historic characteristics, however, the whole
ground, from where the river begins to broaden, is "Fifish," and, from
Dunmyatt to the "East Neuk," bears the traces, in place-names, legends,
and ancient remains, of old Pictish possession, and of Norse, Saxon,
and Highland incursions; of Culdee settlement and of Roman intrusion;
and of all the later strife, in Kirk and State, in which Fife has
"borne the gree." Neighbours have been ready to observe that the joint
effects of geographical isolation and outside pressure are quite as
deeply marked in the character, habits, and ways of the inhabitants;
and that, besides occupying a separate "Kingdom," they are in many
respects a "peculiar people."
[Illustration: FORTH BRIDGE, FROM THE SOUTH-WEST.]
Charlestown and Limekilns, after Culross, are but upstart villages,
built by the Earls of Elgin as shipping-places for the coal, lime,
and ironstone upon their Broomhall Estate. Before us, a prominent
object by the shore, is the stark grey keep of Rosyth Castle. And now
we are fairly in "St. Margaret's Hope," and under the shelter of the
high ground projecting from the Fife shore, which narrows, by a full
half, the width of the Firth, and forms, with Inch Garvie island as a
stepping-stone in mid-channel, the natural abutment whence the Forth
Bridge makes its flying leap to the southern bank. From the lee of this
rocky ridge Queen Mary, having rested at Rosyth, set sail for the other
shore, after her escape from Loch Leven Castle. On the beach here Sir
Patrick Spens may have paced when the "braid letter" was put into his
hands, sending him on the luckless voyage to bring back the "Maiden of
Norway," while not far off
"The King sat in Dunfermline tower,
Drinking the blood-red wine."
But most famous of the events in the annals of the "Hope"--and one of
the epoch-making accidents in the history of Scotland--was the landing,
in 1069, of Edgar Atheling and his sisters in this safe harbourage,
after grievous tossings by storms and ill-fortune. The then royal
residence of Dunfermline is four miles distant, the road leading past
Pitreavie, where, six centuries later, Cromwell, descending from the
Ferry Hill, so terribly mauled the Scottish army. Tradition points out
a stone where the weary Saxon Princess Margaret rested, on a way which
became so familiar to her. For she found favour in the sight of King
Malcolm Canmore, and made many journeys, by the haven and the ferry
that bear her name, to Edinburgh, and to pilgrim shrines in the south.
It might almost be said that civilisation, and the English speech, and
the Roman hierarchy and influence, landed on the Scottish shores with
Saint Margaret; and the whole district around the "Queen's Ferry" is
redolent with memories of her to this day.
"Dunfermline Tower," or rather the foundations of what is considered
the first royal seat there, are within the grounds of Pittencrieff, on
the high bank overlooking the Lyne burn. Farther up, and more adjacent
to the modern town, is the Palace, built in later times, and still
showing a stately front, sixty feet in height, rising above the ancient
trees and overlooking the beautiful Glen. Beyond these walls, and the
crypt-like chambers which served as kitchen and other offices, little
of the Palace remains. The mullioned windows are pointed out of the
rooms in which Charles I. and his sister Elizabeth, the "Winter Queen"
of Bohemia, were born, and where Charles II. signed the "Solemn League
and Covenant;" but within, as without, they only look into "empty air."
The Palace communicated by underground passages with the Abbey,
founded and dedicated to the Holy Trinity by Malcolm Canmore and
Margaret in 1072, and enlarged and beautified by the munificence and
piety of their successors. Beyond fragments of the walls, nearly
all that remains of the monastic buildings is the Frater Hall, with
the delicate Gothic tracery of its west window. But close behind is
the Abbey Church, surrounded by its graves, its rookery, and the
old houses of the town; and it still ranks as one of the proudest
and best-preserved specimens of Anglo-Norman church architecture in
Scotland. Rich and quaint are the carvings on its doorways, and dim
and mysterious is the light that falls through its illuminated windows
as you tread your way between the massive old pillars, and literally
over the dust of kings and princes, to the spacious and lightsome New
Abbey Church. This portion of the Abbey structure was rebuilt seventy
years ago, and in the course of the operations the workmen came upon
the tomb and remains of Robert the Bruce--recognisable, among other
evidences, by the gigantic stature and by the breast-bone, from which
a piece had been sawn to reach the heart that Douglas sought to carry
to the Holy Land. The tomb of Malcolm and Margaret is at the east end,
and without the present limits of the church; and within, besides "The
Bruce," there are buried a score of Scottish Sovereigns and princes,
including David I., the builder of monasteries, and the "Sair Saunt for
the Crown," and Alexander III., whose fatal mischance near Kinghorn was
the beginning of the national troubles.
One may range far before finding a group of buildings so intrinsically
beautiful, so historically interesting, and so fitly set amid their
surroundings. For Dunfermline has many things else, old and new, to
attract the visitor--from the "Oratory Cave" of Queen Margaret, to its
handsome municipal buildings and Free Library and Baths, the gifts
of Mr. Andrew Carnegie. It is a "live place," and not one existing
merely on the memories of its past; for it has extensive and growing
industries in coal and linen. But it will always be more the "City of
Kings" than the seat of trade.
From the old Bartizan Tower of the Abbey Church, one can survey a
dozen shires, and--contrast as strange as the light and shadow in the
churches below--a glimpse is caught, beyond North Queensferry Point,
of the limbs of the New Forth Bridge. This gigantic work represents
the second undertaking adopted by the North British Railway and the
supporting companies for shortening the journey to the North by
throwing a bridge over the narrows at Queensferry. The first plan of
a suspension bridge was abandoned, after the catastrophe that befell
the structure on the Tay; and the design (by Sir John Fowler and
Mr. Baker) now on the point of completion is that of a cantilever
bridge, founded on three sets of piers--at the edge of the deep-water
channels on the north and south sides, and on Inch Garvie island in the
middle--united, over the fairways of navigation, by central girders.
The whole space spanned is over a mile and a half, but fully a third
of this distance is occupied by the viaduct approaches to what may be
termed the bridge proper, supported at a height of 165 feet above mean
sea-level upon a series of stone piers. At this elevation the line is
carried across the Firth, which reaches from 30 to 35 fathoms in depth
in the channels between Inch Garvie and the north and south shores.
Except the supporting bases of stone, the whole central structure is of
steel, wrought and fitted in the works on the southern side; and it is
estimated that not less than 50,000 tons of metal have been used in the
work.
From the three main piers, columned "towers of steel" rise to a height
of 630 feet above high-water mark, that on Inch Garvie being wider than
the two others. They are formed of tubes of ¾-inch steel, 12 feet in
diameter at the base, inclining inwards and towards each other, and
united by cross members, in the shape of the letter "X," for purposes
of strength; and from these the intricate bracket-work of upper and
lower members, with their connecting struts and ties, stretch out over
the Firth, and approach each other near enough to be united by the
two 350-feet lattice girders over the fairways. The two great centre
spans are each 1,700 feet in width, and the half-spans that join them
to the great north and south viaduct piers are 680 feet each. All the
strains are concentrated upon the bases of the cantilever piers, and
the whole structure gives a remarkable impression of combined lightness
and strength, as well as of colossal size. From 3,000 to 4,500 men
have been employed for several years upon the Bridge, of which it may
almost be said that half of the work is under water and out of sight.
Its estimated cost is between two and three millions sterling, and,
connected with it, new lines are being constructed, by which passengers
and goods will henceforth be carried by the shortest available route
from south to north, in despite of the obstacles interposed by the
Forth, the Ochils, and the Tay.
[Illustration: SHORE STREET, LEITH.]
Of all the objects dwarfed and changed by the Bridge, Inch Garvie and
its Castle have perhaps suffered most. Built long ago to protect the
upper waters against the pirates that infested the Outer Firth, it
has often since played a part in schemes of national defence. "Roy of
Aldivalloch" held Inch Garvie with twenty musketeers against Monk's
troops, at the time of Cromwell's invasion; and it was afterwards
manned to repel Paul Jones. Now, looking down upon it from the summit
of the great pier, it seems as if a good-sized stone would crush, like
a toy, the queer admixture of old and new buildings huddled upon it.
From this great height, both expanses of the Firth, with their bounding
shores, lie spread below like a map.
The southern shore, now become once more rich in interest and beauty,
has complacently drawn nearer hand. Looking westward, and withdrawing
the eyes from the fine amphitheatre of hills that enclose the upper
course of the Forth, Blackness Castle--one of the four royal fortalices
specially mentioned in the Treaty of Union, and the scene of many
stirring events in the national annals: Edinburgh, Stirling, and
Dumbarton being the others--is full in sight, upon its peninsula.
Nearer are the woods of Abercorn, whose history goes back to Roman
times, and earlier; closer still, the magnificent colonnaded front,
the sea-terraces, the deer-parks, and the stately lime avenues of
Hopetoun House, the seat of the Earl of Hopetoun; and almost below, and
on the hither side of Port Edgar Harbour, the ancient town of South
Queensferry. The last few years have made "a mighty difference" in many
ways to the little burgh, but have not materially altered the somewhat
grimy features of its main street, which runs eastward, at the base of
the hill, towards the Bridge, the "Hawes Brae," and the "Hawes Inn,"
where, it will be remembered, Jonathan Oldbuck and his young friend
Lovel descended from the Edinburgh Diligence, and cemented acquaintance
over a magnum of port, and where, also, adventures first began to
overtake the hero of "Kidnapped."
[Illustration: EDINBURGH, FROM THE FIFE SHORE.]
Turning eastward, this southern shore is prolonged in the wooded
knolls of the Dalmeny estate, and round the projecting point, and
on the very sea-marge, is the old, but now renovated, Castle of
Barnbougle, once the seat of the Mowbrays. Behind it is Dalmeny House,
with beautiful sward and woodland extending as far as Cramond, where
Lord Rosebery keeps a boat to ferry the public across the Almond water
into Midlothian.
These latter objects, as has been said, are out of sight from the
Bridge, but on the northern side one sees well into the deep inlet
of Inverkeithing Bay, where the old royal burgh, dating from before
William the Lion's time, lies stranded in mud. It is still proud of
having witnessed the last assembly of the Culdees, and the first
movement of Scottish "Voluntaryism," and boasts also of containing the
"palace" of Queen Annabella Drummond, and the birthplace of Admiral
Greig, of the Russian service. For miles the domain of Donibristle
follows the advancing and retiring points of the Fife shore, which,
now that the outer Firth opens up, recedes away northward as well
as eastward. Within the half-circle of Dalgety Bay are the ruins
of old Dalgety Church, and what remains of Donibristle House. The
estate belongs to the Earl of Moray, the owner of Doune and of many
broad lands in the north. The mansion was accidentally burned thirty
years ago; but destined for longer remembrance is its burning, not
accidental, three centuries since, when took place the tragedy of "the
Bonnie Earl o' Moray." The "Bonnie Earl"--son-in-law of the famous
Regent Moray--was in 1591 slain, as he was escaping from the blazing
building, by Gordon of Buckie and other retainers of Lord Huntly, with
the connivance, as was suspected, of James VI. The ballad-writers have
their explanation, for
"The Bonnie Earl o' Moray,
He was the Queen's love."
An Earl and Regent Moray of an earlier stem--Randolph, the companion of
the Bruce and of the Black Douglas--had his home at Aberdour, the next
indentation in this singularly beautiful coast. The line had soon to
give place to the Douglases, Earls of Morton, who have ruled here for
some five centuries, though their old castle, overlooking the lovely
bay, with its projecting bluffs and shining sands, now a favourite
resort for bathers and summer visitors, has been long untenanted. The
wily and unscrupulous Regent Morton came hither to amuse himself with
gardening, in the intervals when, from choice or compulsion, he was not
in the thick of political intrigue. Edinburgh was always in view from
Aberdour, and nature and simple country pursuits could not hold him
long. Through the high beech groves and hanging woods, one of the most
charming of walks leads for three miles to Burntisland. But the charm
is no longer what it was, for the new railway line running athwart the
slope has played havoc with the trees.
Outside Aberdour, and partly shielding the bay, is Inchcolm Island.
It would need a volume to do justice to the islands of the Forth. Some
we have already glanced at. "St. Colme's Inch," where, as Shakespeare
tells us, the routed Norsemen were fain to crave permission of the
Thane of Cawdor to bury their dead, is the most famous of them
all--except perhaps the Bass. The square tower and mouldering walls
of its Abbey, rising close to the narrow isthmus where the isle is
almost cut in two by the sea, are still prominent objects in the view.
The Monastery was founded in 1123, by King Alexander I., in gratitude
for his miraculous rescue from shipwreck, and entertainment here by
a hermit who followed the rule of St. Columba. It once owned rich
possessions in half a dozen shires, granted in part by a Lord Alan
Mortimer of Aberdour, whose body the monks flung overboard in a storm
while crossing to the island, thus giving a name to the inner channel
of "Mortimer's Deep." Invaders, pirates, and rebels, as well as the
hand of time, have since sorely visited the island, but still portions
of the old buildings stand, and are even habitable.
Cramond Island, almost opposite Inchcolm, hugs the other shore, and
there is a road across the sands to its little farmhouse at low tide;
while in the mid-channel there are many rocky islets, some of them
the chosen resorts of cormorants and other sea birds. Further down,
half-way between Leith Pier and Kirkcaldy Bay, Inchkeith stretches
its length for nearly a mile across the Firth. Inchkeith, also, has
harboured anchorites and stood sieges; and there are many curious
legends connected with its coves and caves. But its most prominent
feature is now the white lighthouse perched upon its highest crest;
and barely visible to the eye are the powerful batteries that sweep,
on the one side, Leith Roads, and on the other side the North Channel,
between the island and Pettycur Point, where also great guns are
mounted for the defence of the Forth. Then a long way farther out, at
the very entrance to the Firth, and visible only in clear weather and
easterly wind, runs the long rock wall of the May Island. In other
days the May was a great resort of pilgrims, who held it a merit to
reach a place so difficult of access, and barren women especially found
a blessing in drinking from the well that had refreshed St. Fillan
and St. Adrian. There was a religious house here connected with the
Priory of Pittenweem on the adjacent Fife coast, but the monks found
it by-and-bye most convenient to reside on shore. Though the light of
faith has gone out, another light--a guide to the commerce entering the
Firth--has been kept burning upon the May for two centuries and a half.
Now its only residents are the lighthouse-men and their families, and
its only regular visitors are myriads of sea-fowl.
The Carr Rock and Fidra Island lights mark, with the May, the entrance
to the Firth; and scattered along the East Lothian coast, from Fidra
eastwards, are numerous little islands, "salt and bare." But none of
them have the fame or the aspect of the "Bass." This huge mass of rock,
heaved up by some convulsion of nature, like North Berwick Law and
other great bluffs on shore, presents seawards its precipitous cliff,
rising sheer to a height of 400 feet, while towards the land it shows
a green slope descending steeply to the landing-place and the remains
of its old prison castle. The crevices of the rocks are filled with
the nests of the solan-goose and other sea-fowl, and the air around
is alive with their cries and the sweep of their wings. But otherwise
it is impossible to imagine a spot with the aspect of grim isolation
more thoroughly impressed upon it. St. Baldred is said to have lived
and died on the Bass Rock; but it came most conspicuously forward in
history when it was made the prison of the Covenanters, charged with no
other offence than that of following their consciences against the will
of the King; and afterwards, when its Jacobite garrison held out for
years after every other place in the kingdom had submitted to William
of Orange.
But on the way from Inchcolm to the Bass, what a marvellous series
of noble land and sea pieces, of famous or hallowed sites, we have
passed! It were hard to say whether scenic beauty and historical
associations cluster more closely upon the shores of the Firth, or upon
the surrounding amphitheatre of hills. In the profile of the hills of
Fife, the broad-shouldered Lomonds, with their double or triple heads,
overtop all--the East Lomond looking down upon the ruins of the old
royal hunting seat of Falkland, the scene of Rothesay's cruel pangs,
and the western heights upon Loch Leven and the Island Castle, whence
Mary made her romantic escape. More in the foreground are Dunearn,
crowded by the remains of a Pictish fort, and the steep, rugged front
of the Binn of Burntisland, overhanging the town of that name. Rossend
Castle--a favourite residence of the Queen of Scots, where took place
the incident that cost the enamoured French poet Chastelard his
life--fronts the sea at the west end of Burntisland harbour; and to the
east, behind a beautiful sweep of sand and "links," rises the cliff at
which an evil fate overtook Alexander III. and Scotland.
[Illustration: PORTOBELLO.]
[Illustration: KIRKCALDY, FROM THE SOUTH-EAST.]
Beyond Pettycur, and the high ground of Grange, once the home of that
famous champion, Kirkcaldy of Grange, the wide curve of Kirkcaldy Bay
opens up. The old burgh of Kinghorn is at one extremity, and the still
more ancient town of Dysart at the other; and the middle foreground
is largely occupied by the houses and shipping of the "Lang Toun."
The very names of Kirkcaldy ("Kirk of the Culdees") and of Dysart
("Desertum") point to the antiquity and the sanctity of the origin of
places that to this day are strongly "Churchy." The grotesque folk-tale
relates that the devil was "buried in Kirkcaldy," and that his
complaint that "his taes were cauld" led the good-natured inhabitants
to build house to house, until now the town, with the villages
connected, stretches some four miles in a straight line. The story may
have had its origin in some of the apostolic doings of St. Serf, who
had for a time his "desert" in one of the caves in the red cliffs at
Dysart; or else in some magic feat of the wizard Michael Scott--the
friend of Dante and Boccaccio--whose weird tower of Balwearie is an
uncanny neighbour of the "Lang Toun." The ruins, close by the shore,
of Seafield Tower and of Ravenscraig Castle--the latter the home of
the line of "high St. Clair," and of the "lovely Rosabelle"--are now
strangely backed by floor-cloth factories.
Kirkcaldy has, however, other and even better things to be proud of;
for here Adam Smith was born; here Edward Irving taught and preached,
with Thomas Carlyle, the dominie of a competing school, as his friend
and companion on excursions to Inchkeith, and to quaint nooks of the
Fife coast. The author of "Sartor Resartus" had kindly recollections
of the folks of the "Kingdom"--"good old Scotch in all their works
and ways;" and with strong unerring touches brings before us their
"ancient little burghs and sea villages, with their poor little havens,
salt-pans, and weather-beaten bits of Cyclopean breakwaters, and rude
innocent machineries."
Portentous for length is the mere list of these surf-washed Fife
towns--beloved of wandering artists and haunted by memories and
traditions of the olden time--that are sprinkled along the coast
eastward. Mention cannot be avoided of Wemyss, Easter and Wester, with
their caves and coal-pits rendering upon the sea, and their castles,
old and new; of tumbledown Methil and the "ancient and fish-like
flavour" of Buckhaven; of Leven and Lundin, their Druidical stones and
stretches of breezy links, the delight of golfers; of Largo, where the
Law looks down upon "Largo Bay" and its brown-sailed fishing boats,
upon the cottage of "Auld Robin Gray," and upon the birthplace of the
famous Scottish admiral, Sir Andrew Wood, and of Alexander Selkirk,
the "original" Robinson Crusoe; of Elie, most delightful of East Coast
watering-places; of St. Monance and its picturesque old church and
harbour and ruined tower; of Pittenweem and the remains of its priory,
on the site of St. Fillan's cell; of Anstruther, Easter and Wester, the
scene of "Anster Fair," and the home of Maggie Lauder; of Cellardyke,
Kilrenny, and, quietest and remotest of them all, "the weel-aired
ancient toun o' Crail," where Knox preached and Archbishop Sharp was
"placed," situated close by Fife Ness, with its wind-twisted bents, its
caves, and traces of Danish camps and forgotten fights.
The smell and the sound of the sea are about all these Fife burghs and
fishing villages, and not less saturated with romance and history are
the old-fashioned mansion-houses of the lairds of the East Neuk, that
seek shelter in every fold of the land. For Fife was the true soil of
the "cock" or "bonnet" laird, whose proverbial heritage was "a wee
pickle land, a good pickle debt, and a doo-cot." Little better than a
ruined dove-cote--or "a corbie's nest," as the Merry Monarch called
Dreel Castle, the old tower of the Anstruthers--shows many a crumbled
seat of the long-pedigreed Fife gentry. But they were the nurseries
of famous men--witness the Leslies, Alexander and David, and a host
besides--who found not only their native shire but their native country
too narrow a field for their talents and their ambition. In this, as
in other respects, the shores of Fife offer an epitome of Scottish
history, and the quintessence of Scottish character.
Turn now towards the Southern shore. The spell even of the coasts
of Fife cannot long detain us, when Edinburgh, seated on her hills,
and queening it over the waters, with the couchant lion of Arthur's
Seat beside her, is in view. As Stirling presides over the "Links of
Forth," and the upper courses of the river, Edinburgh Rock with its
Castle appears the Guardian Genius of the Firth. Round the base of
this "Bass Rock upon land," the masses of buildings seem to swirl and
surge like a tide-race of human life, and to climb, in broken wave upon
wave, crested by the spires and roofs of the Old Town, and overhung by
the murky spray of its proverbial "reek," all up the steep slope to
the battlements of the Castle. Stirling itself is scarcely its peer
for dignity of situation or for renown. From the highest platform of
the Rock, where hooped and battered Mons Meg guards the old chapel of
Canmore and Margaret, to the profoundest depths of the shadows cast by
the tall and beetling houses of the Grassmarket, the West Port, and the
Cowgate, it is haunted by traditions; and its history, like its aspect,
is most sombre and most striking.
Looking from the windows of the rooms which Mary occupied, and whence
the infant James was let down in a basket to the bottom of the rock,
one glances across the "plainstanes" of the Grassmarket, the scene of
Jock Porteous's slaughter, to the Old Greyfriars Churchyard and its
graves of martyrs and of persecutors, to the dome and towers of the old
and new University buildings, and to the piled and crowded buildings,
thinning out and becoming newer as they descend the warm slopes of
Morningside and Newington towards the bluffs of Craiglockhart, the
whinny slopes of the Braids, and Craigmillar Castle, behind which
are the finely pencilled lines of the Pentlands, the Moorfoots, and
the Lammermoors. Or the eye can follow the impending walls of the
many-storeyed houses of the Lawnmarket and the High Street, as far as
the "Crown" of St. Giles and the Parliament House--each of them part
and parcel of the national life--and so on by the Canongate and its
memorable old "lands" and closes, towards the spot where the Palace and
the ruined Abbey of Holyrood, shouldered by breweries and canopied by
the smoke of gasworks, shelter under the Salisbury Crags. Or looking
away from the grim Old Town, one may travel far before seeing anything
to compare with the stately front of Prince's Street, facing its
gardens and the sun, and turned away from the cold blasts of the north;
the Calton Hill and its monuments; the serried lines of the New Town
streets and squares, broken by frequent spires and towers, and sweeping
away in one direction towards the wooded sides of Corstorphine, and in
the other joining Leith and its shipping; while beyond, if the day be
fine, the glorious view is bounded by the Firth and its islands and
the hills of Fife, melting in a distance where land, sea, and sky are
indistinguishable.
Too often, viewing it from the "clouded Forth," the grey city, its
castle, and its subject hills are swallowed up in the "gloom that
saddens heaven and earth" during the dismal Edinburgh winter and
spring, and the uncertain summer and autumn. Sometimes they show huge
and imposing, like ghosts in the mist, or rise like islands over
the strata of smoke and haze in which Leith lies buried. But there
are gloriously fine days at all seasons of the year, even in this
much-abused climate, and then the long pier, the shipping in the
roadstead, the tangle of masts and rigging in the spacious docks, and
the warehouses, churches, and close-built houses of the port of Leith
make a brave show in the low foreground of a lovely picture. To the
west, the wide arms of the Granton breakwaters enclose a harbour, built
at the cost of the Duke of Buccleuch. Nearer to Leith is the white
pier-head of Newhaven, with stalwart fishermen, and comely fishwives in
white "mutches" and short petticoats, grouped about its quays. Leith
itself is an old as well as a brisk seat of trade and shipping. The
large business it continues to conduct with the ports of the Baltic
and the North Sea it has carried on for many centuries, and in these
days it has extended its commercial relations to nearly all parts of
the world. Many of the most famous episodes in the national annals
began and ended in Leith. But royal embassies no longer land or embark
there; it is happily exempt from hostile invasions and bloody civil and
religious feuds.
[Illustration: THE BASS ROCK, FROM NORTH BERWICK.]
Eastward from Leith, sewage meadows and brick-and tile-works suddenly
give place to the mile-long front of the Portobello Esplanade, with
its pier and bathing coaches and strip of sand, dear to Edinburgh
holiday-makers, and with the outline of Arthur's Seat as a noble
background to the masses of handsome villas and lodging-houses.
Beyond comes a string of little seaside watering-places, fishing and
shipping ports--Fisherrow, Musselburgh, Morrisonhaven, Prestonpans,
Cockenzie--which, with the country behind them, vie in picturesqueness
of aspect with the Fife towns opposite. A high ridge, the last heave of
the Lammermoors, marks the limits of this belt of coast country--the
old approach of hostile armies from the South--which might dispute
with the district around Stirling the title of the "Battlefield of
Scotland." Carberry Hill, where Mary fell into the hands of the Lords
of the Covenant, overlooks the woods of Dalkeith Palace and the Esk,
not far above where, between Fisherrow harbour and Musselburgh, that
classic stream enters the sea. A continuation of Carberry are the
Fawside braes, and right underneath the ruined castle on the sky-line,
and between it and Inveresk Church, was fought the battle of Pinkie,
so disastrous for the Scots, when the little burn trickling through
Pinkie Woods "ran red with blood." It was on this ground, too, that
Cromwell was out-manoeuvred by Leslie, and compelled to fall back,
"to make the better spring" upon Dunbar; and by the venerable bridge
across the Esk, the Young Pretender led his troops from Edinburgh,
on hearing that the Royalist forces were advancing by the coast upon
the capital. The site of the battle of Prestonpans is in the fields
beyond the tumbledown old town of that name, which boasts--and looks
as if it boasted truly--of being the first place in Scotland where
coal was worked and salt manufactured from sea-water. In the more
thriving looking village of Cockenzie, they point out the house in
which "Johnnie Cope" was soundly sleeping when the Highlanders, making
a circuit of the high ground behind Tranent, and crossing the marsh at
Seton, "sprang upon him out of the mist" of a September morning.
[Illustration: TANTALLON CASTLE, LOOKING EAST.]
Seton, with its woods and wild-flowers, its lovely sweep of sands, the
remains of its ancient church, and the Castle standing on the site of
the Palace of the Earls of Winton, is redolent of memories of the "high
jinks" of Queen Mary and of other members of the unfortunate House of
Stuart, in whose mischances the loyal Setons faithfully shared. The
parks of Gosford, their trees strangely bent and twisted by the east
wind, line the coast for miles, and the great white front of Lord
Wemyss's mansion is a shining landmark. Then comes Aberlady Bay, an
expanse of sand and mud at low water, but at high tide a broad arm of
the Firth, running up close under the walls of the venerable Parish
Church and pretty village of Aberlady, and skirting the favourite
golfing links of Luffness and Gullane.
From here all the way round to North Berwick, the sea-margin, with
its long stretches of grassy turf, interspersed with bent hillocks,
whins, sand "bunkers," and other hazards dear to the devotees of cleek
and driving-club, may be said to be sacred to the Royal Game of Golf.
Four or five spacious golfing courses interpose between; and ardent
pursuers of the flying gutta ball have been known to play across the
whole distance of seven or eight miles. Numbers of them take up their
quarters at Aberlady or at Gullane, placed idyllically upon the edge of
the common and the ploughed land, with views extending across the green
links and the sea to Fife, and landward over the rich fields of East
Lothian to the Lammermoors, with the nearer Garleton Hills, Traprain,
and North Berwick Law; a few also at the beautiful old village of
Dirleton, beside the ivied ruins of its Castle.
North Berwick, however, is the golfer's Mecca on this side of the
Firth; and bathers, artists, and other seekers after the pleasures
of the sea-shore succumb to its attractions in increasing numbers
every season. The sands and the links, the sea lapping upon the
beach, or chafing round Craigleith and the other rocky islets and
points, exercise a potent spell. But North Berwick's great lion, and a
conspicuous landmark over sea and country for a score of miles around,
is the natural pyramid of the "Law." It rises immediately behind the
town, in lines as steep and symmetrical as if built by art, and from
its summit, nearly 1,000 feet high, an almost unrivalled view is
obtained over the Forth and the Lothians. Though one would hardly guess
it, looking at the clean streets and handsome hotels and villas that
line the shore, North Berwick is a burgh and port of great antiquity.
That it never throve to any remarkable extent in its earlier history
may possibly be in part due to its dangerous proximity to Tantallon
Castle, the hold of the Douglases, Earls of Angus. Every visitor to
North Berwick, after he has surmounted the Law and wandered his fill by
the beach, makes an excursion to Tantallon Castle. The coast eastward
is bold and precipitous, and fretted by the waters of the North Sea,
for we are now at the very lip of the Firth of Forth; and the Bass
Rock, lying opposite the beautiful curve of Canty Bay, looks like a
mass of the shore-cliffs washed bodily out to sea. Just where the coast
is wildest and least accessible one sees--
"Tantallon's dizzy steep
Hang o'er the margin of the deep."
The eyrie of the Douglas is now a mere shell; but the extent and
immense thickness of the walls still proclaim its strength in the days
when it was a proverb to "ding doon Tantallon and make a bridge to the
Bass." On three sides it was protected by the sea, and
"Above the booming ocean leant
The far-projecting battlement."
On the land side were those gate-works and walls which Marmion cleared,
after bidding bold defiance to the "Douglas in his hall," and behind
which the turbulent Earls of Angus, for their part, so often bade
defiance to their Sovereigns. James V. once brought up against it
"Thrawn-mu'd Meg and her Marrow," and other great pieces of mediæval
ordnance from Dunbar, where three lords were placed in pawn for their
safe return. But he failed to "ding doon Tantallon"; that feat was
reserved for the Covenanters.
Now the spirit of Walter Scott seems to haunt the ruins, in company
with the ghosts of "Bell-the-Cat," and the other dead Douglases who
built or strengthened these storm-battered walls. The Magician of the
North has waved his wand over the Forth from Ben Lomond to Tantallon
and the Bass!
JOHN GEDDIE.
[Illustration: NORTH BERWICK, FROM THE HARBOUR.]
[Illustration: BERWICK-ON-TWEED.]
THE TWEED.
CHAPTER I.
FROM BERWICK TO KELSO.
Leading Characteristics--The View from Berwick--Lindisfarne--The
History and Present State of Berwick--Norham Castle and
Marmion--Ladykirk--Tillmouth--Twisell Castle and Bridge--Ford
Castle and Flodden--Coldstream--Wark Castle--Hadden Rig.
"A bonny water" was the phrase used of the Tweed by a peasant-woman
whom Dorothy Wordsworth met when she came to spy out the Border river.
Homely as the expression is, it would not be easy to find another quite
so meet. To grandeur, to magnificence, the stream can make no claim,
either in itself or in its surroundings. Of screaming eagles, of awful
cliffs, of leaping linns, of foaming waves, it knows nothing. No more
horrid sound is heard in its neighbourhood than the cry of the pale
sea-maw; its banks are rarely precipitous, never frightful; it has not
a single waterfall to its name; and, save where its surface is gently
ruffled by glistening pebbles, it flows smooth as (_pace_ the poet)
the course of true love usually is. Yet of charms more gracious how
profuse it is! In its careless windings, its silvery clearness, its
sweet haughs and holms, its affluence of leaf and blade, its frequent
breadth of valley, it is dowered with all the amenities of a large and
generous landscape, distributed into combinations of incessant variety.
Nor does it owe much less to art and association than to Nature. It
glides or ripples by some of the most impressive ruins, ecclesiastical
and secular, in all Scotland. At point after point it shines, for the
inner eye, with "the light that never was on sea or land." If over
other Scottish streams as well the magician's wand has waved, the Tweed
is twice blessed, since it can speak not only of "Norham's castled
steep" and "St. David's ruined pile," but of Ashestiel, and Smailholm,
and Abbotsford. And then its course takes it through the very heart of
the Debateable Land--birthplace of myth and legend, of fairy tale and
folk-song--battlefield where hostile races and envious factions and
rival clans have met in mortal strife. For centuries it was the wont
of its waters to reflect the fire-bale's ruddy glare, of its banks
to resound with the strident Border-slogan; and until long after the
coalition of the Crowns its fords continued to be crossed by reiving
marchmen in jack and helmet, driving before them their "prey," or
scurrying before the avenging "hot trod," led on by blaring bugle-horn
and mouthing bloodhound.
[Illustration: HIGH STREET, BERWICK, WITH THE TOWN HALL.]
A bonny water it truly is, but not a brisk. Except in time of spate,
it pursues its way, not wearily, it may be, but certainly lazily, and
even wantonly, often wimpling into curves and loops which half suggest
that, forgetful of its destiny, it is about basely to wind back to
whence it came, and calling to mind Mr. Swinburne's river, of which
all that can be said is that it creeps "somewhere safe to sea." When
in the chiming humour, which is not seldom, it sings sweetly enough,
but crooningly rather than liltingly--less to you than to itself, or
in accompaniment to the birds that pour out their lavish strains along
its banks. Not that there is any particular reason why it should take
life more seriously. To things commercial it does not condescend. It
is tidal only to Norham, and none but mere cockle-shells can get even
so far. And if it has a drainage basin second only to that of the Tay
among Scottish streams, it has never been alleged that in this respect
there is any failure of duty. Let it be said, too, that while it rarely
hastes, on the other hand it seldom rests. The "mazes" to which it is
addicted are not usually "sluggish;" to the spiky rush or the cool
shiny discs of the water-lily it shows no special favour; while dark
pools "where alders moist and willows weep" are only to be found by
those who seek. Exciting the influences of the stream are not; but they
are at any rate cheerful.
[Illustration: THE ROYAL BORDER BRIDGE, BERWICK.]
[Illustration:
_Walker & Boutall sc._
THE COURSE OF THE TWEED.]
One whose only knowledge of the Tweed is gained from what can be
seen of it at Berwick, and when the tide is out, would not be likely
to think of it more highly than he ought to think. For even at its
"latter end" it seems to have no great sense of the dignity of life; it
rolls neither broad nor deep, and does little more than trickle into
the larger life to which it has all along so indolently tended. Nor
is it here altogether happy in the surroundings which it owes to art
and man's device. Berwick itself, rising from the water's edge to the
top of Halidon Hill, and partly girdled by its fine wall, used as a
promenade in these piping times of peace, looks quaint, and comely as
well, seen from the opposite or southern bank. But when one has crossed
the stream by the old bridge--Berwick Bridge, which has stood here
since the time of James I.--and looks across at Tweedmouth, exactly
opposite, and at Spittal, which has thought fit to spring up a little
farther east and just at the river's mouth, the impression is less
pleasing. Neither of these places is pretty in itself, while for their
size they make an amazing amount of black smoke. Then there is Robert
Stephenson's great railway viaduct, the Royal Border Bridge, which
it is the fashion to praise up to the skies, as it well-nigh reaches
them. As a successful bit of engineering, it is no doubt all very
well; but an addition to the beauties of the scene it is not, whatever
guide-books and gazetteers may say. In other directions, however, and
farther afield, the outlook is more satisfactory. Away to the south
the grey and rugged Cheviots make a glorious horizon-line; while out
at sea are the Farne Islands, with their memories of St. Cuthbert,
most austere of Western ascetics, and of Grace Darling, whose heroism
puts so strange a gloss upon the holy man's abhorrence of womankind.
The remnants of the ancient Abbey of Lindisfarne are among the very
few examples of Saxon architecture which the destructiveness of the
Danes has left to us; and that even these ruins remain, is due to
no negligence of theirs. When they descended upon the island in the
seventh century, not for the first time, they made a brave attempt to
leave a desert behind them; but the massive strength which the builders
of the church had intended to oppose to "tempestuous seas" was able
in some degree to withstand their "impious rage." The abbey no longer
shelters St. Cuthbert's remains, which must be sought in the Cathedral
that looks down upon the Wear. But the old Saxon arches and columns
have a stronger interest than this could have invested them with; for
was it not here, in Sexhelm's Vault of Penitence, dimly lighted by
the pale cresset's ray, that the hapless Constance de Beverley, after
solemn inquisition, was doomed to her terrible death, the while her
betrayer was listening to the song which so melodiously contrasts the
traitor's fate with the destiny of the true lover?
[Illustration: VIEW FROM THE RAMPARTS, BERWICK.]
Berwick-on-Tweed is certainly not happy in having no history. Its
beginnings are not clearly ascertainable; but it was for long a Saxon
settlement, until the Danes, attracted by the rich merse-lands through
which the Tweed flows, helped themselves to it. Then came the turn of
the Scots, who held it off and on from about the time of Alfred the
Great until John Balliol renounced the authority of his liege lord, to
whom he had sworn fealty at Norham. When an English army approached,
the citizens were by no means alarmed, although it was led by Edward
himself. "Kynge Edward," they cried from behind their wooden stockade,
"waune thou havest Berwick, pike thee; waune thou havest geten, dike
thee." But they were better at flouting than at fighting; and they
soon had bitter reason for lamenting that they had not kept their
mocks to themselves. The place was stormed with the most trivial loss,
and nearly eight thousand of the citizens were massacred. Some brave
Flemings who held the Red Hall were burnt to cinders in it; and the
carnage only ceased when the sad and solemn priests bore the Host into
Edward's presence and implored his mercy. Then the impetuous monarch,
who in his old age was able to say that no man had ever asked mercy
of him and been refused, burst into tears, and ordered the butchery
to stop. But the lion's paw had fallen, and Berwick was crushed. When
Edward sat down before it, it was not only the great Merchant City of
the North, but ranked second to London among English towns; he left
it little more than a ruin, and it has never since been anything but
"a petty seaport." Through its gates the king went forth to play the
_rôle_ of the conquering hero in Scotland; and when his over-lordship
had been effectually vindicated, the Scottish barons and gentry met
here to sulkily do him reverence.
Two-and-twenty years later there came another turn of the wheel.
When Robert Bruce wrested his native land from the feeble hands of
the second Edward, Berwick shared in the emancipation. Its capture
was held to be an achievement of the first order, and after it, as
Leland tells us, "the Scottes became so proud ... that they nothing
esteemed the Englishmen." But presently a weaker Bruce reigned in
the North and a stronger Edward in the South. In due course the town
was again beleaguered by an English force. A Scottish army under the
Regent, Archibald Douglas, came to its relief; but the English held a
strong position on Halidon Hill, and, met by their terrible showers of
clothyard shafts, the Scots turned and fled, leaving Berwick to its
fate. Thus it once more became English, and never again did it change
masters, though it was allowed to retain many of its privileges. In
these later days, however, it has had to part with one after another of
its peculiarities, and now it is substantially a part of the county of
Northumberland.
[Illustration: NORHAM CASTLE.]
That a place which has received so many rude buffets should have few
very ancient remains is not to be wondered at. The present walls,
which stand almost intact, and in excellent preservation, though the
town in its recent prosperity has straggled outside their line, have
a very respectable antiquity, dating as they do from the closing
years of the sixteenth century; but of the older fortifications,
which embraced a much more considerable space, scarcely a vestige is
left, except an octagonal tower; while of the castle, which frowned
over the stream where the north bank is steepest, little beyond the
foundations has survived. A part of the site has been appropriated
to the uses of a railway station, which by a well-meant but unhappy
thought has been made to take a castellated form. The fortifications
were dismantled some forty or fifty years ago, but there is still much
to recall the ancient importance of the town as a place of arms. Nor
have the citizens lost the military spirit which was bred into their
forbears. They are proud to tell the stranger within their gates that
there is almost as large a garrison here as at Edinburgh; and even the
tavern-signs bear witness to a traditional love of arms.
The parish church dates only from the Puritan period. It is said to
be "quaint" when it is only ugly; and to be a plain specimen of the
Gothic when it is not Gothic at all, except in the opprobrious sense
in which the term was first applied to mediæval architecture by the
superior persons of the Restoration. There being no tower--the Puritans
had no taste for "steeple-houses"--the parishioners are summoned to
service by the bells of the Town Hall, in the High Street, where also
the curfew is still rung at eight of the clock every evening. Although
the Anglican is here the Established Church, the prevalent form is the
Presbyterian, which has many places of worship, while various other
communions are also well represented. But there seems to be some want
of resource in finding distinguishing names for the various churches
and chapels, for there is a Church Street Church, and hard by a Chapel
Street Church, while several places of worship are nameless. Among
these latter is one which bears on its front the legend "Audi, Vide,
Tace"--intended, presumably, for a concise exposition of the whole duty
of the pew in relation to the pulpit.
[Illustration: JUNCTION OF THE TILL AND THE TWEED.]
Not a great way from the first of the bends in which the stream
indulges, and within sight of the towers of Longridge, the Whiteadder
from the Lammermoors, reinforced by the Blackadder, renders up its
tribute. Two miles above this point the river is crossed by the Union
Suspension Bridge, which, built by Sir S. Brown in 1820, is said to
have been the first structure of the kind erected in these islands,
while as bridges go along the Tweed it is also quite an antiquity; for,
until the beginning of the century, there was only one between Peebles
and Berwick, a space of more than sixty miles. Now they are many, yet
there has been little sacrifice of beauty to utility, for, as a rule,
when not picturesque, they are at least neat and modest. Hereabouts the
valley is fairly broad, the banks rising on either hand into a long
succession of rolling meadows green with herbage, or of furrowed fields
red with tilth, in the prime of summer smothered with tender shoots
of corn all aglow with the bright yellow blooms of the runch--to the
wayfarer a flower, to the husbandman a weed. So curve to curve succeeds
until Norham Castle comes in sight, standing on a lofty cliff of red
freestone which rises almost sheer from the water on the southern bank,
and disdainfully rearing itself high above the trees that have presumed
to grow up around it.
[Illustration: TILLMOUTH HOUSE, FROM THE BANKS OF THE TILL.]
When this ancient little village first had a stronghold no one seems
to know. As early as 1121 a fortress was built here by Bishop Flambard,
of Durham; but it was not the first to occupy the site. After the
death of "this plunderer of the rich, this exterminator of the poor,"
the castle was so roughly handled by David I. that in 1164 we find
another Bishop of Durham, Hugh Pudsey, virtually rebuilding it, and
adding a massive keep. But warrior-priests were not much to the mind
of the king who suggested the assassination of Thomas à Becket, and
so, some ten years after he had rebuilt it, the bishop was prevailed
upon to pass it on to William de Neville; and from this time onwards it
appears to have been treated as a royal fortress. Thus it came about
that more than once it was the scene of conference between William
the Lion and the English King whose only association with the noble
beast was through his brother. And here also came Edward I., to decide
between the thirteen claimants to the crown of Alexander III., and
to do a little business on his own account as well. A memoir of the
Dacres on its condition early in the sixteenth century speaks of the
keep as impregnable; but it was nothing of the kind. Like all these
Border strengths, it was always being taken and retaken; and only a
few years before this memoir was written, James IV., then on his way
to Flodden, had brought up Mons Meg against it, and with the "auld
murderess's" help had possessed himself of it. Pudsey's massive keep
still remains, though in a greatly shattered state, and shorn of its
mighty proportions; there are also bits of other parts of the castle,
the whole enclosed within a wall of ample circuit.
[Illustration: FORD CASTLE.]
[Illustration: FLODDEN FIELD.]
In the days when it held a royal garrison, Norham had various
castellans, some of them men of distinction in their day; but the most
famous of them since the "tale of Flodden Field" was told, has been
"Sir Hugh the Heron bold." This "Baron of Twisell and of Ford" passed
among men as William Heron; but Hugh was more poetical, and so his
baptismal name was changed. Nor, at the time selected for the Lord of
Fontenaye's visit, was he here to be twitted with his witching lady's
gallantries. Two years before this his bastard brother had taken part
in the slaughter of the Scottish Warden of the Middle Marches, Sir
Robert Ker of Cessford; and as Sir William himself had been in some
sort accessory to the crime, Henry had thought it well to deliver
him and one of the actual murderers up to justice, so that at this
time he was lying in durance at Fastcastle. This, of course, is the
fault of the facts, not of the poetry. Nor need it be disappointing
to find Sir Walter himself saying that the Marmion of the romance is
"entirely a fictitious personage." When, indeed, it is remembered that
one of the Marmions did verily come here, though long years before--in
the reign which witnessed the triumph at Bannockburn, instead of the
overthrow at Flodden--the poet might very well have been astonished
at his own moderation. The errand of the real Marmion was a good
deal more romantic than that of his imaginary descendant. At a great
feast in Lincolnshire he had been endued with a gold-crested helmet
by a lady who had nothing better to do than to drive a brave man into
mortal peril. Her charge to him was to "go into the daungerest place
in England, and ther to let the healme be seene and known as famous."
So he sped him here to Norham, and within four days of his coming,
Philip of Mowbray, the guardian of Berwick--now in the hands of the
elated Scots--appeared before the walls "with the very flour of the
men of the Scottish marches." The castellan at this time was a Grey of
Chillingham, who drew out his men before the barriers, and then bade
the knight-errant, "al glittering in gold, and wearing the healme,"
to ride like a valiant man among his foes, adding, "and I forsake God
if I rescue not thy body, dead or alyve, or I myself wyl dye for it."
Thereupon the knight mounted and rode into the midst of the enemy, "the
which layed sore stripes on him, and pulled hym at the last out of his
sadel to the ground." But now Grey and his men "lette prick yn among
the Scottes" and put them to rout; and he of the "healme," though "sore
beten," was horsed again and took part in the chase. As it must have
been this visit which made the poet bring his Marmion to Norham, so
no doubt it was the deed itself, coupled with an event which actually
happened at Tantallon, which suggested the knight's precipitate retreat
when he had bearded the Douglas in his halls.
[Illustration: TWISELL BRIDGE.]
Just above the castle is the village of Norham, with its pretty little
church--all but the eastern end, where there is a poor Decorated
window, in the Norman style, and still interesting, in spite of
the drastic restoration it has endured. It stands in a churchyard
which well repays the careful tendance it receives, for it is of
exceptionally choice situation, separated by a row of limes from the
cosiest of rectories, and by little more than another fringe of foliage
from the Tweed, whose waves babble of rest and peace as they ripple by
the cells where lie the simple village folk who ended their toilsome
lives in their beds, and the warriors who came to a ruder end before or
behind the castle walls. Here the northern bank is lofty and pleasantly
wooded, as, a little below, is the southern bank. In its approach to
the castle the stream bends round to the south, and its waters move
less leisurely, as though, fresh from contact with a scene consecrated
to peace on the earth and goodwill among men, they cannot abide these
grim stark ruins, with their memories of weeping captives and cruel
deeds. If the keep yet looks down with something of insolence upon
its lowly neighbour on the strath far beneath, it is, for all that, a
parable against itself, testifying that it is not to "men of might" but
to "men of mean" that the inheritance has been decreed. For while its
strength and splendour have for ever fled, the humble sanctuary has
renewed its youth; and, though the forms of faith suffer change, it
has a good hope that in the far summers which we shall not see it will
still be fulfilling its gracious and hallowed offices.
[Illustration: JUNCTION OF THE TILL AND THE GLEN.]
Within sight of Norham, on the opposite bank, amidst a delightful
bit of woodland scenery, is the tiny village of Ladykirk, named, by a
reversal of the usual order, from its church, dedicated to the Virgin,
and built about the year 1500 by James IV. as a votive gift for his
preservation from drowning while crossing a ford at this spot. Thus
says tradition, which has so much to answer for. But the story is
not improbable. There certainly was a ford here, which was more than
usually dangerous when freshets were running; and James, though not a
serious-minded or scrupulous man--being, indeed, one of those who prefer
to indulge and repent rather than abstain--was not without an easy kind
of piety. From Ladykirk onwards to Tillmouth, walking along the banks,
there is a rapid succession of varied delights. On one side or the
other, when not on both, the stream is edged with lovely copses; and
the path, breast-high with tufted grass and tangled briar, runs past
many a thicket beloved of the yellow linnet and the spotted thrush, and
athwart many a glen where in simpler days fairies held their dainty
revels and laid their sprightly plots.
[Illustration: THE GLEN AT COUPLAND.]
The Till not only augments the waters, but adds to the beauties, of
the Tweed. "The sullen Till," Scott calls it in his poetry; but here
he is tuning his harp to a minor key to sing the disaster at Flodden;
and he can mean no more by the uncomplimentary expression than when
in his prose he speaks of it as deep and slow. A very leisurely water
it certainly is, and the country through which it flows--past Ewart
Newtown, where it is joined by the Glen, which rises on the slopes of
the Cheviots as Bowmont Water, and passes through scenery of which that
at Coupland may be taken as typical--is not on the whole interesting.
But the epithet is less than just if applied to its mouth and the
reaches immediately below, for here it flows through a deep, winding,
and gloriously wooded glen. On the peninsula where the streams meet and
blend, stands a fragment of what was once "a chapel fair," dedicated
to St. Cuthbert; for when the roving saint had tired of Melrose and
induced his custodians to launch him upon the Tweed in a stone coffin,
this "ponderous bark for river-tides" glided "light as gossamer" until
it landed here. The coffin used to be shown in two pieces beside the
ruin (it was broken by the saint's guardian spirits, to save it from
being degraded to an ignoble use); and Sir Walter, who would appear to
have seen it, says that it was finely shaped, and of such proportions
that with very little assistance it might have floated. To "Tillmouth
cell" it was that Clare was conveyed by the pious monk when some "base
marauder's lance" had at once rid her of her persecutor and avenged the
betrayal of Constance; and here she spent the night in prayer. And to
Tillmouth also it was that Friar John was attached, that "blithesome
brother at the can" who in evil hour "crossed the Tweed to teach Dame
Alison her creed," and being interrupted in the exposition by her churl
of a husband, and being on principle an enemy to strife, incontinently
fled "sans frock and hood." A boon companion the worthy John must have
been, but not a safe guide for Marmion or another, since--
"When our John hath quaffed his ale,
As little as the wind that blows
And warms itself against his nose,
Kens he, or cares, which way he goes."
The mere fragment which is all that is left of Twisell Castle stands
high above the Till, near its mouth, overlooking Tillmouth House,
embosomed in trees a little farther up the Till, and Twisell's "Gothic
arch," the picturesque single-span bridge which the foolhardiness of
James allowed the van of the English army to cross on the morning
of Flodden. Begun in 1770 by Sir Francis Blake, the castle was in
the builder's hands off and on for the space of forty years; but it
was never completed, and never occupied, although Sir Walter, whose
conscience failed him in the matter of castle-building, was pleased to
praise it as "a splendid pile of Gothic architecture." William Heron,
the castellan of Norham, was, as we have seen, "Baron of Twisell,"
but his chief seat was Ford Castle, farther up the Till, on the
eastern bank; and it was here, and not at Holyrood, that, according
to the original legend, which did not quite suit the poet's purpose,
the Scottish king fell victim to Lady Heron's charms. The story goes
that, having taken Norham and Wark, he had stormed Ford, and was only
deterred from demolishing it by its fair castellan's blandishments; and
the Scottish chroniclers represent Lady Heron as preening her feathers
expressly that the susceptible monarch might lose his chance of
striking an effective blow. The whole story is now known to be devoid
of truth. The unromantic fact is that Lady Heron deceived neither her
husband nor his captor. When the battle of Flodden was fought she was
far enough away from Ford Castle, imploring Surrey to make terms with
the King of Scotland for the safety of her husband. That James took
the castle by storm is no doubt true, but when he departed for Flodden
he set it on fire, which was about the worst he could do under the
circumstances.
Although the castle which Lady Heron's husband extended and
strengthened was sorely knocked about by the Scots in 1549, portions
of it remain to this day. From the windows a clump of firs which
crowns the Hill of Flodden, known as the "King's Chair," on the west
bank of the Till, is clearly visible, as it is from the Tweed, from
which it is only about three miles distant, to the south; and the
present proprietress of the castle, the Marchioness of Waterford,
has had a ride cut through the woods straight up the famous height.
The chamber occupied by the king may still be seen, and through its
large window he must on the fateful morning have looked across the
Till upon the gleaming tents of his forces. The position was one
of considerable strength; but James recklessly threw away this and
every other advantage. Against the remonstrances and appeals of his
wisest counsellors he refused to permit Borthwick to open fire upon
the English van as it was crossing Twisell Bridge, and so allowed
the enemy to cut off his base. And now that the time was come for
holding his hand, he resolved to strike; so, firing his tents, he amid
profound silence marched down, and the fight began. When night came to
enforce a truce, Surrey was in doubt whether the battle was at an end.
But the Scots had lost their king, and with him his natural son the
boy-Archbishop of St. Andrews, and the flower, and much more than the
flower, of their nobility and gentry, and even of the clergy, and there
was nothing for them but to draw off under cover of the darkness and
carry to their homes the news of the most disastrous blow their nation
had ever suffered. Many long refused to believe that their beloved king
had fallen, and stories got abroad of his having gone on pilgrimage to
win forgiveness for his sin against his father on the inglorious field
of Sauchie, but they vainly waited for his reappearance, and there is
no reason to doubt that the "King's Stone" pretty accurately marks the
spot where he fighting fell. When Sir Walter exclaims--
"Oh for one hour of Wallace wight,
Or well-skilled Bruce to rule the fight,
And cry 'St. Andrew and our right!'
Another sight had seen that morn,
From Fate's dark book a leaf been torn,
And Flodden had been Bannockbourne"--
we hear the patriot as well as the poet. Yet it is the truth that the
Scots at Flodden fought no less valiantly than their ancestors had
done at Bannockburn. But their king, though a gallant soldier, as in
many respects he was a wise statesman, and, like most of his house,
an accomplished man, was as bad a general as ever led brave men to
destruction; while Surrey could not only head a charge, but play a
cunning and wary game. It was not the first time the men had met. Ten
years before, the English noble had handed to the Scottish king his
bride, Margaret Tudor--then, a girl of fourteen, her mind teeming with
dreams of imminent happiness; now, a sad and lonely woman, awaiting
tidings of the strife betwixt her husband and her brother which all her
tears and caresses had been impotent to avert.
At Coldstream, a couple of miles or so farther up the Tweed,
pleasantly girdled with trees, we are still in the thick of military
memories. Not far from where Smeaton's bridge gives a choice view both
up and down stream is the first ford of any importance above Berwick.
Here Edward I. crossed in 1296; here also Leslie and his Covenanters
crossed in 1640 on their way south. At Coldstream, too, rather more
than twenty years afterwards, the general who could make a king and
hold his tongue disbanded his regiment as soldiers of the Commonwealth
and re-embodied it as the Coldstream Guards before setting forth to
undo the work in which the Covenanters had borne so large a share. It
was by this ford, again, that Marmion, in his haste not to miss the
fighting, made his perilous passage across the stream, having spent the
night at Lennel's Convent, of which "one frail arch" is all that is
left.
[Illustration: COLDSTREAM BRIDGE, FROM UP-STREAM.]
A little above the spot "where to the Tweed Leat's eddies creep," on
the southern bank, is a fragment of Wark Castle. According to Leland,
it was "causid to be made" by Henry II. It twice repulsed attack at
the hands of David I.; and when on the second occasion he had reduced
it by blockade, he thought it well "to ding it doon." But it was
rebuilt by Henry, and gave the Scots much further trouble before its
final demolition--probably just after the union of the Crowns, when
so many Border strongholds were dismantled. When, about the middle of
the fourteenth century, David Bruce laid siege to it, the governor
himself, Sir William Montague, mounted on a "wight" steed, penetrated
the investing lines one dark and stormy night, and carried word to the
king, Edward III., of what was happening at Wark, and so the siege
was raised. The castle had been Edward's wedding-gift to the Earl of
Salisbury, and the countess was here when he relieved it. She was
naturally grateful, and her liege complacent; and the gossips say
that in this wise began the romance of which one incident was the
establishment of the Order of the Garter. The king was certainly in a
perilous situation, for had he not just rescued the lady from one?
[Illustration: RUINS OF WARK CASTLE.]
As the stream is traced upwards, the banks not seldom break into
cliffs, the valley gains in breadth and richness, and away to the
north the sky-line is broken by the round top of Dunse Law. Nearly
midway between Coldstream and Kelso the Tweed ceases to be the Border
river, and enters the shire of Roxburgh, and a little higher up it
takes toll of the "troutful Eden," which on its way down from the
slopes of Boon Hill has watered the village of Ednam (Edenham), where
"the sweet poet of the year" was born. A couple of miles or so away to
the south is Hadden Rig, scene of the fight between the English and
Scottish Marchwardens in 1542. Sir Robert Bowes, Governor of Norham,
had, with three thousand horse, ravaged a large part of Teviotdale,
and was marching on Jedburgh, when he encountered George Gordon, Earl
of Huntly, and, with several of his colleagues and many of his men,
was taken prisoner. Fighting on the English side was the exiled Earl
of Angus, who only by a desperate exercise of strength and activity
escaped capture and the traitor's doom which would inevitably have
followed.
THE TWEED.
CHAPTER II.
FROM KELSO TO TWEEDSWELL.
Kelso and its Abbey--Roxburghe Castle--Floors Castle--The
Teviot--Ancrum--Carlenrig--The Ale--The Jed and
Jedburgh--Mertoun--Smailholm Tower and Sandyknowe--Eildon
and Sir Michael Scott--Dryburgh--The Leader and Thomas
the Rhymer--Melrose--Skirmish Hill--Abbotsford--The
Ettrick and the Yarrow--Ashestiel--Innerleithen--Horsburgh
Castle--Peebles--Neidpath--Manor--Drummelzier--The Crook
Inn--Tweedswell.
When Burns came to Kelso in the spring of 1787, and stood upon the
bridge which preceded Rennie's fine piece of work, he is said to have
reverently uncovered his head and breathed a prayer to the Almighty.
A less religious nature than his might well have been moved to the
devotional mood, for there can be few scenes so charged with inspiring
and exalting influences. If Leyden did not quite hit the mark in saying
of the Tweed here that she "her silent way majestic holds," it is
only because she chants as she goes: august her course certainly is,
for she rolls broad and brisk, and flows into queenly curves. On the
one hand is Sir George Douglas's place, Springwood Park, the entrance
dignified by some glorious bronze beeches; on the other are the stately
ruins of the Abbey; and beyond, the town, neat and clean, gleaming
white in the sunshine. Up stream, full in front, stands the palatial
Floors Castle, not far from where the Teviot pours its hurrying tide
into the Tweed; below bridge the spacious current ripples between
thickly wooded banks. The town itself has many interests, modern as
well as ancient. For some months towards the end of last century a boy,
slightly lame, and much given to poring over old romances, attended
the old grammar-school adjacent to the abbey, and still carried on
there, though in a new building; and here began that acquaintance with
the Ballantynes which was to have such ruinous issues. With another
true minstrel also, though one who sings in a lower key, the town has
associations. The Free Church, one of the white spired edifices visible
from the bridge, was built for Horatius Bonar, who during a long
ministry here wrote some sacred songs which men will not soon let die.
Against the Free Church nothing need be urged except its newness; but
the parish church--octagonal, with a huge slated roof, divided into as
many sections--is a building of simply audacious uncouthness, a sight
to make "sair eyes." It has been said to be the ugliest parish church
in Scotland, and the statement might be amplified and still remain
true. During the eighteenth century the parishioners were pleased to
commend themselves to the divine mercy in the dismantled abbey, a low
vault having been thrown over the transept; while right overhead, under
a roof of thatch, certain of their fellows were all the while enduring
the rigours of human justice. This felicitous arrangement survived
until about 1771, when one Sunday the falling of a lump of plaster
from the roof sent the congregation scampering out with the words of
an oracular prophecy attributed to Thomas the Rhymer ringing in their
ears. Then they set up this detestable building, fashioned in the style
of an auction mart, within a stone's-throw of the venerable walls
in which they were too superstitious to longer assemble themselves
together!
The remains of the Abbey are not considerable, consisting of a part of
the central tower, about half of the west front, bits of the transept
walls, and some fragments of the choir. The style is an interesting
mixture of Romanesque and Early Pointed; thus there are round-headed
doorways with zigzag mouldings, and series of those intersecting arches
which mark the transition from the one style to the other; while
the two surviving arches that support the central tower are Early
Pointed. Less graceful than the remains of Melrose Abbey, which are
much later, they have a massive dignity distinctly superior to those
of Dryburgh, which come nearer to them in style. In Burton's opinion,
there was no other building in all Scotland which bore so close a
resemblance to a Norman castle. It was of course its position in the
Debateable Land which prompted its builders to invest it with such
strength and solidity. And the days came when it needed all its power
of resistance, and more besides, since it often had to bear the brunt
of battering-ram, of cannon-shot, and of the still more deadly faggot.
Its visitations culminated in 1545, the year when the Earl of Hertford,
better known as the Protector Somerset, made his terrible descent
upon the northern kingdom. On this occasion it was bravely held by
about a hundred defenders, including a dozen of its monks; but it was
breached and stormed, and "as many Scots slain as were within." Thus
it came about that there was only a remnant of the brotherhood left
for the Reformers to expel fifteen years later; and the iconoclasts on
principle must have found the wrecking of the building an easy enough
task. When the vast possessions of the monastery came to be dealt with,
the prudence, if not the generosity, of James VI. reminded him that he
had favourites. In the previous reign the abbacy had been conferred
upon James Stuart, one of the king's natural sons, while others of his
bastards battened upon the revenues of divers other abbeys. On its
practical side, it is clear, the Reformation came none too soon.
The Abbey of Kelso, like those at Melrose and Jedburgh, and several
more in other parts of Scotland, owes its foundation to David I.,
the pious son of a pious mother--"St." David, as he is often called.
Standing at his tomb at Dunfermline, the first of the Jameses,
whose taste ran to poetry rather than to piety, and to pursuits yet
more frivolous, is said to have uttered the much-quoted remark that
his predecessor was "ane sair sanct for the Crown," thinking the
while of the revenues which had been alienated to religious uses.
The reflection is generally taken seriously, but the wisest of the
Stuarts must have meant it at least as much in jest as in earnest.
David was, in truth, anything but an ignorant, impulsive fanatic. His
training at the refined court of Henry I. had rubbed off "the rust of
Scottish barbarity," as an outspoken English annalist puts it; and
coming to his kingship an educated and accomplished man, he set about
reducing his rude realm to order and civilisation; and in fulfilment
of this mission castles were built, burghs erected, and religious
establishments founded. Those were the palmy days of monasticism, when
religious houses had not come to be filled with ecclesiastics of the
type of Friar John of Tillmouth, and the Abbot of Kennaquhair in the
"Monastery;" and if it can be said of St. David that "he succeeded in
reducing a wild part of Scotland to order," it is chiefly because he
gave so powerful a stimulus to the agencies of the Church.
[Illustration: KELSO, WITH RENNIE'S BRIDGE.]
Between Kelso Abbey and Roxburghe Castle, represented by a small
fragment on a ridge just where the Teviot and the Tweed mingle their
waters, a close connection is to be traced, for the fortress was once a
royal residence, inhabited by St. David himself; and when his one son
Henry died within its walls, the body was borne into the church, and
there with solemn pomp interred. And when three centuries later James
II., at a spot said to be marked by the large holly near the margin of
the Tweed, was killed by the bursting of "The Lion" while attempting
to wrest the castle from the hands of the English, his son was carried
by the nobles into the abbey to be crowned. The catastrophe turned out
well neither for the castle nor for its English defenders; for when
it occurred, the queen, Mary of Gueldres, held up her boy of seven in
view of the troops, and the assault was resumed with such fury that
Lord Falconburg had to capitulate. The castle had often been taken by
the English, and now, in the exasperation of the Scots at the loss of
their king, it was torn stone from stone. Even then it was not to avoid
further associations of the same hateful kind, for after the battle
of Pinkie in 1547, when the Scots had to smart for their triumph at
Ancrum two years before, the Protector Somerset formed a camp among
the ruins, and compelled the neighbouring country to come in and pay
tribute and "take assurance." It was in carrying out his mission of
exacting submission from the recalcitrant that honest Stawarth Bolton
visited the mourning Elspeth Brydone at Glendearg, and thought to
console her for the loss of her husband by offering himself as his
successor. The ancient town which grew up in the shadow of the castle
has been literally annihilated; the present village of Roxburghe is a
little further eastwards. Floors (Fleurs) Castle, the princely seat of
the Duke of Roxburghe, stands on the north bank of the stream, fronted
by a spacious lawn. It was built by Vanbrugh, but was transformed to
something approximating the Tudor type by Playfair, the Edinburgh
architect. Judged by Vanbrugh's achievements elsewhere, the change was
most likely an improvement; but the effect has been to give the fabric
a composite look which does not appreciate its other attractions--its
superb situation, its magnificent proportions, its undeniable air of
distinction.
[Illustration: DRYBURGH ABBEY, FROM THE EAST.]
Something must, in passing, be said of the Teviot, so full of history,
of legend, of folk-song, and of romance, and endowed with such various
and abundant beauty. Its most romantic association is with Branxholm
Hall, cradle of the House of Buccleuch--the "Branksome Hall" where the
"nine-and-twenty knights of fame" hung their shields; now a comely
family residence, with the ancient tower for nucleus, standing on a
steep bank north of the stream, about three miles from Hawick, the town
where Sir Alexander Ramsay was captured by the Knight of Liddesdale,
to be cruelly starved to death in the dungeon of Hermitage Castle.
Denholm, birthplace of Leyden, with Ruberslaw, and many another spot,
must be passed over. But at Ancrum Moor we must give ourselves pause
for a little, for here in 1545 the Scots "took amends" on the most
ruthless and destructive raiders who ever crossed the Tweed. In 1544
Sir Ralph Evers, Governor of Berwick, with Sir Brian Latoun, had made
an incursion in the course of which, according to Evers' own inventory,
the "towns, towers, barnekynes, parysche churches, bastill houses"
which they "burned and destroyed" amounted to 192; while of cattle
they had "lifted" 10,386, of "shepe" 12,492, and of nags and geldings
1,296--and these are only some of the details. For these achievements a
grateful monarch made Evers a lord of Parliament, and he was celebrated
in song as one who, having "burned the Merse and Teviotdale," still
was ready "to prick the Scot." The praise was well deserved, for the
next year he and Sir Brian made another raid, and beat their record.
Returning towards Jedburgh, laden with booty, they were followed by
Angus and by Norman Leslie, and while they were halting on Ancrum Moor,
Sir Walter Scott of Buccleuch came up with a body of retainers. He
had a long account to settle. The outworks of his Castle of Branxholm
had been burned; all his lands in West Teviotdale and on Kale Water
had been harried; and the Moss Tower, near the junction of Kale with
Teviot, had been made "to smoke sore." By his counsel Angus took up a
position on the piece of low ground called Peniel Heugh, and having
drawn the invaders into ambush, an easy victory was won. Evers and
Latoun both fell, and a thousand prisoners were made. The scene of
the battle is also known as Lilliard's Edge, from the "fair maiden
Lillyard," who took part in the fight, and "when her legs were cutted
off" by the English louns, "fought upon her stumps." The column on
the hill, visible for miles along the valley of the Tweed, as well as
in Teviotdale, has nothing to do with this lady's heroism, or with
the Scottish victory, but, as the peasantry are surprised to be told,
commemorates the Battle of Waterloo.
[Illustration: RUINS OF ROXBURGHE CASTLE.]
Another place on the Teviot, Carlenrig, not far from the source, near
the Dumfries border, is celebrated as the scene of Johnnie Armstrong's
execution in the course of James V.'s hanging and hunting expedition.
His keep was at Hole House, in Eskdale; but at the head of thirty-six
bravely attired horsemen he came to Teviotdale and presented himself
to the king, expecting to be received with favour. When James ordered
him and his merry men to instant execution, he is represented as making
a variety of large offers for pardon--as that he would bring in by a
certain day, either quick or dead, any English subject, were he duke,
earl, or baron, whom the king might name. But, his terms being all
rejected, he said proudly, "It is folly to seek grace at a graceless
face." So--
"John murdered was at Carlinrigg,
And all his gallant cumpanie;
But Scotland's heart was ne'er sae wae
To see sae mony brave men die."
Among the Teviot's vassal-streams are the Ale, whose "foaming
tide" William of Deloraine swam in his night ride to Melrose; and
the brawling Jed, which gives its name to the royal burgh on its
banks--famous for "Jethart staves," a species of battle-axe, and for
"Jethart justice," the equivalent of "Lydford law" in the West of
England. One of those who came into the hangman's hands at Jedburgh
was Rattling Roaring Willie, the jovial harper at whose feet the "last
minstrel" sat, with such excellent results. He could not brook that the
tongue of the scoffer--
"Should tax his minstrelsy with wrong,
Or call his song untrue:
For this, when they the goblet plied,
And such rude taunt had chafed his pride,
The bard of Reull he slew.
On Teviot's side in fight they stood,
And tuneful hands were stained with blood,"
and so forth. But the minstrel's memory had etherealised the facts. The
squalid prose of the story is that a drunken brawl arose at Newmill, on
the Teviot, between Willie and a rival from Rule Water, known as Sweet
Milk; that they fought it out there and then; and that Sweet Milk was
slain on the spot.
Above Kelso--to return, with apologies, to the Tweed--the valley
opens out, and the trees grow thicker, while the larch and the fir
begin to come more into evidence. At Mertoun House, Lord Polwarth's
seat, environed with groves, one of those Introductions to the
cantos of "Marmion" which so hamper the movement of the poem, while
they contain some of the poet's finest lines, is dated. Sir Walter
was passing Christmas here, and even then, when the boughs were all
leafless, "Mertoun's halls" were fair. In another of the Introductions
much that is interesting in a biographical sense is said about the
large gabled tower which, as it stands four-square to all the winds
that blow, is one of the most prominent objects in the landscape for
miles along the valley. It is the Smailholm Tower of the mystical "Eve
of St. John," and is built among a cluster of crags a few miles north
of the stream, in the parish which contains Sandyknowe, a farmhouse
leased by Sir Walter's paternal grandfather from Scott of Harden.
Thus it happened that from his third to his eighth year young Walter
was often sojourning in the parish of Smailholm; and long afterwards,
as the shattered tower and crags amid which the "lonely infant" had
strayed and mused until the fire burned, rose up before him in vision,
he confessed the poetic impulse which came to him in this "barren
scene and wild." The tower, anciently the property of the Pringles of
Whytbank, now of Lord Polwarth, is a typical Border peel--not a castle,
but simply a large square keep of enormous strength, the walls being
nine feet thick; the chambers built over one another in three storeys,
with communication by a narrow circular stair; the roof a platform; the
whole enclosed by an outer wall. Much nearer the river, on the other
side, is another Border strength, Littledean Tower, the keep of the
Kers of Nenthorn; and close at hand stands the old shaft of the village
cross, where in more stirring days than these, at the "jowing" of the
bell, the men of the barony, armed with sword and lance, and sometimes
with a "Jethart stave" (the Scots never took kindly to the twanging of
the yew), would assemble in their hundreds to guard their own byres,
or, mounted on their vigorous little ponies, to prick across the Border
to empty their neighbours', and belike to ruin them "stoop and roop."
[Illustration: MELROSE ABBEY, FROM THE SOUTH-EAST.]
[Illustration: MELROSE ABBEY: THE EAST WINDOW.]
The huge three-coned hill which can be seen from below Kelso, and
remains in sight for many miles, although it is constantly shifting
from left to right, from front to rear, so mazy is the way of the
stream, is, of course, the famous Eildon. Tradition says that it was
split into three by the magician Scott, not Sir Walter of that ilk, but
"the wondrous Michael," more formally, Sir Michael Scott of Balwearie.
Indeed, most of the more striking phenomena in these parts are ascribed
to "Auld Michael" when they are not credited to "Auld Nickie" or Sir
William Wallace. The theory is that he was under the constant necessity
of finding employment for a spirit with an enormous appetite for work.
On one occasion he bade him "bridle the Tweed with a curb of stone;"
and the dam-head at Kelso, constructed in a single night, was the
result. The division of Eildon into three was another night's task; and
it was not till he had set the industrious demon making ropes out of
sea-sand that he himself could find any rest. If these incidents have a
legendary look about them, it is certain that Sir Michael himself was
no myth. He was profoundly versed in all the learning of the Dark Age;
and it is probable that he was one of the ambassadors who sailed "to
Noroway o'er the faem" to bring about the return of Alexander's fair
daughter. If he was less of a magician than his distant descendant, it
was through no fault of his own. He was a diligent student of all the
abstruse sciences, and wrote freely about them; and he was credited
with uncanny attributes by the learned as well as by the vulgar of his
day. While Sir Walter was in Italy he was complaining that the great
Florentine had thought none but Italians worthy of being sent to hell.
He was reminded that he of all men had no right to grumble, since his
ancestor figures among the magicians and soothsayers of the "Inferno."
However Eildon got its present shape, it forms a singularly
picturesque object in the landscape. And the scene that lies rolled
out before anyone who chooses to climb either of the summits is one of
the fairest that mortal eye ever rested upon. To the south the view
is bounded only by "Cheviot's mountains lone;" to the north, by the
Lammermoors; eastwards, the Tweed valley, lustrous in its vesture of
green of many shades, spreads itself out for miles beyond Dryburgh
and St. Boswell's, although the stream itself, from its way of hiding
itself between deep and woody banks, is constantly vanishing from
sight; westwards, beyond Abbotsford, to give variety to the view,
the valley is less luxuriant, and the hills are larger, and instead
of being divided into trim fields and meadows, or covered to their
tops with bonny birks and hazels, present an unbroken surface of
pasture-land, relieved only by patches of broom. To the south-west the
outlying Ettricks keep ward over the valley where the shepherd-poet
roamed and dreamed; full in view to the north-west, at the foot of the
lovely Gala Water, is busy, brand-new Galashiels, blotting the blue
with its smoke, and in other ways as well "sinning its gifts;" while
nestling at the foot of the hill is Melrose, now a town rejoicing in
"suburbs" and a hydropathic institution.
The glory of Dryburgh Abbey is its situation and immediate
surroundings, in which it is certainly superior to Melrose, and even
to Kelso. To get to it you leave the public highway, cross the water,
and presently pace along a shady avenue, to find it at last bosomed in
trees, seated on a grassy flat that slopes gently down to the river,
whose music may be heard as its waves ripple by, almost insulating the
site--for nowhere, perhaps, does the Tweed curl into so many loops as
between Mertoun and Abbotsford. And Nature, not content with furnishing
an incomparable situation and almost incomparable surroundings, has
done her best with ivy and other creeping plants to hide the scars left
by the hands of violent men. What now meets the eye is the western
gable of the nave, a gable of the south transept, with a five-light
window, and a bit of the choir and north transept--sufficient to show
that the abbey was much smaller than either of its neighbours. The
transept and choir are First, the nave--rebuilt in the first half
of the fourteenth century--Second, Pointed, while the conventual
buildings, south of the abbey, show the transition from Romanesque to
Pointed. At Melrose there is not a vestige of the monastic buildings
left; here they are in better preservation than the Abbey itself.
The most perfect of them is the chapter-house, over against which
are some immemorial yews. The founder was Hugh de Morville, Lord of
Lauderdale and Constable of Scotland; the stone--an obdurate brownish
sandstone--was hewn from the quarry on the Dryburgh estate which
yielded its substance also for Melrose. Ravished and burnt by Edward
II., the monastery was at once rebuilt, partly at the charges of Robert
the Bruce. Then it was burnt by Richard II.; but it was not actually
ruined until the devastating wars which broke out in the reigns of
James IV. and V., when it was twice ravaged by Evers and Latoun, and
once by the Earl of Hertford, who left it much as we now see it, save
for the healing work of Nature and of Time. One feature of the ruins
to which a peculiar interest attaches is the gloomy vault in which the
"nun of Dryburgh" for years immured herself, never quitting it until
dark, returning to it at midnight, and persisting in this strange mode
of life until at last the night came which had no morrow, when they
buried her in the adjoining graveyard. She never explained herself, but
the common belief was that she had vowed never to look upon the sun
during the absence of her lover, who came not back, having fallen in
the affair of '45.
How it came to pass that the dust of "Waverley" lies in St. Mary's
aisle we know from Allan Cunningham. When Sir Walter was stricken
down in 1819, and was believed to be at the point of death, the Earl
of Buchan, the eleventh of his line, made a somewhat fussy though
well-intended appeal to Lady Scott to prevail upon her husband to
be buried here beside his forbears the Haliburtons of Newmains, to
whom the abbey once belonged; and Sir Walter, without seeming greatly
impressed, promised that the earl should have the refusal of his
bones, since he seemed so solicitous. Things, however, did not shape
themselves quite as the nobleman had anticipated. Sir Walter recovered,
and the earl had for three years been sleeping with his ancestors in
St. Moden's Chapel before that sad September day when the writer whose
nimble pen had traced its last word was borne here, and sorrowfully
laid beside his wife, whom six years earlier he had followed to the
same hallowed resting-place. In the chapel now lie his eldest son,
Colonel Sir Walter Scott, and Lockhart, his "son-in-law, biographer,
and friend." The aisle, it should be added, contains the dust of other
families of note, including the Haigs of Bemerside, who have flourished
there ever since the days of Malcolm IV., and who form the subject of
one of the barbarous couplets said to have been written by Thomas the
Rhymer before--all too tardily--he was appropriated by the fairies.
The Earl of Buchan spoken of above had a weakness for setting up
monuments, and in indulging it he showed more public spirit than good
taste. Close by his suspension bridge he built "an Ionic temple" of
red sandstone, with a statue of Apollo under the dome, and a bust
of Thomson perched on the top. As time went on, the statue was so
much damaged (it may be hoped that something higher than a spirit of
destructiveness was the motive of the image-breaking) that it had to be
removed, though the bust still holds its place. A furlong or two up the
stream, on a thickly timbered eminence, facing the Border, he put up a
colossal statue of Wallace, hewn out of the same incongruous material,
but painted white, though the paint has long since vanished. Wallace
suffered many things during his life, but it was not a Sassenach who
did this.
Between Dryburgh and Melrose the Tweed is swollen by Leader's "silver
tide" from the Lammermoors. On the banks of this water St. Cuthbert
tended his flocks in the days of his youth; while at Earlston--formerly
Ercildoune--two miles above the confluence, lived Thomas the Rhymer,
whose surname appears to have been Lermont or Learmount, and who is
believed to have lived in a castle of which a tower is still shown.
There is no doubt that Thomas had a real existence; but whether he
posed as a prophet, and had commerce with the fairies, and was finally
spirited away by a hart and hind that were seen calmly parading the
village, is more questionable. The poet, however, is clear enough about
it all. With much detail he tells how, when the message came to the
Rhymer to follow the deer, he "soon his cloaths did on," and--
"First he woxe pale and then woxe red,
Never a word he spake but three:
'My sand is run; my thread is spun;
This sign regardeth me.'"
Then, having bidden farewell to the Leader, he crossed the flood and
was seen no more of men.
[Illustration: ABBOTSFORD.]
With the situation of St. Mary's Abbey Dorothy Wordsworth was fain
to avow herself disappointed. When she came to Melrose she found it
"almost surrounded by insignificant houses," which is even truer now
than it was then; and she adds that even when viewed from a distance
the position did not seem happy, for the church was not close to the
river, "so that you do not look upon them as companions to each other."
This has been rebuked as "somewhat captious;" but one presumes to
think it nothing of the kind. In itself, however, the Abbey is fair
beyond description; it would be as difficult to adversely criticise as
it is to adequately praise it. To justly appreciate its proportions,
graceful and imposing even in its ruin, and with the central tower
bereft of its rood-spire, it should be seen from one of the summits
of Eildon; yet its details, when minutely scrutinised on the spot,
are still more admirable. Burns, before his time in his appreciation
of Gothic architecture as in some other things, speaks of it as "a
glorious ruin;" to Sir Walter's mind it was "the finest specimen of
Gothic architecture and Gothic sculpture which Scotland can boast." It
is, in sooth, one of the crowning achievements of the Gothic, with most
of its merits and almost none of its faults. Exuberantly ornamented, it
never oversteps the thin line which separates richness from redundancy.
Even the great east window, built after Richard II.'s devastations in
1385, when the Gothic had passed its prime, has a grace and harmony
which justify all the admiration usually accorded to its size; while
it is preserved from the stiffness which is the besetting sin of the
Perpendicular by the foliaged tracery that knits the long mullions
together. The window in the south transept, also in five lights, is,
however, to be preferred before it, although considerably smaller; it
is in the Second Pointed, or Decorated style, to which the greater part
of the ruin belongs, and the lines into which its mullions flow are of
indescribable loveliness. The carving on capital and corbel, on boss
and buttress, has an elaborate yet dainty beauty such as is seldom met
with on either side of the Tweed, and must of a truth be the work of
hands that were made cunning by love of art and patient by a sense of
pious duty.
The first Abbey of Melrose, built of oak and thatched with reeds,
occupied a nearly insulated site two miles down the river, where the
village of Old Melrose now stands. It was a "Chaldee" foundation, as
Mrs. Dods would say--was founded by Aidan of Lindisfarne, was the home
of the St. Boisil after whom St. Boswell's is named, as well as of
St. Cuthbert, was destroyed by Kenneth, after an existence of three
hundred years, and, though rebuilt, sank into decay and ruin. Then,
five hundred years after St. Aidan, came St. David, who, when the new
monastery had been built, brought Cistercian monks from Rievaulx to
fill it. Its experiences at the hands of the second Edward and the
second Richard, of Evers and Latoun, and of Hertford, were identical
with those of Dryburgh, and the dismal story need not be repeated.
After the Reformation a part of the nave was used as the parish church,
a barbarous wall of brick being put up at the west end, rising into an
equally sightly vault to keep out the weather. Although these additions
are a grievous eyesore, it was rightly decided, when early in the
present century a church was built, to let them be, lest their removal
should leave the ruins less secure. In 1832 these were repaired, and
the circumstance that the Duke of Buccleuch allowed Sir Walter Scott to
superintend the work is guarantee that it was done with a tender and
reverent hand. The bell which counted the slow hours for the drowsy
monks still tells the time, with quite as much accuracy as could be
expected or desired.
To the cloisters access is had by a low door at the north-east end
of the nave--the entrance through which William of Deloraine was led
to the wizard's grave. One of the tombs bears an incongruous printed
label, "Michael Scott;" but the identification rests on evidence which
would not even satisfy an antiquary--on nothing else, in truth, than
the story of the "last minstrel," who was not scrupulous as to matters
of fact. Nor is there anything but tradition to show that the magician
was buried in the Abbey at all. In this instance, moreover, tradition
is divided against itself, for one story has it that he was interred in
the monastery founded by St. Waltheof at Holme Coltrame, in Cumberland.
In one particular, however, the stories agree: they both aver that the
magic books were buried with the wizard, or preserved in the monastery
where he died; and here we have the hint of which Sir Walter has made
such splendid use in the "Lay." There has been much controversy, by the
way, over the question whether the ruins were ever explored by Scott
by moonlight. Old John Bower, who for many years was the keeper of
the abbey, maintained that he could never have done so, since he had
never borrowed the key from him at night; and a verse has been quoted
from Sir Walter himself against those who find it hard to believe
that the sweetest lines in the "Lay" were not written from "personal
experience":--
"Then go and muse with deepest awe
On what the writer never saw,
Who would not wander 'neath the moon
To see what he could see at noon."
The lines are not characteristic, and probably are not genuine. But
whether Scott was "too practical a man to go poking about the ruins by
moonlight," as Tom Moore contended, or was not, is surely a trivial
and even irrelevant question. If Scott never saw the Abbey except when
it was being flouted by "the gay beams of lightsome day," it does not
follow that the passage is mere moonshine. Peradventure it is poetry.
Other doubtful interments here, besides that of the magician, are those
of Alexander II. and his queen Joanna. But probably the Abbey does
contain the heart of the great Bruce, believed to have been deposited
here, in fulfilment of the king's written wish, after Douglas's
unsuccessful attempt to bear it to the Holy Land. Nor is it open to
doubt that some of the Douglases themselves came here to rest after
their stormful lives. The doughty earl who was slain at Otterburn was
not "buried at the braken bush," as says the ballad, but beneath the
high altar of this Abbey. Hither also was borne Sir William Douglas,
the so-called Flower of Chivalry, when Ramsay's murder had been
inadequately avenged on Williamhope, betwixt Tweed and Yarrow, by Sir
William's godson and chieftain, William Earl of Douglas. It was the
wanton defacing of these tombs that nerved the arm of Angus at Ancrum
Moor; and when one remembers the scathe wrought upon and within these
walls by Lord Evers, it seems to be of the very essence of irony that
this should be his place of sepulture. Yet it was not in scorn that he
was interred amid the evidences of his destructiveness, but as a mark
of honour to a brave albeit pitiless foe.
In the churchyard, under the fifth window of the nave, is the tomb
of a modern worthy, Sir David Brewster, who lived at Allerly, near
Gattonside, and died in 1868. Elsewhere is the grave of faithful Tom
Purdie, marked by a monument raised by Scott himself, from whose pen
proceeded the inscription. "In grateful remembrance," runs this model
epitaph, "of his faithful and attached service of twenty-two years,
and in sorrow for the loss of a humble but sincere friend." Poor Tom!
he could not have gone about with a prepossessing aspect if he sat for
Cristal Nixon in "Redgauntlet." Yet when he was brought before Sir
Walter on a charge of poaching, and with mingled pathos and humour set
forth his hardships and temptations--a wife and children dependent upon
him, work scarce, and grouse abundant--the Sheriff's heart was touched;
so Tom, instead of being haled off to prison, was taken on as shepherd,
and afterwards made bailiff. Sir Walter was not infallible. He was
grossly imposed upon by the Flemish guide at Waterloo. But perhaps no
one ever lived who better understood the Lowland peasant; and in this
instance he had no reason to question his insight. Purdie identified
himself with all Scott's concerns, talked of "our trees" as the
plantation at Abbotsford proceeded, and of "our buiks" as the novels
came out, and never ceased to amuse his generous master with his quaint
humour, or to gratify him by his efficient service.
A little above the centre of the town the stream is crossed by a
suspension foot-bridge, which connects Melrose with Gattonside, granted
to the Abbey by its founder, and still celebrated for its orchards. The
footpath which follows the windings of the river, with wooded slopes
on either hand, leads past Skirmish Hill, at Darnick, the scene of
the "Battle of Melrose," one of many consequences of the disaster at
Flodden, which left the realm with a king in long clothes. The gallant
attempt made at the king's own suggestion, and in his presence, by
Sir Walter Scott of Buccleuch, to cut the leading-strings in which
the Douglases insisted upon keeping the high-spirited monarch, was
frustrated by the inopportune return of the lairds of Cessford and
Fairnyhurst, and Buccleuch and his men had to flee for their lives.
In the neighbourhood of the picturesque bridge which carries the
Galashiels road across the river, and gives the passing traveller a
glimpse both up and down stream which must make him hunger for more,
is the site of the curious old drawbridge, if so it may be called,
which belonged to the Pringles of Galashiels, afterwards of Whytbank,
and consisted of three octangular towers or pillars, from the centre
one of which the ward would, for a consideration, lay out planks,
and so extemporise an elevated footway. It was this service which
Peter refused to do for the sacristan of Kennaquhair when the holy
man was bearing to the monastery the Lady of Avenel's heretical book.
"Riding the water" on a moonlit night, he thought, would do the monk
no harm; and so, though a "heavy water" was running, Father Philip
had to ford the stream, with results so discomforting and mysterious.
It was not only with Peter and his laird that the monks of St. Mary's
had disputes. Even when the monastery was founded they were not quite
unsusceptible to sports dear to the profane, for in the charter which
gave them rights of forestry it was thought necessary to except hunting
and the taking of falcons. As they waxed sleek they did not grow less
selfish, or less tenacious of their rights; and so there was much
contention between them and their neighbours, whose opinion about them
sometimes found vent in catches of poetry. The men of God do not appear
to have retaliated in verse. But there was the pulpit, and there were
penances.
Betwixt this point and Abbotsford the Alwyn and Gala Waters flow
in--the one babbling down a glen which is in parts prettily wooded,
and is recognised as the Glendearg where the Lady of Avenel spent
the sad years of her widowhood; the other reeking with the chemical
abominations of Galashiels. As the ascent is continued, the valley
grows somewhat less rich in beauty, nor is it improved by the flaring
red houses which look down upon Abbotsford from the slopes on the
opposite bank. When Sir Walter acquired the estate--or, rather, the
first bit of it--it must have been much less attractive than now. It
was then a farm, a hundred acres in extent, and there was hardly a tree
upon it. He was his own architect; and it was one of his boasts that
there was not one of the trees which had not been planted under his
direction. The house for which he is thus to be held responsible is
scarcely imposing, nor can it be said to have the merit of consistency.
You can see at a glance that it grew, rather than was made. On the
whole, it is pleasing to the eye rather than to the architectural
sense; and if, as has been said, its gables and sections and windows
and turrets and towers are a little bewildering in their multitude
and variety, one still ventures to think that it is better as it is,
plentiful as may be its lack of plan, than it would be if it conformed
more strictly to the conventional castellated type.
The interests of Abbotsford are many and great. It is indeed "a
romance in stone and lime," every outline, as Lockhart says, with
little exaggeration, "copied from some old baronial edifice in
Scotland, every roof and window blazoned with clan bearings, or the
lion rampant gules, or the heads of the ancient Stuart kings." And Sir
Walter was from his earliest years a diligent gleaner of curiosities;
so that, apart from many precious mementoes of himself, the rooms
which the Hon. Mrs. Constable Maxwell Scott, his great-grand-daughter,
throws open to the public, form a museum of the rarest interest. But,
after all, it is chiefly the desire to make acquaintance with the
scenes amid which the sanest and shrewdest of our great writers since
Shakespeare spent the most eventful years of his blameless life that
draws to Abbotsford its crowds of pilgrims. It was here that he wrote
most of his works; here that he met the great disaster of his life in a
spirit which showed in combination the loftiest chivalry and the nicest
commercial integrity; here that he piously submitted himself to the
stroke of death. The story of his return to Abbotsford to die is full
of pathos. "As we rounded the hill at Ladhope, and the outline of the
Eildons burst on him," says his biographer, "he became greatly excited;
and when ... his eye caught at length his own towers ... he sprang up
with a cry of delight." Then they bore him into the dining-room, and
his dogs "began to fawn upon him and lick his hands, and he alternately
sobbed and smiled over them until sleep oppressed him." The next day
he felt better, he said, and might disappoint the doctors after all.
But his strength continued to leave him, and he was often delirious
and unconscious. One day, about two months after his return, he sent
for his son-in-law, who found him with eye "clear and calm," though
in the last extreme of feebleness. "Lockhart," he said, "I may have
but a minute to speak to you. My dear, be a good man--be virtuous, be
religious--be a good man. Nothing else will give you any comfort when
you come to lie here." These were almost his last words. Four days
afterwards he breathed his last, in the presence of all his children.
"It was a beautiful day--so warm that every window was open, and so
perfectly still that the sound of all others most delicious to his ear,
the gentle ripple of the Tweed over its pebbles, was distinctly audible
as we knelt around the bed, and his eldest son kissed and closed his
eyes." Surely this man died "in the odour of sanctity" as truly as
Waltheof of Melrose or any tonsured saint of them all.
[Illustration: GALASHIELS.]
The Ettrick, which joins the Tweed not a great way above Abbotsford,
no longer flows through a "feir foreste;" where once there was "grete
plentie" of hart and hind, of doe and roe, mighty flocks of sheep
now graze. Of Ettrick House, where the pastoral poet was born; of
Thirlestane Castle, the strength of "Ready, aye ready" John Scott; of
Tushielaw, where another of the Scotts, Adam of that ilk, was hanged
by the king who had no mercy for Johnnie Armstrang; of Carter haugh,
where the "fair Janet" met "young Tamlane," and by strength of love
won him from the thraldom of the Fairy Queen; of Selkirk, whose burly
"souters" (_sutors_) gave so good an account of themselves at Flodden
Field--of all this there is no space to speak. Nor can there be
anything but barest mention of the Yarrow, whose bonnie holms and dowie
dens were dear to Wordsworth and other modern poets, as they were to
the old folk-singers of the Border. St. Mary's lone and silent lake,
with its swans that "float double;" Henderland, where Cockburne's widow
mourned her knight "sae dear;" Dryhope, where the "Flower of Yarrow"
was wooed and won by Walter Scott of Harden; Newark's stately tower,
where the last minstrel's trembling fingers tuned his harp and swept
its strings--these and other scenes must all be left unnoticed. But
the Yarrow is perhaps the most benign of Border streams, and it has
inspired the sweetest and saddest of Border songs, not excepting even
the "Flowers of the Forest," or "Annan Water." And of them all, none
is more sad or sweet than that which tells the story of the Baron of
Oakwood, who was slain on its "dowie banks," and there found by his
"ladye gaye."
"She kissed his cheek, she kaimed his hair,
She searched his wounds all thorough;
She kissed them till her lips grew red
On the dowie howms of Yarrow."
It is near Philiphaugh that Yarrow and Ettrick wed--Philiphaugh, famed
for its memories of Outlaw Murray, and still more for the crushing
defeat which Montrose here suffered at the hands of David Leslie. The
most princely of apostates was taken completely by surprise, and the
men who until now had carried all before them were fleeing for their
lives before he could strike a blow. Leslie is said to have butchered
many of his prisoners in cold blood, some being shot in the courtyard
of Newark Castle, while others were precipitated from a high bridge
over the Tweed. It would be pleasant to believe that the story is
not true, or is at all events exaggerated. The latter part of it is
certainly inaccurate, if not wholly false, for in those days there was
no bridge over the Tweed in this region. Sir Walter, however, was at
the trouble to point out that there is a bridge over the Ettrick only
four miles from Philiphaugh, and another over the Yarrow, either of
which might have been the scene of the massacre.
Above Clovenfords, celebrated for its vines, the Tweed has burrowed
for itself deeper banks, while the valley broadens; and if the braes
amid which it insinuates itself are less cultivated, and not so
thickly wooded, the water itself moves more swiftly and sings more
cheerily, and shines more lucidly than ever, displaying the tawniest
of beds. Presently the emulous Cadon Water flows in, and then comes
Ashestiel, an earlier residence of Sir Walter, where most of the
cantos of the "Lay" and of "Marmion" were written. West of Thornilees
stands a fragment of one of many ruined peels which line the stream on
both sides, forming an unbroken line of communication, for they were
sufficiently close together for the fire-bale's warnings to be passed
on from one to another. Beyond this the valley contracts, as the stream
winds round a great hill fertile of little but screes, but before long
it again opens out; and then comes the solitary bit of prosaic scenery
of which the Tweed is guilty. The braes on either side, though not
lofty, are nothing but uncomely sheep-walks; the banks themselves are
utterly commonplace. The interval, however, is a brief one, and almost
before the stranger has recovered from his surprise at finding the
bonny water so demeaning itself, he is once more raised to the admiring
mood. For he is now at Innerleithen, nicely placed on the lower
slopes of an enormous brae, where Leithen Water comes down from the
Moorfoot Hills to keep tryst with Tweed. Here are mineral springs, with
properties not dissimilar from those of the Harrogate Wells; and to
drink the waters of these "filthy puddles," in a more or less serious
spirit, many in summer come this way. The good people of the town will
not need to be told that for the opprobrious expression here quoted no
one but Mrs. Dods is responsible. For when one of the least pleasing,
though not the least powerful, of the "Waverley" books saw the light,
Innerleithen made haste to identify itself with the _locus in quo_;
the St. Ronan's Club was started; and the St. Ronan's games are still
kept up. The incident was not a bad thing for Innerleithen, and Sir
Walter, being a good-natured man, did not protest; but the wayfarer
must not be disappointed if he fail to see much correspondence between
the scenery of the book and that of the place. Yet let him not scorn
the pious faith. Would not he himself be glad to believe, if there were
any shadow of reason, that the lines had fallen to him in the veritable
place where Captain MacTurk swaggered, and took his Maker's name in
vain, and angrily resented imputations upon his piety; where Mr.
Winterblossom appropriated the tit-bits of the table and made phrases;
where the omniscient Mr. Peregrine Touchwood circumvented Mr. Valentine
Bulmer; where, above all, the immortal Meg spurned "riders" from her
door, and rated her "huzzies," and railed at the "stinking well" and
all who frequented it?
Over against Innerleithen lies the parish of Traquair, with its burn
and its "bush." A little to the south of the stream is Traquair House,
a seventeenth-century residence tacked on to a much older tower. If
the books could be believed, it would be the original of the Baron of
Bradwardine's house. "Waverley" himself, however, was of a different
opinion. The ruins of Horsburgh Castle, the seat of the family of this
name, now for more than a hundred years abandoned to owl and bat, are
about a couple of miles or so below Peebles. The town itself has a
lovely situation at the point where Eddlestone Water babbles into the
Tweed, and at the foot of a glorious brae, broad and lofty, and covered
with fir and larch, with rolling hills all around, making a mighty
amphitheatre. No wonder that it should have risen to the dignity of
a holiday resort with a "season;" or that in other days the Hays of
Yester should have been glad to come in from Neidpath Castle to winter
in their town-house, the quaint old building in the High Street now
known as the "Chambers Institute." In very early days Peebles was a
dwelling-place of kings; and by the time of that James who was addicted
to "the profane and unprofitable art of poem-making," it was renowned
for its games, which were sung either by the monarch himself or by
some brother minstrel of not much later date. But about the middle of
the sixteenth century the Earl of Hertford came here, and then the
town had to make a fresh start. The castle has disappeared from the
head of the High Street without leaving a wrack behind. Of the Cross
Kirk, built in the thirteenth century by Alexander III., little beyond
the shell of the tower and a gable remains, and even the pitiful ivy
has not been able to make it a sightly relic. There used to be here
also the still older church of St. Andrew; and William Chambers has
received much praise for having "restored" it--an exceptionally brutal
use of a much-suffering term. The only other building of any note is
the "Cross-Keys Inn," many-gabled and picturesque and comfortable. It
has seen better days, for it was once upon a time the town-house of the
Williamsons of Cardrona; but the crowning glory which it claims is that
of being the "public" of Dame Dods, yclept the "Cleikum," which had for
sign a large picture of St. Ronan catching hold of the devil's game leg
with his episcopal crook. If you ask for evidence, you are pointed to
the legend above the doorway, "The original Cleikum Inn, 1653"!
[Illustration: PEEBLES, FROM A LITTLE BELOW NEIDPATH.]
The stream has now been traced up for a distance of well-nigh seventy
miles, yet Peebles is not much more than five hundred feet above the
sea-level; herefrom the ascent is more obvious, though still quite
gradual, for in the thirty miles or so yet to be traversed the rise is
not more than a thousand feet. As they ripple by the town the waters
sing a pretty song; but a stone's-throw or two above the comely old
bridge which spans them close to where the castle frowned upon all who
sought to cross it with hostile intent, it glides smooth and silent,
as though it had fallen asleep. Now the valley narrows into a glen,
winding and profound; and at Neidpath, in full view of the town, the
river dwindles into the merest burn, which it would be no great feat
to leap across. But what a burn, and what a glen! Nothing yet seen, or
still to be seen, is quite so superb as what now meets the view. For
here the braes on either side are steep, and of immense height, and
smothered to their tops with firs and larches; and the stream winds
more than ever, at one moment widening into still deep pools, at the
next shrinking into a dancing rapid; and all around, wherever the eye
turns, it rests upon large swelling hills, robed with verdure, and
girdled with timber, and crowned with grey cairns. Surely the glen was
not much more lovely in the days before the last Duke of Queensberry,
to spite the next heir of entail, or to put money into his mistress's
purse, barbarously cut down the noble avenue by which the castle was
approached, and provoked Wordsworth to gibbet him in an indignant
sonnet. Burns, by the way, was aroused to an even finer show of wrath
by the similar havoc which "Old Q." had wrought at Drumlanrig, in
Nithsdale.
[Illustration: NEIDPATH CASTLE.]
Neidpath Castle, however, has pleasanter associations with the bards.
From the southern branch of the Frasers it passed to the Hays of
Yester; and to the ninth lord of Yester, first Marquis of Tweeddale, is
credited the earliest surviving lyric inspired by the Tweed. Here are
two of the verses:--
"When Maggie and me were acquaint
I carried my noddle fu' high;
Nae lint-white in a' the grey plain,
Nae gowdspink sae bonny as she.
"I whistled, I piped, and I sang,
I woo'd, but I came nae great speed;
Therefore I maun wander abroad,
And lay my banes far frae the Tweed."
The man who wrote this pretty piece held his castle for Charles II.,
but it was unable to stand the brunt of Cromwell's cannon, and was not
merely captured, but ruined. It was long untenanted, but has now by
repair and addition been made habitable, though not more picturesque.
Where the Manor Water joins the Tweed they show the grave of the "Black
Dwarf," and the cottage which he built with his own hands--with some
help from compassionate neighbours--on land which he appropriated
without asking any one's leave. The portrait is not very highly
coloured: Elshender of Mucklestane Moor had scarcely a sourer or
more splenetic humour than David Ritchie, though he may have been a
trifle more comprehensive in his misanthropy. Yet David had great
sensitiveness to natural influences, and, though he had a reputation
in the parish for heresy, would speak of a future state with intense
feeling, "and even with tears." Poor "bow'd Davie!" There was little
in common betwixt him and his kind, and it seemed to him that his tale
of mercies was not a long one; yet there have been many who would be
willing enough to part with some of their advantages in exchange for
his firm grasp of "the mighty hopes that make us men."
As the bridge at Stobo is approached the stream broadens out again,
and strolling along the pleasant, shady road cut in the hill there is
much to delight the eye, and something as well to please the ear--on
the right splendid plantations, climbing up the brae; on the left the
water, gleaming through the fluttering leaves, and beyond it a grassy
level--where the patient kine make music with their bells--rising into
fine slopes of sward, while above these are broad belts of timber.
Close beside the stream, above Drummelzier, is the ruined castle of
this name, and hard by, but high up the brae, where it must have been
almost inaccessible, are some fragments of Thanes or Tinnis Castle,
used as a citadel or redoubt by the garrison. Of an early laird of
Drummelzier historians relate that when after long absence he came
home from the East, where he had crusading been, he was surprised to
find his faithful spouse nursing a strapping boy. The lady, however,
was able to explain: while she was walking along the banks one day,
the spirit of the Tweed had issued forth; and how could a weak woman
prevail against a spirit? So the boy was called Tweedie, and founded
the great family of that name, whose legend was, "Thole[1] and
think." This, however, one supposes, is to be taken as a considerate
exhortation to their victims rather than as a motto for their own
guidance. So interpreted, it is not less frank than the device of
the Cranstouns, "Ye shall want ere I want," or that of the Scotts of
Harden, "Reparabit cornua Phoebe." Moonlighting is no invention of
the nineteenth century.
But Drummelzier's most famous association is with Merlin the seer,
Merlin Wylt, the Wild, as he is called, to distinguish him from Merlin
Ambrosius, who is believed to have uttered his oracles and succumbed
to Vivien's enchantments in the preceding century. The story goes that
after the battle of Arderydd, in or about the year 573, he fled to the
wilds of Tweeddale, and here passed the remainder of his life with a
reputation for insanity; that he prophesied that he should die from
earth, water, and wood, and accordingly, being pursued by a band of
unappreciative rustics, he leapt into the Tweed here and was impaled
upon a stake; and that they buried him where the Pausayl brook flows
into the river, the spot being marked by the scraggy thorn which is
visible from the churchyard. For anyone not blessed with a mighty
intuition it is not easy to be sure of anything about Merlin except
that he was, and was not. Mr. Veitch, however, paints an impressive
picture of Merlin as no wild man of the woods, but as "a heart-broken
and despairing representative of the old Druidic nature-worship, at
once poet and priest of the fading faith, yet torn and distracted by
secret doubt as to its truth." In the same volume--that on the history
and poetry of the Border--the eloquent professor remarks that we are
"apt to interject into ancient actors and thinkers modern ideas, at
which probably they would have stood amazed."
Beyond Merlindale, "hearsed about" with black firs, the stream expands
until it becomes broader than it is at many points within a dozen miles
of its mouth. The Edinburgh road bears it company nearly from Broughton
to its source; but instead of crossing to the western bank some way
above Drummelzier, it is pleasanter, if you have no "machine"--that is,
are not driving--to keep along the eastern bank for some two or three
miles farther, when a delightful saunter across a magnificent haugh,
besprinkled with the yellow tormentilla and many another timid wild
flower, brings you to Stanhope Bridge, and so again to the highway. A
few years ago, when the Tweed had one of its spasms of turbulence, this
bridge was swung bodily round to the bank, while several others higher
up were swept clean away. As the Crook Inn is approached the stream
has again become attenuated; the valley, too, has straitened, the
hills are less abrupt and barren than those seen in the distance a few
miles below, and occasionally a small plantation is espied, where the
mavis and the merle may be heard flooding the air with their amorous
minstrelsy. The Crook, beloved of anglers, who have tender memories
of its luscious mutton, as well as of the good sport which can almost
always be had in this part of the stream, is still the comfortable
place it used to be before it classed itself as a hotel and acquired
fashionable habits.
For the remaining ten or twelve miles the course is one of utter
solitude and of growing wildness--not even a shepherd's hut in sight,
and no tree, except here and there a stunted hawthorn or a lonely
rowan; the braes less verdant, and more given to yielding screes; no
sound to be heard but the irritating squeal of the stone-chipper,
the low, long-drawn whistle of the "whaup," or the pleading cry of
the peewit. Of animated nature no other sign meets the eye save
little groups of sheep clinging to the braes--the fierce-looking
black-faced variety it may be, or the half-breeds with their still
more ferocious-looking streaked visages, or the meeker "cheeviots."
So the slow ascent continues until at last Tweedshaws, the solitary
farmhouse, is reached, and then, leaving the road a little way up
Flocker Hill, you stand at last at Tweedswell, the putative source of
the stream. Looking around, you see on every hand huge hills rising in
the distance, and making between them a vast circle--Black Dod, and
Clyde Law, near which the great western stream rises, and Moll's Cleuch
Dod, and Lochraig, and many another, while just behind Flocker Hill,
Hart Fell rears its giant form. When Merlin Wylt roamed the wilds of
Tweeddale a mighty forest waved over them; now the evidence of their
former glory of rowan and birch and hazel must be looked for in the
peaty soil which stains the head-streams as they furrow their way down
the braes. Later in the year these hills, at present so swart and
void, will be brightened with scatterings of purple; and then, under a
sunnier sky, their plight will seem less blank and savage. But now they
show an aspect stark and grim; for the time of the broom is not yet,
and to-day the sun is sulking behind the murk, and their gusty tops are
all asmoke.
W. W. HUTCHINGS.
[Illustration: HART FELL.]
[Illustration: AMONG THE FELLS.]
THE COQUET.
The Fisherman's River--"Awa' to the
Border"--Peat-Hags--Eel-Fishing--Alwinton and Harbottle--The Village
of Rothbury--Brinkburn Priory--Weldon Bridge and Felton--Warkworth
Hermitage and Castle--The Town of Amble--Coquet Isle.
"There's a gentleman that will tell ye that just when I had ga'en up
to Lourie Lowther's, and had bidden the drinking of twa cheerers, and
gotten just in again upon the moss, and was whigging cannily awa' hame,
twa land-loupers jumpit out of a peat-hag on me or I was thinking, and
got me down, and knevelled me sair eneuch, or I could gar my whip walk
about their lugs; and troth, Gudewife, if this honest gentleman hadna
come up, I would have gotten mair licks than I like, and lost mair
siller than I could weel spare; so ye maun be thankful to him for it
under God."
So, with all the generations of Pepper and Mustard frisking about him,
did honest Dandie Dinmont explain to his wife how he came by a battered
face and a wounded head.
[Illustration:
_Walker & Boutall sc._
THE COURSE OF THE COQUET.]
The "peat-hag" is a characteristic not only of the Scottish
Border-land, but of wide tracks on the English side, and a very
remarkable feature it makes in a wild landscape, being a sort of
black precipice made in the green hills by some sudden sinking of
the apparently bottomless peat. It is all ancient peat-land together
where the river Coquet rises--"Coquet, still the stream of streams,"
as one of the poets of "The Fisher's Garland" has observed; "the king
of the stream and the brae," as has been remarked by another poetical
brother of the angle. Other northern rivers the fisherman mentions with
respect, and perhaps with joyful remembrance of pleasant and successful
days; but of the Coquet he never speaks except with glowing enthusiasm.
No tuneful fisher who was friendly with the muse ever failed to give
the Coquet a preferential mention in his verse. Now it is--
"Nae mair we'll fish the coaly Tyne,
Nae mair the oozy Team,
Nae mair we'll try the sedgy Pont,
Or Derwent's woody stream;
But we'll awa' to Coquet side,
For Coquet bangs them a'."
And now it is--
"There's mony a saumon lies in Tweed,
And many a trout in Till,
But Coquet--Coquet aye for me,
If I may have my will."
A much beloved stream, indeed, is the Coquet, rising in an acre or two
of marshy land, losing itself for a while among the peat, then winding
into the sunlight round the feet of the green hills, and--after many a
mile of joyous wandering--plunging into deep embowered woods and mossy
thickets, where, to all but its familiars, it is unsuspected and unseen.
All around Coquet Head lies the Debatable Land. Mounting the dark
hill of Thirlmoor one may look far away over Roxburghshire, whence, in
former rough times, there was many a raid into the rich Northumbrian
lands. The district known as Kidland lies along Coquetside, from the
Cheviots eastward, and here in the stormy moss-trooping days no soul
could be induced to live, even if he were tempted by the offer of free
lands. The hills are now covered with sheep; there is a shelter for the
shepherds on the top of Thirlmoor; yet to this day Kidland is a country
bare of habitations, shrouded for great part of the year in mists;
dank, rainy, treeless; swept by fierce winds, treacherous by reason of
its numerous bogs. The wild duck may be shot at Coquet Head, but for
the most part it lives and breeds here in great safety, too remote from
men, too fortunate in its wild surroundings, to be much or frequently
incommoded by the English enthusiasm for sport. It is possible,
perhaps, to be in as deep a solitude on Dartmoor, but scarcely possible
to be so far from the musical church bell and the cheerful cottage
smoke.
But even in this wild region there are remains of our old civilisation,
and numerous relics of "the grandeur that was Rome." What are known
as the Ad Fines Camps are situated close to Coquet Head; the Watling
Street crosses the young stream not far from its source on Thirlmoor;
the Outer and the Middle Golden Pot, Roman milestones of an unusual
design, are within easy reach of where the river encloses the ancient
camps in one of its forks. These stations were of considerable extent
when they were made, and were serviceable in after ages as the
meeting-place of the Wardens of the Middle Marches of England and
Scotland when they assembled to punish offences against the Border
laws. Wild stories of lawless times are told by the shepherds on
the hills. There was a "Thieves' Road" over Kidland, along which,
doubtless, many a herd of stolen sheep or kine has been driven. Many
fights there were in these parts, and much pursuing of raiders from
the other side of the Border. The Northumbrians, it must be admitted,
were no better than their neighbours, and not the least less inclined
to thieving. Even a judge was stolen on one occasion, as he was going
the rounds of the King's Justiciaries, and was kept in prison until his
captors could exact from him their own terms.
The country below Coquet Head is veined by little streams, which pour
into the river at brief intervals, so that what was but lately a thread
of water hidden among the moss soon becomes a laughing, sparkling
river, though even so low down as Blindburn, four or five miles from
the source, it may, in very dry seasons, be bridged by a lady's foot.
The first house is at Makingdon, rather more than a mile from Ad Fines
Camps, and fifteen hundred feet above the level of the sea. There are
occasional houses at intervals of a mile or two along the far-winding
course of the river to Alwinton. Of one of these a Mrs. Malaprop of
the hills remarked that "it was in a very digested state," meaning
thereby that it stood grievously in need of repair. A descendant of
the true Dandie Dinmont lived at Blindburn farmhouse until a few years
ago, and kept up the famous breed of terriers, giving to each pair the
immortal names of Pepper and Mustard. The traveller into these regions
is dependent upon the kindly hospitality of the sparse inhabitants,
for there is no house of entertainment within many miles, and a
weary distance must the shepherd trudge over the moors before he can
forgather with his kind.
The Coquet flows through wild and exceedingly rocky scenery between
Blindburn and the next house, which is Carl Croft, and anglers, even
with long waders, find no inconsiderable difficulty in fishing the
stream. Those of the more discerning sort make their way up one of the
tributaries, the Carl Croft or the Philip Burn, or, by preference,
the Usway--the largest and wildest and most beautiful of the feeders
of the Coquet--which joins the river at Shillmoor, distant from the
small village of Alwinton only about five miles or so. Near the point
of junction the Coquet falls, in leap after leap, among rugged and
dangerous rocks. Good eel-spearing may be had here in due season. It
is usual to make up a party of ten or a dozen, chiefly composed of the
shepherds of the district, and to set out on moonless nights, each
man with a torch and four-pronged fork, or "cleek." Those who have
tasted its joys say there is no sport in these islands equal to that
of spearing eels in the Coquet, with Border shepherds for company.
Sometimes, indeed, eels are not the only prey. The river swarms with
bull trout, and how is it possible to resist the temptation of cleeking
a fine plump fish if it comes within reach of one's spear? Such sport
is dangerous, however, being against the laws, and numerous have been
the conflicts, in times not long past, between the hillmen and the
watchers, their hereditary foes. On some occasions the poachers have
played sly tricks on those who have intended their capture. They have
sent out rumours of their intention to have "a gey night;" then they
have sat in some lonely place drinking whisky and telling stories
the night through, issuing thence in the morning, when the watchers
had convinced themselves of a hoax, to sweep the Coquet and all the
neighbouring streams.
[Illustration]
[Illustration: HARBOTTLE.]
[Illustration: ALWINTON BRIDGE.]
The chief resorts alike of shepherds and of anglers are the villages
of Alwinton and Harbottle, distant about two miles from each other,
and near to where the Coquet winds out of the hills and flows between
rich meadow-lands, that slope away to the distant Cheviots on the one
hand, and to the nearer Simonside Hills on the other. Alwinton has the
large allowance of two inns to about eleven houses. It is one of the
most ancient of the Border villages, and had a church in 1293, to which
fled one Thomas de Holm, escaped from the prison of the neighbouring
town, but taken by Simon Smart and Benedict Grey, who "beheaded him
at Simonsett, and hung his head up on the gallows at Harbottle," as a
warning to all like evil-doers. Alwinton has its peel-tower, at about
half a mile from the present village; but at Harbottle there are far
more striking memorials of a stirring past. There is Harbottle Castle,
for example, a ruined mass of masonry on the summit of a steep hill
between the village and the river. It must anciently have been almost
the strongest place on the Borders, when what is now a small village
was doubtless a fairly considerable town. "Here Botl," the place of
the army--such is the name which it is said to have borne before the
Conquest, when it contained a stronghold held by Milred, the son of
Ackman. "Robert with the Beard," the lord of Prudhoe, founder of the
family of De Umfraville, came into possession of all the surrounding
lands in 1076, on condition of defending the countryside against wolves
and the enemies of the king. The castle, of which there are portions
still remaining, was built in the reign of Henry II., and was the
prison and place of execution of all offenders taken in the liberty
of Redesdale. Sitting by the castle of Harbottle in these days, and
listening to the joyous music of the Coquet stream, the imagination
vainly endeavours to piece together the meagre fragments of the past
into some consistent whole; for the quiet aspect of things, the sweet
rural peace, and this
"Place of slumber and of dreams
Remote among the hills,"
make it seem incredible that a great Scottish army can ever have sat
down before it, and that the place can have been strong enough to
resist a determined siege.
[Illustration: THE COQUET AT FARNHAM.]
When Harbottle has been left behind, the river no longer strains
through narrow passes or hurries by great ramparts of riven cliff.
It broadens out, indeed, into a quiet, smiling stream, with a brown
shingly bed, and with occasional large masses of reeds, in which an
otter may hide. There are now frequent small villages along its course,
the most interesting of these being Holystone, where there is a well in
which, as Alexander Smith has related--
"The king and all his nobles and his priests,
Were by Paulinus in Christ's name baptised,
And solemnly unto his service sealed.
And then Paulinus lifted up his hands,
And blessed them and the people."
No less than three thousand Northumbrians are said to have received
the sacrament of baptism at this place, a statement which will seem
the less incredible if we consider that Northumbria was then the most
powerful and populous of the Saxon kingdoms. The famous well lies by
the junction of two Roman ways, in a little grove of fir-trees, where
the water still bubbles up actively through the sand and gravel.
There is above it a stone cross with this inscription: "In this place
Paulinus the Bishop baptised 3,000 Northumbrians, Easter, DCXXVII."
Under the brow of Simonside, which is a huge shoulder of mountain
thrusting itself up suddenly from the ascending land, there are a few
cottages, and one great house, and a mill where are manufactured the
Cheviot tweeds. This is the village of Tosson. Hence one looks away
across the Coquet to the long range of the Cheviot hills, which seem
surprisingly near, and yet are separated from Coquetside by many a mile
of rich and pleasant pasture land. The ancient village of Rothbury is
close at hand, with its one long street dipping down from the moorside
to the Coquet banks, with its picturesque "Thrum Mill," its ancient
church tower, and its great expanse of furze-bestrewn moors, amid the
nearest of which Cragside, the residence of Lord Armstrong, is set. "An
Act of Parliament is out of breath before it reaches Rothbury," say
the people of the place. It is a saying which has survived from the
pre-railroad days, when this portion of the wild Border land seemed
as much cut off from the rest of England as if it had been islanded
by the sea. Nor, indeed, is the sea so far away. On clear days one
may behold it from the top of Simonside, a thin grey streak, scarcely
distinguishable from the greyness of the sky.
A turbulent little town was Rothbury in its earlier days. It was here
that Bernard Gilpin took down from the church door a glove which had
been hung up as a challenge to all and sundry, and then preached a
powerful sermon on the wickedness of private war. In the same church
many years ago an old man who was listening to a condemnation of
robbery rose up and said, "Then the de'il I give my sall to, bot we
are all thieves." Happily that broad statement no longer applies.
The people of Rothbury and the region beyond are honest, stalwart,
hard-working, prosperous folk, given to no pursuit more lawless than
the occasional poaching of bull trout.
And of bull trout, which easily passes for salmon with the unwary,
it is well that a word should be said. The _salmo eriox_ has long
established its title to the Coquet as its own exclusive stream. "On
the Coquet it goes by the name of salmon," says a writer on angling,
"there being no true salmon in that river. Bull trout very rarely takes
fly or bait of any kind, except when it is in the kelt state, when
it is ravenous. It reaches fifteen and twenty pounds in weight." A
noble fish, it will be remarked; but why should it have laid exclusive
claim to the Coquet, with that river lying, as it does, between such
salmon-haunted streams as the Tyne and the Tweed? This is a puzzle
which the scientific mind finds itself incapable of solving to this
day. A generation since it was maintained that the bull trout devoured
the young of salmon, and it was decided, therefore, that the _salmo
eriox_ should itself be destroyed. By the connivance of the local
landowner every specimen of the bull trout was killed as it entered the
river from the sea. Breeding ponds for salmon were then established at
Rothbury, and 17,000 young fish were turned into the Coquet in a single
year. Many of these were branded for future identification, but, so far
as was known, not a single fish of the whole 17,000 ever came back to
the stream in which it was bred. Some were caught in the Tyne, and some
in the Tweed, and some in more distant rivers, but never did the bite
of a true salmon reward the patient angler by Coquetside. Worse than
all, too, the common trout deteriorated, for they had fed on the spawn
of the _salmo eriox_. These things becoming apparent, as much anxiety
was shown to get the bull trout back to the river as there had been
eagerness for its destruction. The bull trout is now, in fact, strictly
preserved under the salmon laws. There is a Coquet Fish Conservancy
Board; and the catching of bull trout in Coquet, alike by nets and by
more artificial expedients, is now a considerable industry, much of the
so-called salmon exported to France and Spain being no more than the
_salmo eriox_ of the English Border. There are those who will not even
yet believe that the Coquet cannot be made a salmon river. Now and then
some angler confidently announces that he has caught a true salmon in
this delightful and prolific stream. Such tales are listened to with
interest, but are not believed. Even experienced fishermen are capable
of confounding the bull trout with its nobler brother of the streams.
[Illustration: ON THE COQUET, BRINKBURN.]
At the foot of the long street of Rothbury, and just on the lower
outskirt of the village, is the Thrum Mill, the name of which is
explained by the fact that the river here strains through a narrow
chasm, or thrum, in a piled-up bed of freestone rock. The mill is an
object of the conventionally picturesque description, with a moss-grown
waterwheel, and with a tumbling torrent for foreground. A bridge here
crosses the Coquet, and to the left, half-way up the steep side of
a heathery hill, rises the mixed Gothic and Elizabethan mansion of
Lord Armstrong. The site has clearly been chosen for the wildness of
its surroundings, for whatever changes may be wrought by cultivation,
and however the growth of plantations may soften the harsh brown and
softer purple of the heather, untamed Nature will still assert itself
here, like Hereward's wife at Ely, as "captive but unconquered." At
Cragside there is one of the noblest of English picture galleries, the
contents of which have been brought together by an exceedingly catholic
taste, and by a liberality of expenditure only possible to "wealthy
men who care not how they give." Here are Linnell's "Thunderstorm in
Autumn," Millais' "Chill October," David Cox's "Ulverstone Sands,"
Leslie's "Cowslip Gatherers," Wilkie's "Rabbit on the Wall," Rossetti's
"Margaret and her Jewels," and some of the finest works of Turner,
Landseer, Phillip, Müller, and, coming down to living artists, Sir
Frederick Leighton.
[Illustration: AT FELTON.]
From Rothbury the Coquet takes a long sweep through the fields and
then plunges into the woods of Brinkburn. There are here, one reads,
great and dangerous holes in the river bed; but so there are at
many places on the Coquet, and not at Brinkburn more remarkably or
permanently than elsewhere. Such holes are made by the swirling water
of the floods, and may change their situation with every spate. Their
more particular association with Brinkburn may arise from the fact that
the bells of the priory are believed to have been cast into a hole in
the river, from which whosoever recovers them, says the tradition, will
come into possession of treasures galore. Brinkburn was one of the
earliest religious settlements on the disturbed and lawless English
side of the Border. Exceedingly courageous must have been those monks
who decided to accept the rough chances of life at Brinkburn Priory.
They had the protection of the deep woods, indeed. Even now one may
pass by Brinkburn without suspecting what rich memorials of a past
age and a venerable faith are hid within its leafy coverts. It is not
merely embosomed, but buried, in trees. So, too, it must have been when
the monks were here, for the story goes that a party of marauding Scots
had already passed the priory, and was well on its way toward places
under less saintly protection, when the monks too soon set the bells
a-ringing for joy at its departure, with the evil result of revealing
their hiding-place, so that the Scots, returning, fell upon the black
canons of Brinkburn while they were assembled to offer up prayers of
gratitude for their deliverance from danger.
This priory of Brinkburn was founded in the reign of Henry I. by a
certain Sir William de Bertram, Baron of Mitford, by Morpeth, who
endowed it liberally from his extensive lands. Its monks were of the
order of St. Augustine. Of their history little is known, but it must
have been troublous enough, and there is reason to think that they were
more than once under the necessity of flight. Having resolved to build
a church, the Lord of Mitford determined that it should be such a one
as would do honour to his name. The present extensive remains still
speak eloquently of the original beauty of the edifice. Of the church,
partially restored in 1858 by the present owners of the estate, the
Cadogan family, it has been remarked that, "the richest Norman work
is here inextricably blended with the purest Early English, and the
fabric must be regarded as one of the most fascinating specimens of
the transition from one to the other that there is in the country."
Out of the ruins of the monastery, and above the cellars in which the
monks may have hidden themselves in times of trouble, the present manor
house of Brinkburn has been built. It stands not far from the banks
of the Coquet, which are here somewhat narrow and steep, with rocky
projections, and with no route for the angler except in the bed of the
stream, or amid an almost impenetrable confusion of shrubs and brambles
and trees. At one point the piers of a Roman bridge may be discerned
when the water is low; there is a quaint old watermill by the side of
the stream; at a spot but a short distance away, it is averred by a
pleasant tradition, the Northumbrian fairies were buried, and there
they sleep, like King Arthur under the castle of Sewingshields, until
faith shall return to the earth.
The most widely known of all the villages below Rothbury is Weldon
Bridge, at which one arrives when the Coquet has left Brinkburn Woods.
It is the main resort of those anglers who love quiet fishing, and are
not adventurous enough to make their way into the hills. Much has it
been besung by the poets of the craft. "At Weldon Bridge," says one--
"... there's wale o' wine,
If ye hae coin in pocket;
If ye can throw a heckle fine,
There's wale o' trout in Coquet."
It is but a little place, this Weldon Bridge, with a large inn,
before whose doors the river flows in gentle music. For the last
two or three miles the stream has been characterised by the most
capricious bendings, and henceforth, but with rather larger sweeps, it
preserves the same wilful habit until it reaches the sea. There are
pleasant walks along its banks down to Felton, sometimes diverging
into low-lying woods, sometimes climbing the hillsides among farms,
and occasionally leading to some ancient ford. At Felton itself the
hills close in more narrowly, and the pleasant little village stands
on a declivity amongst trees, whilst the river streams through a rocky
pass. There is a dam at Felton which furnished material for rather
a feeble joke to the late Frank Buckland. He found the fish falling
back exhausted from vain attempts to leap the weir, and he posted
up a "notice to salmon and bull trout," telling them to go down the
river and take the first turn to the right, when they would find good
travelling water up stream, and assuring them of the good will of the
Duke of Northumberland, who meant to make a ladder for them by-and-bye.
The fact that an inspector of fisheries, like Buckland, should have
believed that salmon went up the Coquet with the bull trout is a
curious illustration of the indeterminate ideas which have until lately
prevailed on the subject of the varieties of fish by which this river
is frequented.
Felton is one of those villages at which it is pleasant to spend
a night. Its bridge is almost as beautifully situated as that of
Bettws-y-Coed. One stands upon it in the evening, and leans one's arms
on the parapet, and looks towards the hills which environ it, and the
comfortable village inn, and the quiet cottages, and feels how glorious
a land is this England in which we live. There is nothing else to do or
to enjoy, unless the river is low, as Frank Buckland saw it, and the
fish are crowding up the stream; and then the sight is one that is for
the existing moment very exciting and is afterwards difficult to forget.
Felton is an ancient place. The old religion lingers there. The
Protestant Reformation scarcely penetrated to north Northumberland,
and many of the chief families of the district are still attached to
the more ancient forms of faith. Attached to Felton Park is the Roman
Catholic chapel of St. Mary. There are remains of a more antique
edifice of the same faith about two miles away, the Church of St.
Wilfred of Gysnes, given to the canons of Alnwick in the twelfth
century. Felton is on the old Northern Coach Road, and is not now
far away from the rail. Whosoever desires to make acquaintance with
the whole of the Coquet should alight at the neighbouring station of
Acklington. He may then go downward to Warkworth, to Amble, and the
sea; or he may go upward to Brinkburn, to Rothbury, and the moors.
[Illustration: MORWICK MILL, ACKLINGTON.]
From Felton until Warkworth is in sight there is little over which one
need linger. The country is level more or less, and the river seems to
flow in a deep trench, with a fringe of trees on either side of it.
At one place it comes through a deep break in the solid rock, which
seems as if it must originally have been quarried. One speculates in
vain as to the mighty force of the water by which such passages must
have been hewn. These clefts for rivers are not uncommon, but they are
incomprehensible. The water, one is compelled to feel, was but a minor
element in their formation. A mile and a half from Warkworth there
is another weir, a great straight wall of cement, with a passage for
fish on either side. Yet though the fish may go up to left or right,
as they may choose, there is what persons addicted to sport might call
"an even chance" in connection with their coming down. If they take the
ladder to the right they will get off to sea, but if they come down to
the left they will fall into a trap, and will, in all probability, be
eaten on French dinner tables as salmon. For, at Warkworth, or within
a short distance of it, is the great fishery of Mr. Pape, who has not
only the weir to assist his operations, but has the right--acquired by
paying a rent to the Duke of Northumberland--to stop up one of the fish
passes at the extremities of the weir, which privilege he exercises so
ingeniously that every fish that chooses the left side of the river for
its downward passage gets into his trap, from which it may be lifted
out at will.
[Illustration: WARKWORTH CASTLE.]
[Illustration: THE VILLAGE OF WARKWORTH.]
Can Edmund Spenser ever have been at Warkworth? If not, how does he
come by this description?--
"A little lowly hermitage it was,
Down in a dale, hard by a forest's side;
Far from resort of people that did pass
In travel to and fro; a little wide
There was an holy chapel edified,
Wherein the hermit duly wont to say
His holy things each morn and eventide;
Thereby a crystal stream did gently play,
Which from a sacred fountain welled forth alway."
Except as regards the little stream and the sacred fountain this is
accurately descriptive of the hermitage at Warkworth. The Coquet
is here a tolerably broad river indeed, so that to reach the lowly
hermit's cell one must make employment of the boatman's art. A little
church hewn out of rock, and with a certain architectural skill--that
is the famous hermitage of Warkworth. A wood grows high above it; there
is a pleasant walk by the riverside below; and above the cave there
are some steps by which the hermit is supposed to have ascended to his
garden ground. The Hermitage is, as Bishop Percy says--
"Deep hewn within a craggy cliff,
And overhung with wood."
Never did hermit choose a lovelier spot for his orisons; but this
hermit of Warkworth was a man of industry and taste. He used the hammer
and the chisel well. He made for himself a chapel, a confessional, and
a dormitory, and none of these did he leave without ornament. There is
a groined roof, and there is a rood above the doorway, and there is
the recumbent figure of a lady with upraised hands. Whosoever chooses
to weave legends about the hermitage of Warkworth is at liberty to
do so, for nothing is certainly known of the hermit. The received
tradition is to be found in Percy's "Reliques," where a member of the
family of Bertram by mistake slays his sweetheart and his brother,
and expiates his double crime by isolating himself from his kind. The
Coquet is very beautiful here, with a mile walk through woods and
meadow lands. After the Hermitage a sweet bend of the river brings
Warkworth Castle in sight. It stands high up on the summit of grassy
slopes, which have a few shrubs scattered about them. Here it was that,
according to Shakespeare's narrative of events, Henry Hotspur read the
letter of "a pagan rascal--an infidel," who would not join him in his
designs against the Crown. The next scene is in the Boar's Head Tavern,
Eastcheap, with Poins and Prince Hal. Shakespeare was so far adherent
to fact that Hotspur actually lived at Warkworth Castle. Edward III.
had conferred it on the second Lord Percy, and until the middle of
the fifteenth century the Percies preferred Warkworth to Alnwick. The
Castle is one of the most beautiful and perfect ruins in England. It
is not only finely situated, but is unique in design, suggesting less
of strength than of taste in constructing a palace which must also be
a stronghold. A living novelist, the best of our story tellers, has
made Warkworth the starting-point of one of his Christmas tales, and
has most admirably conveyed to the reader the feeling of the place.
Whom should I mean but Mr. Walter Besant? The church where his hero
did penance, and where his heroine bravely stood beside her lover, is
at the foot of the village street, which slopes upward to the height
on which the Castle stands. Just beyond the church is the great stone
archway through which the town must be entered, standing at the inner
side of the bridge over the Coquet stream. Altogether, the village does
not amount to much. It has a few good inns, and a few old-fashioned
cottages. But it is as sweet a place as is to be found in all the
countryside, and is therefore much in favour with persons in search of
a brief, quiet holiday.
In Warkworth, small as it is, one feels everywhere the influence of
the past. History seems to keep guard over it as an important part of
its story. In 737 it was conferred by King Ceowulph on the monastery
of Lindisfarne. The town was burnt in 1174 by the army of William the
Lion, who was something of a poltroon. King John visited the place in
the thirteenth century, and did much mischief farther up the river.
General Forster and his Jacobites were here in 1715. That very Mr.
Patten who is a principal figure in Mr. Besant's "Dorothy Forster"
writes:--"It may be observed that this was the first place where the
Pretender was so avowedly pray'd for and proclaimed as King of these
realmes."
From the turrets of Warkworth Castle one looks over a wide expanse of
land and sea. The coast line is visible for great distances, beyond
Alnmouth and Dunstanborough on the one hand, and almost to Tynemouth
on the other. The great towers of Alnwick are in sight, and mile on
mile of the most fertile land in Northumberland, and mile on mile
of rabbit-haunted sandhills by the sea. Just beyond the Castle the
land slopes downward, past a cottage or two, and a little wood, and
a great clump of whin-bushes, to the Coquetside, and then the river
flows through flat marsh-land until the small seaport town of Amble
is reached. I have never seen those Essex salt marshes in which Mr.
Baring-Gould lays the scene of his powerful "Mehalah," but whenever
I read the book I am reminded of the country from Warkworth to the
sea. Amble has grown up on a steep above the river; but there are flat
spaces all round about it, and the river seems to stagnate where barges
and schooners lie grounded in the mud, and beyond the harbour there are
great level fields between "the bents" and the sea. Not a cheery place,
by any means. Amble is one of the smaller outlets of the Northumberland
coal trade. In very early days the Romans had some sort of encampment
here, and in the Middle Ages Amble had its Benedictine monastery. It
is now an exceedingly prosaic little town, with a harbour quite out of
proportion to its size, and with an evident intention of "getting on."
[Illustration: HUNTING ON COQUETSIDE.
(_From the Picture by Colonel Lutyens, by Permission of Major Browne,
Doxford Hall, Northumberland._)]
"The bents" are the grass-covered sandhills which time and the winds
have piled up between the ancient landmarks and the present limits of
the tide. They rise to very considerable heights, and stretch, in great
undulations, along many a mile of shore. The Coquet flows down between
them to a wide waste of sand when the sea is out, and one may trace
its waters, should they be discoloured by flood, on either side of the
Coquet Island, which the river must have worn from the mainland very
long ago. The island is a low, level strip, containing some sixteen
acres of ground. It has a peculiar history of its own. There was a
monastery upon it in the seventh century, and here the Abbess of Whitby
is said to have met St. Cuthbert, who, for this occasion, had overcome
his generally invincible dislike to women. St. Cuthbert's own island
is in sight from the Coquet, and if the Farnes were not in the way
one's range of vision might extend to Lindisfarne. In later times than
those in which Cuthbert taught religion to a rude people the hermit of
Warkworth had a rival hermit in the recluse of Coquet Isle; a far more
dismal place to reside in, for all around it rage the terrible winter
storms of the North Sea. Persons interested in the art of "smashing"
may be interested to hear that Coquet Island was resorted to by the
makers of false coins--"hard hedds" they were called in those days--so
early as 1567. The place was taken by the Scots during the Civil
Wars, and there its history ends, except so far as it is continued
by shipwreck and disaster at sea. On Coquet Island a lighthouse now
stands, tall and white, so that its walls may be seen far away over the
sea in the daytime, and its lamps for many a rood at night. Gulls and
terns and puffins and guillemots play around it and make their nests
amid its sandy turf; and there comes "the dunter," as the fishermen
call it, the porpoise as it is called in more ordinary speech, to
devour the bull trout as it is making towards the comparative safety of
the Coquet waters. All this may be changed a few years hence, for Amble
is developing its trade, and hereafter masts of assembled shipping, and
a black prospect of "coal-shoots," may be the characteristic features
of Coquet mouth.
AARON WATSON.
[Illustration: KEILDER MOORS (WITH PEEL FELL TO THE RIGHT).]
THE TYNE.
CHAPTER I.
THE NORTH TYNE.
Peel Fell--Deadwater Bog--Keilder Castle and the Keilder
Moors--The Border Peel--Border Feuds and Friendships--The
Charltons--Bellingham--The Reed--Tyne Salmon--The Village
of Wark--Chipchase Castle--Haughton Castle and the
Swinburnes--Chollerford and the Roman Wall--The Meeting of the
Waters.
The clouds which are dragging themselves along the summit of Peel
Fell were but lately dappling a bleak English landscape with their
shadows, and are now being carried by the indifferent winds beyond
that border-line over which, at peril of their lives, mail-clad men in
earlier and ruder times were wont "to go to Scotland to get a prey."
The last house in England, a lonely but pleasant homestead, with its
wide sheep-walks and its patch of cultivated land, stands under the
shelter of a ridge where the brown waste rises into high moorlands; and
beyond it, the fell looms very darkly, save where a beam of sunlight
traverses its purple slope, with such bright decisiveness as if it were
Ithuriel's spear. Up above Alston, in Cumberland, where the South Tyne
comes wandering from the mountain slopes, you may find cottages and
farmsteads which were built almost as far back as it is safe to carry a
noble pedigree; but here, where the North Tyne oozes out of the fells,
we are in a country which was constantly raided from both sides of the
Border; and so, for many a mile round about, there is nothing ancient
but the castle and the peel tower, the Roman road over the moss,
and the Roman wall chaining together the windy ridges of the moors.
How could there be, indeed, when the Borderer of former times was
accustomed to see his house "all in a low," and was happy and fortunate
if he could but drive his cattle in safety to the nearest peel? If a
farmhouse dates back a hundred years or so it seems to belong to a
venerable past, and if there is in these parts any more noble residence
which does not proclaim to the wanderer that it was built for the
purposes of defence, it will belong to a day later than that on which
James I. crossed the Border to assume the English crown.
Peel Fell is the westernmost spur of the Cheviot range. Beheld from
afar it seems to be a hill of gentle and inviting slope; but is, in
fact, more craggy and broken than any of its kindred hills, which, of
all the uplands of our country, are, except for the presence of the
shepherds and their sheep, the most solitary. On the summit one stands
1,975 feet above the level of the sea. In these days a railway crosses
the Border near to Peel Fell. It has kept to the winding course of the
river from Newcastle upwards, and now it plunges into that Debateable
Land which was for so long a period the excuse of Border feud and
foray, and which was not definitely assigned either to the Scots or the
English until 1552. Along the very path which this railway keeps there
went, on many a memorable day,
"Marching o'er the knowes,
Five hundred Fenwicks in a flock;"
for their old enemies the Grahams kept the Border beyond the fells,
and there was not among the Montagues and Capulets such wild and deep
enmity as existed between the Tynedale and the Liddesdale men. It
must have been ill-marching enough, for the route lay over Deadwater
Bog, where, in case of misfortune and retreat, the Fenwicks would
have an advantage over their pursuers in their superior knowledge of
the sounder spots of ground. In this Deadwater Bog, it is maintained,
the North Tyne takes its rise, though here, as in so many cases in
which great rivers originate otherwise than in well-defined springs,
there is division of opinion and of faith. The Deadwater is a curving
silvery thread in a black setting of peat-moss. It belongs wholly to
the English side of the Border, and after its leisurely circuit of an
almost level plain it ripples into a wider channel and fuller light
through a mask of weaving reeds. But between the stations of Saughtree
in Scotland and Keilder in England there is a wet ditch within a
railway enclosure, and here, say some of the people of the district,
and here the Ordnance Survey also asseverates, we must look for the
actual origin of the North Tyne. I would gladly debate the question
with the Ordnance Survey, if only to prove that the Tyne is an English
river up to the remotest spot to which it can be traced; but it is
"ill fechtin'" with those who are appointed to settle questions of
boundaries, and whose decisions are held to be final however much they
may be disputed; and as the little Deadwater and the small stream which
insists on counting honours along with it eventually join together and
form the indisputable North Tyne, it will be the discreeter course to
let the Ordnance Surveyors have their will.
[Illustration:
_Walker & Boutall sc._
THE COURSE OF THE TYNE.]
The Tyne has scarcely become a distinguishable stream when it commences
to take toll of its tributaries. First of all it is broadened and
deepened by the junction of the Keilder Burn, whereupon it assumes
such dimensions that a wooden bridge is thrown over from bank to bank.
Keilder is here a name common to some of the chief features of the
landscape--Keilder Castle, Keilder Burn, Keilder Moors. The castle is
not one of the old Border strongholds, as might be assumed from its
situation, but was built in the latter part of the last century by
Hugh, last Earl and first Duke of Northumberland. It is approached by
a road over the moors, and through a forest of young fir-trees. Its
square tower is half hidden in a wood of more ancient date, and it has
for background a fair expanse of purple hills. Between the castle and
the fells there is a "forest primeval," as old, it may be, as that
which Longfellow describes in the opening of "Evangeline," and far more
strictly preserved; for not even the scant natives of the district are
permitted to enter here, lest perchance they might disturb the game.
On Keilder Moors, to the North of Tynehead, three miles hence,
there is as good sport as anywhere in South Britain. All varieties
of moor-fowl wend thither. The heron may be seen rising, like an
arrow shot from a bow, from Keilder Burn; sea-birds wander thus far
inland from Holy Island and the Farne Isles, and even make their
nests and breed their young at this distance from their kind. The
frequent hooting of the owl may be heard here in the night-time, and
the distressed cry of the plover resounds all day over these heathery
solitudes, where, but for such shrill voices, the silence and the utter
loneliness might be felt as a burden, and the bare, desolate country,
stretching to the bare, desolate hills, might seem too horribly remote
from the kindly haunts of men. But wild as this country now is, and far
scattered as are its inhabitants, there must, "in the dark backward
and abysm of time," have been a numerous people here, for there are
traces of ancient camps on most of the hills, and within two miles'
compass there must have been at least six settlements of the aboriginal
inhabitants of these islands, perhaps of those very Picts whose
disorderly valour caused the building of the Roman wall.
[Illustration: KEILDER CASTLE.]
[Illustration: GREYSTEAD BRIDGE.]
The woods of Keilder are still in sight when the yet inconsiderable
"water of Tyne" is swollen by the broader and more impetuous Lewis
Burn, which, after a turbulent career through picturesque glens amid
the fells, ploughs its way deep among the pebbly soil of the haughs,
and then makes a fatal junction with the more distinguished stream.
"There's wealth o' kye i' bonny Braidlees,
There's wealth o' youses i' Tine,"
says the old ballad. It was the habit of the Borderer to regard other
folks' possessions as his own, as they might be for the taking, and
of these "youses" and kye the hardy wooer remarks to her to whom his
speech is here addressed, "these shall all be thine." Here, looking
down from the moorlands on the confluence of the Tyne and the Lewis
Burn, one sees how this portion of the north country must always have
been a rich pastoral land, very alluring indeed to the reivers who
lived beyond Peel Fell. The "haughs" are the flat pastures among the
hills and by the side of streams. There is a fair, broad prospect of
these where the two "waters" come together. Their monotony is here and
there broken by dark bands of sheltering trees. Over the sheep and
cattle grazing on these lowlands the ancient peel towers kept guard.
There were both peels and castles, indeed. The Border peel was a
solitary square tower, with stone walls of enormous thickness. Into the
lowest of its compartments cattle were driven when there was an alarm
of visitors "from over the Border." To the upper storeys those who fled
for shelter and safety ascended by means of a ladder, which they drew
up behind them, then defending themselves as best they might until
their neighbours could be summoned to the conflict by the fire which on
these warlike occasions was always hung from a gable of the roof. It
was not only to steal cattle and sheep that the marauders came. There
were often deep blood-feuds to avenge. The Robsons, who are declared to
have been "honest men, save doing a little shifting for their living,"
made a raid on the Grahams of Liddesdale, and brought home sheep which
were found to be afflicted with the scab. Their own flocks died in
consequence, and the Robsons became very angry therefore, so that they
made a second raid into Liddesdale, and brought back seven Grahams
as their prisoners, all of whom they incontinently hanged, with the
intimation, quite superfluous under such circumstances, that "the neist
time gentlemen cam to tak their schepe they were no to be scabbit."
Such acts bred constant retaliation, and in Northumberland to this day
there is no very kindly feeling to persons "from the other side of the
Border."
[Illustration: DALLY CASTLE.]
The remains of castles and peel towers crowd together somewhat when
we have passed the pleasant little village of Falstone, which seems
from time immemorial to have been occupied mainly by the Robson clan.
At Falstone, where there are two rival but not unfriendly churches
nestling among the trees, was discovered, a while ago, a Runic cross
raised to the memory of some old Saxon Hroethbert, from whom, the
name being the ancient form of Robert, it is probable enough that the
doughty Robsons sprang. There was a peel in the village itself, but
this has been long since incorporated with the laird's house. Another
stood a short distance away, on the opposite side of the Tyne, below
Greystead--where we reach the first important bridge over the North
Tyne; and within a short distance of a point where three valleys
unite their streams there stood two castles related to each other
by a deadly feud, and two peels made famous by a wild friendship.
Dally Castle--there are now but a few low, earth-covered walls
remaining--occupies the summit of a hill distant about a mile and a
half from the south bank of the Tyne. Tarset Castle--recognisable only
as a green mound--stood on the north bank, close to where the river is
joined by the Tarset Burn. The popular legends have connected these
old Border strongholds by a subterranean passage, which is believed to
have been haunted through many generations. Here a vivid superstition
has heard carriages rolling underground, and has seen long processions
emerge from an opening which no country wit had the skill to find.
In Tarset Castle lived that Red Comyn who was slain by Robert Bruce,
and of whom one of the Bruce's friends "made siccar" by thrusting a
dagger to his heart when he had been left for dead. Sir Ralph Fenwick
occupied Tarset Castle in 1526, but was driven out by the Charltons,
though this must then have been one of the strongest places on the
Borders. At some other and undetermined period--so the popular legends
say--Tarset and Dally Castles were occupied by families which were at
feud with each other, but it so fell out that the Lord of Tarset was
smitten by the charms of his enemy's sister, whom he met by stealth in
some retired spot on the moorlands. There, one day, he was set upon by
the Lord of Dally and killed, and a cross was thereafter set up to his
memory--perhaps by the lady for whom he had died--the site of which is
pointed out to this day.
Far different from the relations which existed between the lords of
Tarset and Dally were those of Barty of the Comb and Corbit Jack, who
inhabited neighbouring peels further up the Tarset Burn. Barty awoke
one morning to find that all his sheep had been driven over the Border.
Straight he repaired to his faithful Corbit Jack, and the two friends
set off together over the fells; whence Barty of the Comb returned
with a sword wound in his thigh, the dead body of his "fere" on his
shoulder, and a flock of the Leathem sheep marching before him. The
record of such occurrences is preserved only in the stories of those
who rejoice in male prowess, and who relate how Barty "garred a foe's
heid spang alang the heather like an inion;" but that they had a very
pathetic side also the touching ballad of "The Border Widow" might help
us to understand.
The old feuds were kept up long after all reason for them had ceased
to be, and when no more raiders came from the Liddell to the Tyne the
men of the neighbouring valleys fought with each other, from lack of
more useful employment. It was the wont, for example, of a descendant
of this same Barty of the Comb to appear suddenly at Bellingham Fair,
with a numerous following of Tarset and Tarret Burn men at his back,
and, raising a Border slogan, to behave as if Bellingham had been
Donnybrook. This was at the beginning of the present century only,
when, according to Sir Walter Scott, the people of North Tynedale
were all "quite wild," a statement which is not borne out by other
authorities, though this "muckle Jock" of Tarset Burn can by no means
have had such manners as stamp the caste of Vere de Vere.
The home of those Charltons who drove Sir Ralph Fenwick out of Tarset
Castle, and even out of Tynedale, "to his great reproache," observes
an old writer, was at Hesleyside, which is nearly two miles from
Bellingham northwards. Here a tower was erected in the fourteenth
century. There were other powerful Charltons in the immediate
neighbourhood--at the Bowere, a mile further up the Tyne, for example,
where there lived Hector Charlton, "one of the greatest thieves in
those parts," if old stories tell true. It was Hector who bought off
two men that were to be hung, and then let them loose to prey on
the King's lieges, taking for himself, as became a man boastful of
his shrewdness, a due share of their spoil. Also it was the lady of
Hesleyside who, in place of a sound meal, would sometimes serve up a
spur on an otherwise empty dish, by way of hint that the larder had
need to be replenished; and Hesleyside, proud of its past, still keeps
this spur as an heirloom. But out of strength, as says Samson's riddle,
there cometh sweetness. The later generations of Charltons have been a
cultured race, and it was a rare collection of choice books which was
dispersed at the Hesleyside sale a few years ago. Of the ancient tower
nothing now remains, the present mansion of the family, situated amid
woods which are conspicuous for many miles around, having been built at
a comparatively recent period.
At Bellingham, where several fairs are still annually held, and which
has been, so long as local history goes back, the central market town
of this remote district, we find amid the billowy moorlands a sweet
pastoral country, set about with well-timbered lands. The village took
its name from the De Bellinghams (now extinct), a family which tried
to drive out the Charltons of Hesleyside, and came to no good thereby.
Under Henry VIII. Sir Alan de Bellingham was the Warden of the Marches.
The village is somewhat commonplace, but has a very interesting church
and beautiful surroundings. A mile away Hareshaw Lynn comes tumbling
down, between seamed cliffs and verdurous precipices.
"'Tween wooded cliffs, fern-fringed it falls,
All broken into spray and foam."
For two miles there is a succession of beautiful cascades, which sing
their wilful tune under a dappled archway of clinging shrubs and
bending trees. Bellingham Castle has disappeared, like the family by
which it was erected, but the old church, with its strong stone roof,
bears witness of how in the days of the Border feuds even the House
of God had need to be built so that it might be defended against wary
and ruthless foes. The structure is in the early Norman style. The
stone roof was probably added after the church had been twice fired
by the Scots. The nave seems to have been used for much the same
purpose as the peel towers, the narrow windows having obviously been
intended as much for defensive purposes as for the admission of light.
At Bellingham, as indeed throughout all this wild Border country, one
may gather a plentiful store of song and legend--tales of how a man
whom Bowrie Charlton had slain was buried at the Charlton pew door,
so that his murderer dared not to go to church again whilst he lived;
of how St. Cuthbert appeared in the church to a young lady who sought
a miracle, and how the said miracle was but half completed because
of the fright of the young lady's mother; of how other miracles were
wrought at St. Cuthbert's Well; and of many another strange event of
superstitious times. "The past doth win a glory from its being far,"
but Bellingham is a very humdrum village now, with no more exciting
occurrences than its fairs.
[Illustration: BELLINGHAM CHURCH.]
[Illustration: CHIPCHASE CASTLE.]
Shortly after the North Tyne has dreamed leisurely along through
Bellingham village, its quiet ways are suddenly disturbed by the
inrush of a water which is almost as wide as its own, and greatly more
turbulent. The Rede has come down from the wild and bare region which
the Watling Street traversed on its way to Jedburgh and beyond. Its
springs are in the slopes of the Cheviot range north of Carter Fell.
Forcing its way over a rock-strewn bed, it flows under the dark shade
of Ellis Crag, and by the battlefield of Otterburn, and, with many a
capricious bend or lordly curve, past the ancient Roman station of
Habitancum, where, until a splenetic farmer destroyed all but its lower
portions, the heroic figure of "Rob of Risingham," one of the most
ancient of English sculptures, might be seen. The Rede is a stream
which drains an enormous acreage of moor. A day's rain will swell it
into a broad and boisterous torrent, with wide skirts extending far
over the haughs. Famous for salmon-breeding is the Rede, and it is
only by constant watching that the men of Redesdale are prevented from
taking, out of all due season, what they regard as their own. When
there is no "fresh" in the river the fish may be seen lying crowded
together in the shallow pools, so that it is possible to wade in and
take them without intervention of net, or gaff, or rod. But it is
an exasperating circumstance that, plentiful as the salmon are, the
season for rod-fishing in Redesdale is short, in spite of the law which
permits it to be pursued for most months of the year; for as the fish
come up here for the spawning season only, there are not more than some
two months during which they may become the angler's legitimate prey.
Doubtless such scenes as that which is depicted by Sir Walter Scott in
"Guy Mannering" have been witnessed in Redesdale on many a former day.
Salmon-spearing from "trows" was common down to at least the middle of
the present century, the "trow" being a sort of double punt, pointed at
the bows and joined together by a plank at the stern, and the spear, or
"leister," being a barbed iron fork attached to a long pole. The Tyne
has a Salmon Conservancy Board in these more severe times, and if trow
or leister were to be seen on the river they would be seized as spoil
of war.
The narrow streak of gleaming water which made a silvery line across
Deadwater Bog has now taken toll of wide lands--
"The struggling rill insensibly has grown
Into a brook of loud and stately march,
Crossed ever and anon by plank and arch."
Far more than this it has done, indeed, for no longer would any plank
be capable of spanning its waters. The North Tyne, which, with all its
winding, keeps a much straighter course than the Rede, is now beyond
all doubt a river, and such a river as, being liable to sudden and
mighty floods, called "freshes" or "spates" in these parts, is of a
width altogether out of proportion to the ordinary depth of its waters.
Very pleasant and cool and shady are the banks of the North Tyne on hot
summer days, and of such varying beauty, withal, that the angler whose
thoughts are not too intently fixed on his creel, and on those stories
of extraordinary luck with which he purposes hereafter to entertain
his friends, may lose all sense of his occupation in that "peace and
patience and calm content" which, says Izaak Walton, seized upon Sir
Henry Wotton, "as he sat quietly on a summer's evening, on a bank,
a-fishing." He is a fortunate angler who can take "a contemplative
man's recreation" on such a river as the North Tyne, where he may camp
out for a month together, well assured of sport; but where he need not
feel lonely unless he wills, for a moderate walk will generally suffice
to bring him to a village and an inn.
Among the oldest of these villages is Wark, some five miles below
Reedsmouth. In course of centuries of change it has fallen from its
high estate, for it was once the capital of North Tynedale, and a
session of the Scottish Courts was held on its Moot Hill when Alexander
III. was King of Scotland, great part of Northumberland being also
under his rule. Wark is a very unpretending village now, with a modern
church, and a school founded by a philanthropic pedlar, and nothing
about it half so interesting as its history. A mile away stands
Chipchase Castle, which looks bright and new as it is seen from the
railway, and yet is one of the most ancient and famous strongholds on
the Borders. Not all of it is equally ancient, however, for in the time
of James I. the present noble manor-house was added to the "keep" of
earlier days by a descendant of that Sir George Heron who was slain
in "The Raid of the Reidswire," and who is called in the ballad which
celebrates that event, "Sir George Vearonne, of Schipsyde House."
Ballad-writers were clearly not particular in the matter of proper
names, for Sir George's patronymic was known well enough to the Scots,
seeing that after his death they made presents of falcons to their
prisoners, grimly observing that the said prisoners were nobly treated,
since they got "live hawks for dead herons."
There was a village of Chipchase in Saxon times, and there are remains
of a fort much older than the keep which has been incorporated with the
existing mansion. Peter de Insula, a retainer of the Umfravilles of
Prudhoe, which is further down the Tyne, lived here in the thirteenth
century. The Herons, who followed him, were of the same family as the
stout baron who is celebrated by Sir Walter Scott:--
"That noble lord
Sir Hugh the Heron bold,
Baron of Twisell and of Ford,
And captain of the hold."
The race has died out, as is the case with so many of the famous
families of Northumberland; but coal sustains what a warlike lordship
built, and Chipchase Castle is to this day as proud and stately a
place as in the time of the noblest Heron of them all. There are
grim stories told of what took place there in former rude times. Sir
Reginald Fitz-Urse, says tradition, was starved to death in the dungeon
of the keep, and another unfortunate knight, pursued by the swords of
intending murderers, lost himself in the chambers of the castle walls,
and never issued alive therefrom. The peel tower of Chipchase is almost
as large as a Norman keep, and is more ornamented than was common in
most structures of the kind. The more recent castle is held to be one
of the noblest examples of Jacobean architecture that have come down to
us.
[Illustration: HAUGHTON CASTLE.]
Mr. Algernon Charles Swinburne, the poet, has recently reminded
the world, through the medium of some Border ballads which but
indifferently represent the dialect of Northumberland, that he is
himself a Borderer. Long ago he wrote glowingly of "the league-long
billows of rolling, and breathing, and brightening heather," and of
"the wind, and all the sound, and all the fragrance and freedom and
glory of the high north moorland." It is probably from Sir William de
Swyneburn of Haughton Castle that he is descended. Haughton stands on
the opposite bank of the river to Chipchase, and a brief space lower
down. Here Archie Armstrong, the chief of a famous moss-trooping clan,
was starved to death long ago--by accident, and not design, let it in
justice be said. Sir William de Swyneburn was treasurer to Margaret of
Scotland, and is credited with having had a great and insatiable greed
for his neighbours' lands. He was succeeded in his tenure of the castle
by the Widdringtons, one of whom is celebrated in the ballad of "Chevy
Chase." It was he, indeed, for whom the poet's
"----heart was woe,
As one in doleful dumps;
For when his legs were smitten in two
He fought upon his stumps."
But there was a Sir Thomas Swinburne at Haughton in the reign of Henry
VIII. He was Warden of the Marches, and it was through his neglect of a
prisoner that Archie Armstrong came to his death. Haughton Castle has
a fine look of antique strength, but is nevertheless, in the main, a
modern building. The original castle was burned down at some unrecorded
time, and its ruins were restored and made habitable in the early part
of the present century. Close by, it is sad to say, a former owner had
a paper-mill, where forged assignats were manufactured for the purpose
of being passed off as the genuine French article during the Duke of
York's expedition to Flanders in 1793. To Sir William de Swynburn the
people around Haughton are still indebted for the convenience of a
ferry, for one which he established so far back as the reign of Henry
II. plies in the old fashion--by an overhead rope and pulley--to this
day.
[Illustration: AT WARDEN.]
Past Haughton Castle the river strains and rushes between narrowing
banks. Lower down, at Chollerford, it has changed its course somewhat
in the lapse of centuries, and the waters of North Tyne now flow over
what was the abutment of an ancient bridge. At this spot let the chance
visitor take the poet's advice:--
"Here plant thy foot, where many a foot hath trod
Whose scarce known home was o'er the southern wave,
And sit thee down, on no ignoble sod,
Green from the ashes of the great and brave;
Here stretched the chain which nations could enslave,
The least injurious token of their thrall,
Which, if it helped to humble, helped to save;
This shapeless mound thou know'st not what to call
Was a world's wonder once--this was the Roman wall."
Here, indeed, the great bulwark against northern barbarism approached
the Tyne on either of its banks. The river is now crossed by a bridge
which was built in 1775, but there still exist substantial remains of
that by which the Roman legions crossed over to the great stations of
Procolitia and Cilurnum. Procolitia was one of a trio of important
stations near to this portion of the North Tyne, and is some three
or four miles away. Not many years ago no less than 16,000 coins,
besides some rings, and twenty Roman altars, were discovered on this
site. The coins ranged from the days of the Triumvirate to those of
Gratian. The altars were all dedicated to Coventina. Who Coventina may
have been, the antiquaries inquire in vain. Of her neither Greek, nor
Roman, nor Celtic mythology has kept record. What is clear is that she
must have been worshipped by the first cohort of Batavians, which kept
guard here when these altars were made. At Cilurnum, now known as the
Chesters, nearer by three miles to the bank of the Tyne and the ancient
Roman bridge, altars were raised to more various deities. A cohort
of Asturians was in garrison here. With the exception of Newcastle,
probably, and Birdoswald certainly, this was the most important station
on the Roman wall, and is at this time far the most wonderfully
preserved. One may stand in the grounds of Mr. John Clayton, at the
Chesters, and, with slight exercise of the fancy, reconstruct a Roman
city in Britain, so materially is the imagination assisted by what
recent excavations have disclosed. Agricola is believed to have built
Cilurnum in 81 A.D. It existed as a camp before the wall was built,
and covered a space of six acres of ground. Coal was found on one of
the hearths when the place was first unearthed, a curious proof of the
long period during which that mineral has been in use in the district
through which this river flows. Among the statuary discovered was a
well-preserved figure which is believed to represent the river-god of
North Tyne:--
"The local deity, with oozy hair
And mineral crown, beside his jagged urn
Recumbent."
At Chollerford the even course of the river is broken by a long
curving weir, over which the "wan water" comes down magnificently in
seasons of flood. "The water ran mountains hie" at Chollerford Brae,
says an old ballad; but that is clearly an exaggeration. Nevertheless,
Chollerford is not the place at which one would choose to cross the
river at flood-time, and without a bridge, as happened with "Jock o'
the Side," when he was hotly followed by pursuers from Newcastle town.
It is odd how ancient and mediæval and ballad history centres around
this quiet spot. Half a mile away is Heaven's Field, where Oswald of
Northumbria gathered his army around him, set up the standard of the
Cross by the Roman wall, adjured his troops to pray to the living
God, and overthrew in one of the most important battles of our early
history the far larger forces of heathenesse. Here we are approaching
the point where the North and the South Tyne, making a fork of swift,
clear-shining water, unite their streams to form the great river of
which Milton, and Akenside, and many another poet, have admiringly
sung. By the ancient village of Warden, the two streams, as an old
writer says, "salute one another;" and where they meet there is a
stretch of water as wide almost as a lake, reflecting on still days the
high-towering woods and the misty hills which divide North and South
Tynedale.
[Illustration: ALSTON MOOR.]
THE TYNE.
CHAPTER II.
THE SOUTH TYNE.
On the "Fiend's Fell"--Tyne Springs--Garrigill--Alston and the
Moors--Knaresdale Hall--The Ridleys--Haltwhistle--Allendale--Haydon
Bridge and John Martin--The Arthurian Legends.
We are in Cumberland, amid the wilds. How did St. Augustine contrive
to penetrate to such a region as this? The land is desolate,
bleak, solitary. A desert of heathery hills; here and there a
reed-fringed stream; in front the wild and stern face of Cross Fell!
A seldom-trodden height, this Cumberland mountain, seeming to stand
sentinel over all the country round. On its lower slopes, the three
great commercial rivers of the North have their rise. We have come
here in search of the source of the South Tyne, but a short morning's
wandering would lead us also to the sources of the Wear and the Tees.
Cross Fell is 2,892 feet above the level of the sea, and to half that
elevation we have ascended to reach these moors in which it seems to
be set. The "Wizard Fell," some poet has called it. The "Fiend's Fell"
it was called of old. To reach it from Alston one must trudge wearily
afoot, or hire such vehicle as may be obtainable where travellers
seldom come. The road winds about over windy uplands, ever rising
nearer to the drifting clouds. A lead-miner's bothie stands beside it
here and there, and one is constantly passing places where the miners
have "prospected" for ore. All the roadside, indeed, has been explored
and broken. The South Tyne is making music all the way, for it flows
downward to one's right, and is constantly tumbling over rocks and
forming cascades over little precipices. It becomes a hasty, tumultuous
river almost immediately after its birth, increasing in volume with a
celerity quite wonderful to see, and seemingly impetuous to lose the
cold companionship of these bleak and barren hills, which, despite
their sternness, are all aglow with colour, and pulsating with rapid
waves of light.
To the right, brown ridges of high moorland; to the left, slopes more
broken, strewn over, as it would seem, with masses of light-purple
rock; beyond all, the dark ridge of Cross Fell closing-in the lonely
valley. A streak of brighter and fresher green than any that is visible
on the hillsides indicates where a hidden thread of water percolates
the moss. Then there is a glint of silver here and there. Finally,
the eye lights upon a sedgy pool, in the centre of which there is
perceptible that throbbing movement which tells of the presence of a
spring. This, then, is the source of the South Tyne. Before its waters
have travelled far from here they will be crossed by a rude, ancient
bridge, and swollen by many a little tributary from the hills.
From the summit of Cross Fell at certain seasons the mysterious and
terrible "helm wind" blows. When no breeze disturbs the air, and when,
over all the country round, there is a clear and bright sky, a line
of strangely tortured and curving clouds will form itself along the
ridge of the mountain. Then the shepherds will hie to where shelter
may be found, for they know that a wind will soon be blowing before
which no human creature can stand upright, and that may uproot trees,
and unroof houses, and carry dismay into the valleys far below. It
was the fiends holding revel, said the early inhabitants of these
regions; wherefore St. Augustine erected a cross on the highest part
of the fell, collecting his monks around him, and holding a religious
service there, whereby if the fiends were made less harmful they were
by no means dispossessed. The nearest inhabited place is Garrigill,
which is a prominent object in the valley as one ascends the moor
from Alston. A Cumberland village is a series of white gleaming spots
against the hillside--a collection of whitewashed walls and grey-blue
roofs of stone. This of Garrigill is like so many others, except as to
the height at which it has been built, and its bright contrast with
the gloom of its surroundings. There is a pleasant shadow of trees
about its housetops. There is a village inn, and a village green, and
a village well. The young river flows past quickly, merrily, with the
music of numerous little falls. The people of these hill regions are
miners for the most part. Lead was worked in these mountain sides at
times so far back as the Roman occupation of Britain, and some of the
miners, if they had kept a record of such things, might show a pedigree
longer than that of those whose ancestors were engaged in Senlac fight.
Their chief quarters are at Alston and at Allenheads, but their bothies
are scattered about these moors. The town of Alston is four miles below
Garrigill. It is a pretty, white-looking town, high up on the slope of
the moors. Of its two principal streets one is parallel with the river
Nent, and the other with the South Tyne, the two streams here joining
to make a fairly considerable river. At Alston we are again on the
track of St. Augustine's footsteps. He may even have founded a place
of worship here, and it is in keeping with the tradition of his having
Christianised Cumberland that the church should bear his name.
[Illustration: FEATHERSTONE CASTLE.]
[Illustration: FEATHERSTONE BRIDGE.]
White Alston, with the wild brown moors beyond it, stands between the
broad, open desolateness of the mountain region and a lovely district
in which the South Tyne laughs under the threading branches of ancient
woods, or broadens out by sunny haughs, as if to rest itself between
strife and strife.
Just below Alston we once more set foot on Northumbrian soil. The
Ayleburn and the Gildersdale waters flow from opposite directions
along the county boundaries, the one from high moorlands, by the old
manor-house of Randalholme, the other from the peaty morass where once
flourished the great forest of Gildersdale. Henceforth the country
assumes a more gentle aspect. The lead-mines have been left far behind;
the river lies broad in the sunlight, or darkens under the shadow of
trees; there are gentler undulations in the hills, and
"Long fields of barley and of rye
That clothe the wold and meet the sky."
The remains of Whitley Castle, which is the modern and inappropriate
name of a Roman station, are to be seen shortly after the Gildersdale
Burn has joined the Tyne, and here, also, one comes upon an ancient
Roman road, the Maiden Way, along which it may have been that "a woman
might walk scatheless in Eadwine's day." Hereabouts the river is
pleasantly fringed, and cool, and full of shadows and deep reflections.
At brief intervals it is joined by some new tributary, pouring noisily
out of a little valley of its own. Of these one of the most interesting
is the Knar, which comes down in a boisterous and scurrying manner from
a region of wilderness and lofty fell, where the red deer lingered
latest in these parts, and where the remains of ancient forests may be
discovered in the soft and treacherous moss.
Very rich in interest and beauty are some of the glens through which
these mountain rivulets flow, with sudden precipices, and narrow
defiles, and rock-strewn gorges, and the charm of moss and fern and
overhanging tree. Knaresdale Hall, which is no more than a farmhouse
in these days, is some distance lower down the South Tyne than the
spot at which the Knar Burn brings its contribution to the constantly
broadening stream. It dates back to rough seventeenth century times,
and was as strongly built as became the home of the doughty lairds
of Knaresdale. But the noblest of South Tyne castles is that of
Featherstone, or Featherstonehaugh. It stands in a fine park opposite
to where the river is joined by Hartley Burn. When Lord Marmion was
feasting full and high at the castle of Norham, on Tweedside--
"A northern harper rude
Chanted a rhyme of deadly feud;
How the fierce Thirlwalls, and Ridleys all,
Stout Willimondswick,
And Hardriding Dick,
And Hughie of Hawdon, and Will o' the Wall
Have set on Sir Albany Featherstonhaugh,
And taken his life at the Deadman's Shaw."
For "the rest of this old ballad" the notes to "Marmion" refer us to
"The Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border." But the ballad has not an old
line in it. It is simply one of those sham antiques which it amused
Surtees, of Mainsforth, to pass off upon one who trusted to his good
faith and his familiarity with Border legend and story. The incident
which it records is probably as imaginary as the old woman from whose
recitation the words are declared to have been taken down.
Featherstone Castle is not built upon elevated ground, as is the case
with most of the strong places of the Borders. It stands in a quiet
vale amid wooded heights. The Featherstones claimed to have lived there
for many centuries, the first of the family, according to tradition,
being a Saxon chief of the eighth century. No pedigree can be safely
and certainly traced back so far; yet, undoubtedly, the Featherstones
were a very ancient race, and maintained their footing here through all
the long troubles of the Borders. The nucleus around which the castle
has grown was a square peel, of more elaborate ornamentation than was
common. It has been declared, indeed, to be "the loveliest tower in the
county." At this day it forms but one feature of a splendid group of
castellated buildings, with many of the walls overgrown with ivy, and
with a Gothic chapel as one of its main features. Near by is the lovely
little glen of Pynkinscleugh, concerning which Mother Shipton predicted
strange things, as yet unrealised. In Pynkinscleugh it was that Ridley
of Hardriding endeavoured to carry off the daughter of the Lord of
Featherstonehaugh on her wedding-day, and caused her death thereby, for
she ran between the combatants' swords; and this she did so hastily and
impetuously that she was slain.
The "Willimondswick" mentioned in the ballad of Surtees was one of
the very numerous Ridleys of this district. Willimontswick disputes
with Unthank Hall the honour of being the birthplace of Bishop Ridley
the martyr. He was, in all probability, the only peaceful man of
his family, for these Ridleys were through many generations a hard
fighting, hard-riding, and turbulent race. From the record of scarcely
any deed of violence on the Borders is the name of a Ridley absent. The
ballads tell how--
"But an' John Ridley thrust his spear
Right through Sim o' the Cuthill's wame;"
and how--
"Alec Ridley he let flee
A clothyard shaft ahint the wa';
And struck Wat Armstrong in the ee."
To such men as these the good Bishop Ridley, about to yield his body
to the flames, wrote that, "as God hath set you in our stock and
kindred, not for any respect to your person, but of His abundant grace
and goodness, to be, as it were, the bell-wether to order and conduct
the rest, so, I pray you, continue and increase in the maintenance
of truth, honesty, and all true godliness." Bell-wethers they were,
indeed, these Ridleys, and to some rough purpose, too.
Unthank Hall, to the tenants of which the martyr also wrote letters
of farewell, is a recently rebuilt mansion, the near neighbour of
Willimontswick, and on the opposite side of the Tyne to the quiet
little country town of Haltwhistle. We are here again within a brief
distance of the Roman wall. Haltwhistle may have been garrisoned by
some of the assailants of that stupendous rampart. There are ancient
earthworks on the site of what is known as the Castle Hill, one side
of which is defended by an artificial breastwork of precipitous
appearance. The former "Castle of Hautwysill" is now no more than a
tall barn-like building, with a loop-holed turret resting on corbels.
The chancel of the church is a survival from the old rough-riding
days, and dates back to the thirteenth century; but there was too
much fighting in the little town for much that was ancient in it to
have survived into the present century. Haltwhistle has now a growing
population of 1,600, and is as sweetly situated as heart could desire.
[Illustration: HALTWHISTLE.]
[Illustration: HAYDON BRIDGE.]
This little town is made attractive not only by its neighbourhood to
the Tyne, but through the wild and fantastic beauty of Haltwhistle
Burn, which flows down from the desolate, dreary, and cruel-looking
Northumberland lakes, where the winds that ruffle the surface of these
forlorn waters
"Wither drearily on barren moors."
Yet there are fine sights enough above the ravine through which
Haltwhistle Burn has ravaged and torn its way--wide views of fir-clad
slopes, and wide-stretching farm-lands, and rolling moors, and dark
precipices, and the ever-pleasant valley of the Tyne. Such another
sight there is, with even a more extensive prospect, from the heights
above the little hamlet of Bardon Mill. Southward lie Willimontswick,
and the ancient chapel of Beltingham, and Ridley Hall, and the
confluence of the Allen and the Tyne, and the grey, bright-looking
village of Haydon Bridge; northward may be seen the important Roman
stations of Vindolana and Borcovicus, and the far-reaching, dipping,
and bending line of the Roman wall. Backwards, over the ground which we
have traversed from Cross Fell, Saddleback and Skiddaw are in sight,
and half the peaks, fells, and ridges of the great Cumbrian group.
A little below Bardon Mill the River Allen joins the South Tyne. What
the Rede is to the northern, the Allen is to the southern branch of
the river--the largest and longest of its affluents. It is formed by
the joining of two streams which rise on the extreme southern borders
of Northumberland, and which flow some three or four miles apart until
they are within about five miles of their confluence with the Tyne.
The Allen is one of the loveliest and most retired of streams, flowing
between picturesque rocks, and sheltered and darkened by hanging woods.
There are here
"Steep and lofty cliffs,
That on a wild secluded scene impress
Thoughts of more deep seclusion."
Of all northern rivers this is the one which is most praised for the
wild and yet tranquil variety of its scenery, for the charms which the
quiet angler finds in the turns and windings of its rocky pass, and
for the beauty and diversity of the foliage which clothes its steeply
ascending vale.
At Haydon Bridge, when the water is low, there lies a great expanse
of shingle, polished into whiteness by the floods. White are the
houses also, with roofs of bluish stone; and there is an aspect of
great quaintness about the little village, which seems to have been
founded in Saxon times, and to have borrowed much of its older building
material from the Roman wall. Of its former state there are still some
small remainders in the chancel of an old chapel, and a cottage here
and there on the height. It was at Haydon Bridge that John Martin,
the painter of "The Last Judgment," and "The Plains of Heaven," and
"Belshazzar's Feast," was born, and here, up to his twelfth birthday,
he evoked the wonder of the simple folk with his rough drawings, a
number of which, with the family eccentricity, he once exhibited upon
his father's housetop.
From here it would be easy to make an excursion into King Arthur's
country. Not, indeed, to
"The island-valley of Avilion,
Where falls not hail, nor rain, nor any snow,
Nor ever wind blows loudly."
Avilion is Glastonbury, it is said; but all about this ruder country
there is store of Arthurian legend, mostly of that coarser sort to
which belongs the story of the "bag pudding" which "the Queen next
morning fried." The King and Queen Guinevere, the King's hounds, and
the lords and ladies of his court, lie all together in an enchanted
sleep in a great hall beneath the Castle of Sewingshields, near to the
Roman wall; or so the legends say.
And now we are once more approaching Warden Mill. To the North and
South Tyne we must henceforth bid adieu. From this point they will flow
together in the same bed. One has come down from the Scottish borders,
a holiday stream, for forty-three miles; the other, not without doing
its share of work by the way, has hurried over thirty-nine miles from
the Cumberland fells. Thirty-six miles more, over half of which extent
the Tyne is a great labouring, work-a-day river, and we shall meet the
breezes and the billows of the northern sea.
[Illustration: HEXHAM ABBEY.]
THE TYNE.
CHAPTER III.
FROM HEXHAM TO NEWCASTLE.
Hexham and the Abbey Church--Dilston Hall--The Derwentwater
Rising--Corbridge--Bywell Woods--Prudhoe and Ovingham--Stephenson's
Birthplace--Ryton and Newburn--The Approach to Newcastle.
Until it becomes a tidal river, which does not happen till the huge
pillar of smoke that announces Newcastle comes in sight, the Tyne in
ordinary seasons is a broad and shallow stream, with occasional deep
and quiet pools dreaming in shadowy places. Below Warden its banks
are open on either side to the far-away hills, and it has but a bare,
starved look among these level and almost naked shores. Yet it is a
rich, fertile, and famous country, through which now flows this "water
of Tyne." Hexham, renowned for its market-gardens, is close at hand.
Its roofs peer out of a wide circle of trees, and above them all,
massive and conspicuous, stands sentinel the broad square tower of the
Abbey Church.
"The heart of all England" is a designation which was long ago claimed
for their town by the Hexham folk. Just as Boston is held to be the
hub of the universe, so Hexham was declared to be the centre of our
right little, tight little island. Hence radiated such Gospel light
and such imperfect learning as illumined these wild northern parts in
Saxon times. Mr. Green has said of St. Wilfred, whom he calls Wilfrith
of York, that his life was made up of flights to Rome and returns to
England, which is but a churlish description of a great career; for St.
Wilfred, the most magnificent and wealthy ecclesiastic of his period,
not only restored York and built the church at Ripon, but erected
here at Hexham an abbey and a cathedral of which Richard, the Prior,
who assisted to restore it from its ruins, wrote:--"It surpassed in
the excellence of its architecture all the buildings of England; and,
in truth, there was nothing like it at that time to be found on this
side of the Alps." The time to which Prior Richard refers was the
latter portion of the seventh century. Wilfred, who was trained at
Lindisfarne, visited France and Italy in his youth, and came back full
of great architectural ideas. There were then, it is probable, no stone
churches in England. At any rate, the first five churches of stone were
York, Lincoln, Ripon, Withern, and Hexham; of which Wilfred certainly
built three. Never had bishop a vaster diocese. Wilfred, Archbishop of
York and Bishop of Hexham, had supreme ecclesiastical control over a
district which--during his lifetime, and when he was in misfortune--was
divided by Theodore of Tarsus into the four bishoprics of York, Hexham,
Withern, and Lindisfarne. Of Wilfred's cathedral of Hexham nothing
remains but the underground oratory, built about 674. The church was
fired by incursive Danes in 875. Three centuries later the canons of
Hexham piously went to work to rebuild and restore; but then the unruly
Scots made a raid into England, taking Hexham on their way, and not
only destroyed the restored buildings, but slaughtered the townsfolk,
and burned to death two hundred children whom they found at school.
Hexham was once, says Prior Richard, "very large and stately." However,
it diminished in importance under the influence of successive battles,
tumults, incursions, and changes. Hexham ceased to be the seat of a
bishopric at an early period of its history; and though the monks
donned armour and girded swords to their sides when Henry VIII.'s
commissioners came, declaring that, "we be twenty free men in this
house, and will die all or that you shall enter here," their bravery
nothing availed them, and the dissolution of the monastery still
further depressed Hexham in the list of English towns. There is a story
that the last Superior was hanged at the priory gates, and several of
his monks along with him. The beautiful Abbey Church was restored,
greatly to its detriment, in 1858. But even the restorers could not
spoil it utterly, and it still gives an air of grandeur and stateliness
to the quiet town which it adorns.
It is all an old battlefield, the land around Hexham. "Wallace wight,"
who is frequently heard of on Tyneside, generally to his disadvantage,
and part of whose body was hung up on the bridge at Newcastle when he
was executed, came here and slaughtered the people in 1297. One of the
decisive battles of the Wars of the Roses was fought close by Hexham
in 1464, on which occasion, as one of the most romantic stories in
our history narrates, Queen Margaret and her son found shelter and
hiding in a robbers' cave. "Hexham," writes Defoe, "is famous, or
rather infamous, for having the first blood drawn at it in the war
against their Prince by the Scots in King Charles's time." A good deal
of the blood of the families of these parts was shed for the Stuart
cause, then and long afterwards. Three miles below Hexham, and near to
the scene of the Yorkist and Lancastrian battle, Devil's Water flows
into the Tyne, past the grey old tower which is all that remains to
attest the former splendour of the Earls of Derwentwater. This Devil's
Water--which was Dyvelle's Water in bygone days, so called from an
ancient family of these parts--tears its way swiftly between high and
verdurous walls of rock--
"It's eddying foam-balls prettily distrest
By ever-changing shape and want of rest."
The hillsides of Dilston are clothed in magnificent woods. The scene
is such as those which the old-fashioned writers were wont to describe
as "beautifully sylvan." There are wild wood-paths and beds of fern,
the green tangle of underwood, and the varied shade and brightness of
interlacing boughs. And hence, with hesitation and a doubtful mind, the
last Earl of Derwentwater set out on that rash and unlucky expedition
which caused him the loss of his head.
[Illustration: PRUDHOE CASTLE.]
[Illustration: CORBRIDGE.]
The ancient village of Corbridge--the quietest of country villages
now, with extensive market-gardens occupying ground on which the Roman
legions may have camped--lies but a short distance away, and it was on
Corbridge Common that the army of the Stuart adherents came together
when preparing to attack Newcastle. There was a British settlement near
the little river Cor, as is made evident by certain camps and tumuli
in the neighbourhood. The later Roman station of Corstopitum, believed
to have been founded by Agricola, was a little west of the present
village. It was on the line of the Watling Street, and had considerable
extent and importance. Many of the fragments of it have been worked
into existing buildings, for the stations of the Roman wall, and the
wall itself, were during many generations so many quarries for those
who succeeded the first conquerors of our island. For a few years
before and after Wilfred's time there may have been a period of quiet,
during which a monastery, and, it is believed, even a king's palace,
was established; but thenceforward, for long afterwards, Corbridge is
mentioned in history only when it is overtaken by some great trouble.
When King John arrived here in 1201 he conceived the idea that the
place must have been destroyed by an earthquake, so complete and so
extensive was the ruin that had been wrought. Yet three times again
the town was burnt by the Scots. Even this, however, did not prevent
the return of the people, and the founding of a new town of Corbridge,
which sent a member to our earliest Parliaments, and only abandoned the
privilege when the Corbridge folk became too poor or too indifferent to
defray his "proper cost." The bridge which gives the village its name
is the only bridge over the river which was not washed away or broken
in the great flood of 1771.
[Illustration: BYWELL CASTLE.]
From Corbridge to Bywell the winding course of the Tyne has as various
a beauty as heart could desire. There are wide, open reaches, and
still, deep, shadowy spaces between overhanging woods, and passages of
lively water scourging a rocky bed. Bywell itself is an idyllic place.
There are stories of how it was once a bustling town, much liable to
attack from moss-troopers and all manner of Border thieves. Old records
have it that so late as "the stately days of Great Elizabeth" it was
"inhabited with handicraftsmen, whose trade is in all ironwork for the
horsemen and borderers of that county, as in making bits, stirrups,
buckles, and such others, wherein they are very expert and cunning,
and are subject to the incursions of the thieves of Tynedale, and
compelled, winter and summer, to bring all their cattle and sheep into
the street in the night-season, and watch both ends of the street, and
when the enemy approacheth to raise hue and cry, whereupon all the town
prepareth for rescue of their goods, which is very populous, by reason
of their trade, and stout and hardy by continual practice against the
enemy." A quaintly confused statement this, but sufficiently explicit
as to the uncertain conditions under which the artificers of Bywell
lived. The place now sleeps quietly under its woods, lulled by the
waters of the Tyne as they fall over Bywell Weir, and seems to dream of
its past. "The antique age of bow and spear" has left for memorial a
ruinous square tower, all mantled over with ivy, and hidden, with the
exception of its battlements, in the surrounding trees. This ruin is a
portion of a projected castle of the Nevilles, Earls of Westmorland;
but the building was never completed, or, indeed, carried far, for
the last Earl of Westmorland of the Neville family took part in that
"rising of the North" of which Wordsworth's "White Doe of Rylstone"
tells the sorrowful tale.
Any traveller by Tyneside whom night should overtake would be amazed
to see fires gleaming out of the hillside about two miles below Bywell.
They are unaccounted for by the presence of any town. The river,
indeed, is about to plunge through clustering woods, and there is an
aspect of solemn quiet all around. Here, nevertheless, in a small and
unpretentious way, the industrial career of the river Tyne begins.
The fires between the river and the hill are those of coke ovens,
and they burn where, in his sturdy boyhood, Thomas Bewick, the great
wood-engraver, used to play. Cherryburn House, his birthplace, is close
by, and on the other side of the river--that is to say, on its north
bank--stands the ancient village of Ovingham, where a tablet against
the wall of the church tower announces his grave. The brother of Dora
Greenwell was incumbent of the parish for a while, by which means it
came about that the poetess spent much of her youth at Ovingham. On the
south side of the river, directly facing Ovingham, on a hill which is
like a huge mound, stand some fragments of Prudhoe Castle. A ruin it
has been for three centuries at least, and it is a very picturesque and
interesting ruin still.
[Illustration: NEWBURN.]
After a shady passage between high-banked woods, the river emerges
to the broad light of day once more in front of the village of Wylam,
which is one of the oldest, one of the most dismal and miserable, and
one of the most famous, of the colliery villages of Northumberland.
Here is George Stephenson's birthplace, a little two-storeyed cottage,
standing solitary by the side of a railway. The Roman wall ran along
the high ridge of ground beyond Wylam. Some interesting portions of it
still remain at Denton Burn, which is over above Newburn, from two to
three miles further down the Tyne. At Denton Hall lived Mrs. Montague,
first of blue-stockings. Here Johnson was a visitor, and Reynolds and
Garrick were occasional guests. There is a "Johnson's chamber" and a
"Johnson's walk" to this day.
The village of Newburn lies about half-way up the heights, on the north
side of the Tyne. Here was the last spot at which the river could be
forded, for though Newburn is seventeen miles from the sea, as the
river flows, it is reached twice a day by the tide. Across this ford
the Scots troops under Lesley poured in 1640, to overcome the king's
troops on Ryton Willows. The spot is still marked on the maps as a
battlefield, and the event is spoken of as "the battle of Newburn."
A little below this place the Tyne is joined by a muddy little brook,
known as Hedwin Streams. Here, as it is contended, the jurisdiction of
Newcastle begins. From time immemorial--legally defined, I believe,
as a period which came to an end with King Richard's return from
Palestine--the mayor and citizens of Newcastle have claimed a property
in the bed of the river Tyne from Spar Hawk, within the Tyne Piers, to
Hedwin Streams here at Newburn, and the claim is still asserted once
in five years; when, on what is known as "barge day," the Newcastle
Corporation proceeds up and down the river in a series of gaily
decorated steamboats, on board which high revel is held. And near
Newburn, indeed, Newcastle may be said really to begin. It is five
miles to where the city is blackening the atmosphere and dimming the
sky with its smoke, but here are clearly discernible the fringes of
its dusky robe. To our right, as we pass downward, lies the village of
Blaydon. Prosaic Scotswood is on the left, and beyond it are the vast,
mile-long works of Armstrong, Leslie, and Co. Where these works are was
once one of the pleasantest of valleys. Now the furnaces vomit forth
their flames, and the air is filled with smoke and the mighty clang of
labour.
[Illustration: OVINGHAM.]
[Illustration: THE HIGH-LEVEL BRIDGE AND GATESHEAD.]
THE TYNE.
CHAPTER IV.
FROM NEWCASTLE TO THE SEA.
The Growth of Tyneside--"The Coaly Tyne"--Newcastle Bridges--Local
Industries--Poetical Eulogies--Tyneside Landscapes--Sandgate
and the Keelmen--Wallsend--Jarrow and the Venerable Bede--The
Docks--Shields Harbour--North and South Shields--The Tyne
Commission--Tynemouth Priory--The Open Sea.
From Newcastle to the sea, twelve miles by water, the Tyne is a vast
tidal dock. It stands second among the rivers of the kingdom for the
extent of its commerce. The Thames takes precedence in the number of
vessels which enter and leave, and the Mersey stands before it in
respect of the total tonnage of the ships by which it is frequented;
but the Tyne ranks second to the Thames in the number of vessels
which enter the port, and second to the Mersey in the bulk of its
trade. But more remarkable even than the commerce of the river are its
great industries. From Gateshead to the sea on the one hand, and from
Newcastle to the sea on the other, there is a constant succession of
shipyards, chemical factories, engineering establishments, glass-works,
docks, and coal-shoots. Newcastle, it has been remarked, owes its rise
to war, its maintenance to piety, and its increase to trade. A very
neat and true saying. But trade has done more for the Tyne than for
Newcastle. It has, since the beginning of the century, increased the
population of the chief Northumbrian town from 30,000 to 160,000; but
it has increased the population of Tyneside to half a million or more.
Milton did the river a huge injustice when he called this the "coaly
Tyne." His intention was innocent enough, no doubt, since he meant only
to acknowledge its celebrity in connection with coal. But it is the
fate of these indecisively descriptive phrases to be misunderstood. The
Tyne is a brighter and clearer stream than the Mersey, is immeasurably
purer than the Thames, is only occasionally muddied like the Humber,
and is at no time discoloured by coal. When there are floods in the
upper reaches, so much brown soil is carried down by the impetuous
water that the current of the river can be traced far out to sea;
but at ordinary seasons the local colour of the Tyne approaches that
of the sea itself, and is, in fact, a deep, clear olive-green. What
is insufficiently understood, however, is that the local colour of a
stream is that which is most seldom disclosed. Water takes its hue from
the sky above it, and from the light which plays about its face. Hence
Spenser's beautiful and much assailed phrase, "the silver-streaming
Thames." Hence, also, the Tyneside poet's eulogy of his native stream:--
"Of all the rivers, north or south,
There's none like coaly Tyne."
The Romans threw three bridges across the river. There was one which
crossed with the wall at Chollerford; and there was one which crossed
with the Watling Street at Corbridge; and there was a third, earlier
and far more important than the other two, which linked together what
were afterwards to be named the counties of Durham and Northumberland.
The bridge at Newcastle, built by Hadrian on his first visit to these
northern parts of Roman Britain, was deemed of so much importance
that at Rome a medal was struck to commemorate its erection. Also it
gave its name to the Roman station which stood on the heights above.
Newcastle first became known to history as Pons Ælii, in honour alike
of Hadrian's bridge and of Hadrian's family. And ever since that day
the town has been famous for its bridges. There was one which resembled
London Bridge in having shops almost from end to end. It endured, says
an eloquent local historian, "from the times of the Plantagenets,
and through the Wars of the Roses, past Bosworth and Flodden Fields
and the Armada, down to the encounter of the King and Parliament, to
the Commonwealth, the Restoration, and the Revolution; and beyond
the rebellions of 1715 and 1745 it kept its accustomed place across
the stream, surviving the daily pressure of the tide, the rage of
inundations, the bumping of barges and keels, the shocks of civil war,
the negligent inattentions of peace." But at length large portions of
it were swept away by the great flood of 1771, one of its houses being
carried whole as far as Jarrow Slake, some miles farther down the Tyne.
On the bridge of Hadrian two lofty hills looked down. The Tyne has
here at some remote period scourged its way through a deep ravine, and
Newcastle, and its opposite neighbour, Gateshead, are built partly
around the feet of commanding eminences, and still more extensively
on the summits of these hills. Old Newcastle was a town of stairs.
Communication between its upper and its lower portions was, with the
exception of one narrow and steep street leading from the bridge,
maintained by means of long flights of stone steps, which still exist,
and are up to this day extensively used. All the succeeding bridges
were built on the site of that of Hadrian. "The Low Bridge" was the
name given to the last of these from the time when the High Level was
built. It is the Swing Bridge which now crosses the Tyne at the point
selected so many centuries ago, this swing bridge being a gigantic iron
structure, with a great central span that is moved by hydraulic power,
and leaves two openings of such extent that the _Victoria_, the largest
vessel in Her Majesty's Navy, has been able to pass through without
grazing either of the piers. But notable as is the Swing Bridge as a
work of engineering, it is inferior even in this respect to the High
Level Bridge, and very far inferior in grace and beauty. The High Level
does for the higher portions of Newcastle and Gateshead what all the
bridges from Hadrian's time have done for the lower portions. It is a
foot and carriage way between the neighbouring towns; but it is also
more than this, for at a height of twenty-seven feet above the roadway,
under which a full-rigged ship can sail, there is a railway viaduct
along which passes the main line to Scotland. One of the most wonderful
of the world's bridges, the High Level is also one of the most handsome
and well proportioned, so that it has probably been painted more
frequently than any bridges but those of Cumberland and Wales. It is an
appropriate thing that in the Swing Bridge and the High Level Bridge,
which are likely enough to last for centuries to come, Newcastle should
have memorials of its two greatest engineers, the High Level having
been built by Robert Stephenson, and the Swing Bridge by Lord Armstrong.
Gateshead has been disparagingly described as "a dirty lane leading
to Newcastle;" but this was in the days that are no more. It is
now a great congeries of lanes, streets, roads, and alleys, dirty
and otherwise. But for a large town thus intervening, we might
see how rapidly the land slopes upward from the riverside to the
two-miles-distant crown of Sheriff Hill, which is on the road southward
to Durham, to York, and through the fair English shires to London. It
was on the summit of Sheriff's Hill that the Sheriffs of Newcastle--a
place which boasted of such officers because it was a county as well
as a town--received the King's Judges when coming on Circuit. Thus
far they advanced to meet them into the county of Durham. There was
a splendid procession through Gateshead, over the Low Bridge, up the
steep "Side," into Newcastle, and to the Assize Courts. Gorgeous
trumpeters made proclamation; the gilded and hammerclothed carriages
of the Mayor and Sheriffs were guarded by halberdiers; a tall official
walked in front, with a great fur cap of maintenance and a most
amazing sword. When the judges, sated with hospitality, and with the
gaol-delivery completed, set off on horseback towards Carlisle, they
were presented with money to buy each of them a dagger, to guard
themselves against robbers and evil men.
[Illustration: COAL TRIMMERS.]
[Illustration: A COAL STAITHE.]
Gateshead was the site of a Saxon monastery that was certainly in
existence in 653. It does not seem to have done much in the way of
civilising the people, for when Walcher of Lorraine was made Bishop
of Durham by the Conqueror, the Gateshead folk murdered him on the
threshold of their church. This was not the present church of St. Mary,
which is the most prominent object in Gateshead when the spectator
stands on Newcastle Quay, but it probably occupied the same site.
Gateshead was a domain of the Bishops Palatine of Durham, except for a
short period during which it was annexed to Newcastle, and they built a
palace there, no portion of which building now remains.
[Illustration: NEWCASTLE-ON-TYNE.]
Between the two great Tyneside towns the river is narrower than at
almost any point of its course from Hexham to the sea. Formerly it
washed on either side over a shelving beach, and was but a shallow,
inconsequential stream. There is a drawing of Carmichael's, made about
the end of the first quarter of the century, in which some boats are
unloading in the centre of the Tyne. Carts are drawn up beside them,
and the horses in the shafts are not standing in water to the depth of
their knees. The shores have been partly built upon and partly dredged
away since those days, and there is now a depth of twenty-five feet
at low water at Newcastle Quay. The High Level Bridge strides across
the river to a point which must have been just outside the walls that
Rufus built around his castle. The great well-preserved Norman keep is
only a few yards away. On the same eminence, and a little nearer to the
river, stands the Moot Hall, or Assize Courts, which--all the rest of
Newcastle being a county in itself--is still a part of the county of
Northumberland. Here it must have been that the station of Pons Ælii
was built, in a position admirable alike for watch and for defence.
Much the greater portion of old Newcastle clustered around this
elevated spot for many centuries. At a distance of not much more than
a hundred yards is the ancient church of St. Nicholas, with its famous
lanterned steeple, of which a local poet has sung that
"If on St. Nicholas ye once cast an e'e,
Ye'll crack on't as lang as ye're leevin'."
The Quayside at Newcastle has a long line of handsome stone buildings,
intersected here and there by narrow "chares" that lead into the old
district of Pandon, where the Saxon Kings of Northumberland are said to
have had a palace in the olden time. The quay on the Newcastle side of
the river is broad and spacious, but there is no quay space to speak of
at Gateshead, where dreary and half-ruinous buildings cluster to the
edge of the quay wall. Many of the ancient branches of local trade have
died, or are dying, out. From the Tyne much wool was formerly shipped
for the Netherlands; to Tyneside came the glass-blowers who were driven
out of Lorraine by the persecutions, and here they settled once for
all, soon exporting more glass from the Tyne than was made in the whole
of France. The first window-glass was manufactured at Newcastle, and
used in the windows of the church at Jarrow. There is a Tyneside glass
industry still, but it no longer maintains its former eminence amongst
local trades. Coal export, iron shipbuilding, chemical manufacture,
engineering--these are the employments by which all others have been
dwarfed on the banks of the Tyne.
In the whole of England, so far as my experience goes, there is only
one town that is grimier, murkier, or more appalling in appearance
than the towns on the lower Tyne as they are seen from the railways
which run along either bank of the river. Bilston in Staffordshire is
of more fearful aspect than either Hebburn, or Walker, or Felling, or
Jarrow. On Tyneside, too, one may look away to the bright open country,
to where there are low sunlighted hills on the horizon; but at Bilston
an eye which searches over a landscape of blackened and withered
grass only beholds more forges. In these northern latitudes, again,
the skies are very cloudy and wonderful; and in the Black Country one
never becomes aware that Nature can work miracles with her clouds and
skies. From the river itself the blackness, the squalor, the apparent
dilapidation, of these Tyneside towns are not so conspicuous. The Tyne
is like a bending shaft of sunlight, making darkness not only visible
but sublime. There is a quaint variety and picturesqueness about the
wharves and "staithes" and factories which line its banks. The chemical
works are like belated castles, about which hives of Cyclopean industry
have grown up, for they thrust tall wooden towers into the air, round
which there goes a platform that seems to be intended for sentries
on the watch. From Newcastle Quay downwards, ships of all sizes and
varieties are anchored at either side of the stream. Some are loading,
some are discharging their cargoes, some are waiting to load. There are
others which glitter in all the glory of new paint, having but lately
been released from the stocks on which they were built. Shipyards,
where new vessels are being constructed, may be found here and there
between the chemical factories and the engineering works; and just
now there is in every berth of every yard a new vessel in some stage
of its construction. Out of these heterogeneous materials the sun
sometimes builds up magnificent effects on the Tyne. Doubtless, on
dull days, as Mr. William Senior has mournfully observed, "the smoke
hangs like a funeral pall over the grimy docks and dingy river-banks,
and the pervading gloom penetrates one's inner being;" but there are
seasons when this grimy stream becomes a painter's river, indescribably
striking and grand.
[Illustration: QUAY AT NEWCASTLE.]
Below Newcastle Quay, at Sandgate and its neighbourhood, was the
sailors' and the keelmen's quarter. Tyne sailors were the best that our
country produced; and so it happened that the visits of the press-gang
were frequent at the Sandgate shore. Many a fight there was before the
captured men were carried off. All the folks of the neighbourhood, save
such as had gone into hiding, would assemble for battle. The dialect
of the place and the manner of these fights may both be surmised from
these lines of the local muse:--
"Like harrin', man, they cam' i' showls,
Wi' buzzum shanks an' aud bed-powls--
Styens flew like shot throo Sandgeyt.
Then tongs went up, bed-powls got smashed,
An' heeds wes cracked, an' windors crashed.
Then brave keel laddies took thor turn,
Wi' smiths an' potters frae the Burn;
They cut the Whiteboys doon like corn,
An' lyed them law i' Sandgeyt."
The Roman Segendunum, which covered about three acres and a half of
land, stood near to the river where it comes once more into a straight
course after having taken a great bend southward shortly after leaving
Newcastle. The wall thus enclosed a great bight of land between Pons
Ælii and its eastern extremity, probably made useful in the landing of
troops. From Segendunum it would be possible to signal to the important
Roman stations at the mouth of the Tyne. But of Roman rule there is now
nothing to remind us except after long search. The fame of Wallsend has
been carried over the world by its coal, though, curiously enough, no
coal is ever brought to bank at this place now.
Rather more than half-way from Newcastle to the sea, and over the
river from Wallsend, the flames of the Jarrow furnaces leap into the
air. At two widely separated periods of our history, Jarrow--the
Saxon Gyrwy--has reached a distinction and importance altogether out
of proportion to its size and the advantages of its situation. Here,
as Mr. Green has beautifully observed, "the quiet grandeur of a life
consecrated to knowledge, the tranquil pleasure that lies in learning
and teaching and writing, dawned for Englishmen in the story of Bede."
And of late years Jarrow has become the seat of an immense industry,
whose results are to be met with in all parts of the world and on every
sea. The first screw collier, the _John Bowes_, was built at Jarrow.
It revolutionised the coal trade, and has made an almost inconceivable
change in the commerce of the Tyne. Esteemed a large vessel in its day,
it may occasionally be seen in Shields Harbour--for it still carries
coals to London--dwarfed into insignificance by the passing to and fro
of its gigantic successors. It is probable that the smallest steamer
now built in the Jarrow shipyards is larger than the _John Bowes_. The
place which gave the little steamer birth has grown into a considerable
town, with a mayor and corporation, and some expectation of a member
of Parliament by-and-bye. In all England, so far as I know, there is
no sight which gives so powerful and weird an idea of a great industry
as do the Jarrow furnaces when the flames are leaping from their
lofty mouths on a murky night. The fire plays and burns and glows on
voluminous clouds of smoke and steam; the Tyne is illumined by blazing
pillars and rippling sheets of flame; everything shorewards is gigantic
and undefined and awful, "'twixt upper, nether, and surrounding fires."
[Illustration: SHIELDS HARBOUR: THE HIGH LIGHTS.]
How different was the quiet Gyrwy on which Bede first opened his
eyes! Beyond the furnaces and the shipyards the river broadens out
suddenly over a space which is like a great bay. At low water this is
nothing more than a huge acreage of mud, with quicksands beneath. To
the right, Jarrow Church and Monastery stand on a lonely eminence; to
the left, the little river Don flows sluggishly into the Tyne. After
the landing of Hengist, says Gibbon, "an ample space of wood and
morass was resigned to the vague dominion of Nature, and the modern
bishopric of Durham, the whole territory from the Tyne to the Tees,
had returned to its primitive state of a savage and solitary forest."
All round Jarrow there was morass only--so much we should know from
its ancient name, which means "marsh" or "fen," if there did not now
remain something of the ancient appearance of things. The one piece
of irredeemable land is this Jarrow "Slake." The river Don must have
scoured out a wider estuary in Bede's day and before, for twice at
least it was used as a haven--once by the Romans, who anchored their
vessels at its mouth, and once by King Egfrid, who found shelter
in it for the whole of his fleet. Of Bede's monastery--he was born
at Monkton, close by--only a few broken walls remain, but they are
attached to a large and interesting church, which has a good example of
a restored Saxon tower. Ruin swept over the monastery again and again
in its early days. In less than a century after Bede's death, the Danes
were spreading themselves over England; the Cross went down before
the hammer of Thor; and one mournful illustration of the reasserted
supremacy of heathenism was to be found in the ruined monastery of St.
Paul at Jarrow. When the monks of Lindisfarne, bearing with them the
body of their saint, turned round to look upon Jarrow on their way to
Chester-le-Street, they saw quick tongues of flame shooting upwards,
and the wild, active figures of marauding Danes visible in the midnight
glare. That same year a great battle was fought near the monastery,
and the Vikings were overcome; whereat the monks crept back to their
former quarters, rebuilt dormitories there, and enjoyed eighty years of
peace; but in 867 a fleet of Baltic pirates sailed up the Tyne, and so
plundered and burnt Jarrow Monastery that "it remained desolate and a
desert for two centuries, nothing being left but the naked walls."
In the whole course of the river there is no finer sweep of water than
that which stretches from Jarrow Slake into the harbour of Shields. On
the north side we have passed the Northumberland Docks, which have a
water-space of fifty-five acres, and are entirely devoted to the lading
of coals. On the south side are the Tyne Docks of the North-Eastern
Railway Company, which have a water space of fifty acres, and are
employed equally for coals and general merchandise. The one is the main
outlet of the great Northumberland coalfield, the other of the still
more productive coalfield of North Durham. With the Albert Edward Dock,
constructed more recently than either of these, and fit for ships of
heavier draught, this is the whole dock accommodation of the Tyne;
for, as I have had occasion previously to remark, the river itself,
from the sea to two miles above Newcastle, is a huge tidal dock, which
is available in all weathers, and in all states of the tide, for the
largest vessels that float. What this phrase means may be seen to the
full in Shields Harbour, where, on either side of the broad stream,
vessels lie chained to the buoys in tier beyond tier, leaving a wide
passage in mid-river along which great steamers are for ever passing to
and fro.
The story of how the Tyne has been developed from a shallow and
perilous stream into one of the noblest rivers of the kingdom makes a
curious history, much too long to relate in this place. All the more
extensive changes have been effected since the middle of the present
century. The Tyne had a foreign as well as a domestic coal trade so
early, at least, as the year 1325; but so little had at any time been
done for its accommodation that there are many now living who remember
how a small vessel might be stranded on sandbanks some five or six
times in the course of its passage from Newcastle to Shields. Indeed,
the reckless emptying of ballast into the bed of the river, and the
utter neglect of means for keeping a navigable passage--things which
seem altogether incredible in these days--at length brought matters
to such a pass that the small passenger steamers often stuck fast at
some portion of their journey, wherefore there was always a fiddler
on board, to keep the passengers entertained till the rising of the
next tide. It was whilst the Newcastle Corporation still successfully
asserted its jurisdiction that such things were, and were growing
worse; but as strong young communities grew up along the banks of the
Tyne, the oppression and neglect of Newcastle became intolerable, and
in 1850 the Tyne Commission was formed, with results that cannot have
been foreseen by its founders; for the river has been widened and
deepened over an extent of fifteen miles or more. Docks have been made,
the Tyne has been straightened where "points" projected dangerously,
enormous stone breakwaters have been built out into the sea, and
where, in 1851, there were thirty vessels ashore in one confused heap,
the British Navy might now safely ride at anchor, even in the teeth
of a north-east gale. The transformation of the Tyne from its former
dangerous condition into such a harbour of refuge as does not exist
elsewhere on our coasts is one of the noblest pieces of engineering
that our century has seen, and there is no other great engineering work
the fame of which has been so little noised abroad.
[Illustration: THE RIVER AT TYNEMOUTH CASTLE.]
About Shields Harbour the seagulls pursue each other in play. They come
all the way from the Farne Islands, and when the sun has gone down, and
the western sky is still full of crimson and orange light, they may be
seen circling ever higher, and gathering in bands, and finally setting
off in a straight line northwards, calling to each other meanwhile with
their shrill, baby-like cries. There is a space of a quarter of a mile
or so between the twin but rival towns of North and South Shields. They
divide, somewhat unevenly, a population of something over a hundred
thousand persons between them. South Shields is of more rapid and most
recent growth, but both the towns originated in the erection of a few
fishermen's sheds, or shielings, which existed so long ago at least as
the reign of Edward I. There were then, and for very long afterwards,
two mouths to the Tyne, one of which ran parallel with the present main
street of South Shields, and made an island of the Roman station which
was founded here.
The whole aspect of the land round about has been changed by the
deposit of ballast from ships. At many points of the Tyne there are
artificial hills and embankments. Some of these are made by the
refuse of chemical works; a more numerous and more lofty class are
composed entirely of sand and shingle which was brought over-sea as
ships' ballast. One of the earlier employments of George Stephenson
was the minding of an engine that was employed in building up these
huge ballast-heaps, which give a very singular appearance to some of
the towns on the banks of the Tyne. South Shields was a spot greatly
favoured for the discharging of this refuse, and it therefore happens
that what was low and, for the most part, level ground, is now absurdly
uneven, some of the streets being built upon the ballast, whilst others
are far overtopped by mountains of sand and shingle that it would cost
large sums of money to remove.
At North Shields there are terrifying flights of innumerable stairs.
The lower quarters, both of North and South Shields--those, that is
to say, which are nearest to the river--are incomparable as examples
of old maritime towns. Something there is at Greenwich of the same
character, and something more at Wapping; but nowhere is there such a
salt-sea savour about the whole aspect of things.
[Illustration: JARROW CHURCH: THE SAXON TOWER.]
The sailors, it should be observed, seem to have exercised their
own discretion in the naming of streets. There is "Wapping," and
"Holborn," and "Thames Street," and what not. These places are narrow
thoroughfares running parallel with the river, and are accessible
therefrom by means of wooden stairs and cramped passages between high
blocks of buildings. The houses facing the Tyne, more particularly on
the north side, seem less to have been built than to have been cobbled
together. They are made indifferently of brick and wood and stone;
they have platforms standing on wooden piles; they are kept out of the
river by stout timbers that the tide washes, and that are green with
salt-water moss or white with clustering limpets. There is all manner
of variety among them, and nothing could be more quaint, ramshackle,
or interesting as a reminiscence of an older world. It is the sailors'
quarter now, as formerly, this odd assemblage of narrow streets and
strange houses. Now, as in freer days,
"Up to the wooden bridge and back,
To the Low Light shore down in a crack,
Rambling, swaggering, away goes Jack,
When there's liberty for the sailors."
"The Low Lights" is that portion of North Shields which is nearest to
the sea. A square white lighthouse stands on a wooden fish-quay, which
projects far into the river; another similar lighthouse--"The High
Lights"--occupies the top of a neighbouring hill. A ship making the
river must have both of these lights in line, as if they were occupying
different heights of the same tower. Lighthouses swarm about the mouth
of the Tyne. There is a flash-light at the end of "The Groin," a reef
which runs into the river from the South Shields side, thus assisting
to make a beautiful sheltering bay between this point and the South
Pier. There is a gleaming red light on the promontory at Tynemouth,
and a vivid electric light flashes over the sea from Souter Point,
two or three miles south of the Tyne. At the Quay by the Low Lights,
in the herring season, there is a perfect forest of bare poles, and a
great acreage of decks, on which brown fishermen are at work hoisting
their catch, or mending their nets, or scouring their boats, as the
case may be. The lettering of these craft indicates that they come from
Kirkcaldy, from the Berwickshire coast, from Yarmouth, from Lowestoft,
and from the Isle of Man. There are from two to three hundred of them
in the season, and the river has no finer sight than the departure of
these herring boats to sea when the wind is fresh enough to fill their
sails. Should the evening be calm, they are towed outward in groups of
five or six by a steam tug; and a pleasant voyage it is to the herring
grounds; whence, when the sun has not long risen, the boats may be seen
racing back again to get the best of the market at the Low Lights Quay.
There are steam trawlers also at this busy mart in the early morning.
It is all fish that comes to their nets, and some of it very queer fish
too. A singularly odd mixture of scaly creatures may be seen lying
about in heaps on the Quay--ling, skate, plaice, soles, cuttlefish,
cat and dog fish, and cod, the biggest of which find their way to the
London market; turbot, suggestive of aldermanic banquets; and a host of
small fry too numerous to mention. The burly fishermen stride about in
their oilskin coats, plentifully besprinkled with silvery scales, and
glittering in the morning sunlight. The fishwives keep up a constant
clatter of talk, in voices made shrill by their daily cry of "Fe-esh,
caller fe-esh!" The auctioneers are very clamorous over their business,
and for three hours all is hurry and shouting, and competition and
confused haggling as to prices and sales.
[Illustration: TYNEMOUTH, FROM THE SEA.]
On the north side of the Tyne the rocky promontory of Tynemouth shoots
out into the sea. It is the termination of a high chain of banks
extending from North Shields to the coast. On these stands the brigade
house of the first of the volunteer life brigades; by which one is
reminded that if South Shields invented the lifeboat, North Shields
has a kindred claim to distinction in the origination of those brave
bands of volunteers that watch our coasts in seasons of storm. Between
the brigade house and Tynemouth Light, overlooking the entrance to the
harbour, stands a colossal statue of Lord Collingwood, a Tyne seaman,
mounted on a massive stone pedestal, and guarded by four of the guns of
Collingwood's ship, the _Royal Sovereign_. A little further seaward,
"their very ruins ruined," surrounded by British, by Roman, and by
English graves, are the beautiful remains of Tynemouth Priory, which
was built so sturdily, despite a certain apparently fragile character
of style, that these ancient walls seem likely to bid defiance to
storms for almost as many centuries to come as have already passed them
by. A small chapel, built of wood, and dedicated to St. Mary, was the
primitive and humble beginning from which sprung the great and powerful
monastery of Tynemouth. One of the Kings of Northumberland (Edwin)
erected this early in the seventh century, at the instigation of his
daughter, who took the veil here. Tynemouth soon gained a reputation
for sanctity, and grew so much in public favour that the chapel had to
be rebuilt of stone ere long. Many were its vicissitudes during the
subsequent warlike years. The priory at the mouth of the Tyne suffered
even more frequently from fire and foray than the monastery at Jarrow.
But the monks, as attached and devoted in the one case as in the other,
returned after each fresh assault; until, in the reign of Henry III.,
they reared a monastic pile fit to be compared with Whitby for beauty
and fame. After the dissolution, unfortunately, it became the prey of
whosoever chose to make use of it for building materials; and it was
not till the present century that the folk at the mouth of the Tyne
began to understand that they are responsible for its preservation.
In its rich and prosperous days the walls enclosed the whole of the
promontory on which the Priory ruins stand; but now there remain only
a small lady-chapel, a few scattered walls, a portion of a groined
roof, a fine Norman gateway, and a magnificent remnant of the church.
In the grounds where the monks formerly took their exercise red-coated
soldiers may now be seen at drill. Pyramids of cannon-balls are piled
amid the ruins; there is a large powder-magazine beside what may have
been the entrance to the church. It is now fortified and garrisoned,
in fact, this promontory where the godly men of old looked away over
the wild North Sea. The Tynemouth cliffs have thus, it may be presumed,
been brought back to their earliest uses, for the Romans had a station
here, and before the Romans came the Britons must have had a camp on
the spot, since recent excavations have revealed the existence of
British graves.
Shooting outward from the Tynemouth shore, the mighty rampart of the
North Pier makes division between the river and the sea. Such another
pier comes outward from South Shields; and between them these two great
works of engineering make a comparatively narrow channel for ships
where there was formerly a wide and most dangerous estuary. Terrible
indeed are the storms which sometimes rage over them and assail them
with the battery of their waves. In a north-east gale the white water
leaps above the summit of the Tynemouth cliffs. Outside the piers and
beyond the bar the waves seem to be miles long, and when they narrow
themselves to enter the river they rise to a height so appalling that
the topmasts of a sailing-ship running for shelter may, with every
dip the vessel makes, be lost to the view of those on shore. "The
next instant," says Mr. Clark Russell, of a ship which he had been
watching from Tynemouth when a storm was raging, "she had disappeared,
and before another minute had passed I was straining my eyes against
the whirling snow and looking into a blackness as empty as fog, amid
which the pouring of the hurricane against the cliffs, and the pounding
of the ponderous surges a long distance down, sounded with fearful
distinctness. For three-quarters of an hour I lingered, peering to
right and left of the beach at my feet, as far as the smother of
flying flakes would let me look. But I saw no more of the brig." Such
incidents were mournfully common before the piers were carried out to
their present length. The Tyne was notorious for the number of its
wrecks. No more than nine or ten years ago, indeed, I saw fourteen
ships ashore in or near the mouth of the river, the spoils of a single
night of storm. But this was the last occasion of so much calamity. For
some years past now the Tyne has, most happily, almost been free from
all disaster but collision.
As we round the Tynemouth cliffs the fishing village of Cullercoats
comes into sight, rather over a mile away, with the dim, far-projecting
Newbiggin Point a few miles beyond. On bright days a flash of light may
reveal the white lighthouse at Coquet Island, by Warkworth town. Round
the rocky promontory close at hand there is a little bay, a projecting
point of rock, and then a long stretch of yellow sand, broken almost
at its centre by a brown, weedy reef of rocks, among which the pools
linger when the tide goes down. This is "Tynemouth Sands." Here the
pleasure-seekers come in crowds the summer through, rejoicing in the
fine weather, and yet desiring a storm, a sight which, once beheld,
would leave its memory within them their whole lives through.
"Oh, hear us when we cry to Thee
For those in peril on the sea,"
runs the touching sailors' hymn, and to those who live about the mouth
of a river like the Tyne it has a deep meaning and thrilling pathos,
such as those who have never heard it sung when the tempest was blowing
outside cannot fathom or understand. For storms only those who live
inland have any longing, for though these have heard of the wildness,
they do not know the terror of the sea.
AARON WATSON.
[Illustration: TYNEMOUTH, FROM CULLERCOATS.]
[Illustration: IN WEARDALE.]
THE WEAR.
William of Malmesbury on the Wear--Its Associations--Upper
Weardale and its Inhabitants--Stanhope--Hunting the
Scots--Wolsingham--Bollihope Fell and the "Lang
Man's Grave"--Hamsterley--Witton-le-Wear--Bishop
Auckland--Binchester--Brancepeth Castle--The View from
Merrington Church Tower--Wardenlaw--Durham--St. Cuthbert--His
Movements during Life and Afterwards--The Growth of his
Patrimony--Bishop Carilepho and his Successors--The Battle of
Neville's Cross--The Bishopric in Later Times--The Cathedral,
Without and Within--The Conventual Buildings--The Castle--Bear
Park--Ushaw--Finchale--Chester-le-Street--Lumley and Lambton
Castles--Biddick--Hylton--Sunderland and the Wearmouths--The North
Sea.
"Britain," says William of Malmesbury, "contains in its remotest parts
a place on the borders of Scotland where Bede was born and educated.
The whole country was formerly studded with monasteries, and with
beautiful cities, founded therein by the Romans; but now, owing to
the devastations of the Danes and Normans, it has nothing to allure
the senses. Through it runs the Wear, a river of no mean width and
tolerable rapidity. It flows into the sea, and receives ships, which
are driven thither by the wind, into its tranquil bosom." With the
mending of a few phrases, almost the whole of this description by the
twelfth-century chronicler could be transferred to the Wear, and to the
Durham and Sunderland, of our own day. The Scots have earned the right
to be classed with the Danes and Normans as the pillagers of the fanes
and castles of this centre of the ecclesiastical and political power of
ancient Northumbria. Their modern successors, as destroyers of objects
that "allure the senses," are the mine-owner and the mill-owner, the
railway and the blast-furnace, the chemical works and the dockyard.
The march of modern industry has taken the place of the foray of the
Borderers in the valley of the Wear, as on the neighbour streams of the
Tyne and Tees; and, like the fires of Tophet, the smoke of its burning
goes up day and night. Yet there are compensations. The Wear does not
quarrel with the good fortune that has clouded its once pure air,
muddied its whilom clear stream, and disturbed its "tranquil bosom"
with keels that no longer depend upon the wind for their coming and
going. The wealth that has come to it with peace and the development of
its mineral resources and shipping trade is not despised, although it
be soiled with honest coal-dust.
Besides, those who are acquainted with the Wear know that it has higher
boasts than its importance as a channel of navigation and outlet of
trade. Even in its busiest parts--from Sunderland and Monkwearmouth
to Chester-le-Street and Lambton--venerable associations with feudal
and monkish times struggle for notice with the evidences of modern
prosperity and enterprise. At Durham decisive victory is won by the
memories of the past over the grimy allurements of the present. From
the Cathedral City we carry away impressions of the picturesque
grouping of its old houses and bridges, of the ruins of its strong
Norman keep built by the Conqueror to repress the turbulent townsmen,
and of the magnificent fane which covers the bones of St. Cuthbert
and of the Venerable Bede, rather than feelings of respect for its
manufacturing industry, or even for its distinction as the seat of
a Northern University. We remember the former glories of the County
Palatine, the semi-regal power and pomp of its Prince-Bishops,
the odour of miracle that drew throngs of pilgrims to its saintly
shrine, and the treasures that had an equally potent attraction for
grasping kings and barons and for marauding Borderers, in preference
to statistical and other testimony of the growth of its trade and
population. All up the valley of the Wear, to Bishop Auckland and
Witton, and to Wolsingham and Stanhope, commerce has pushed its way,
and the very sources of the stream have been probed by the lead-mining
prospector. But beauty is there also, and in possession--the beauty of
stately woods, embowering princely piles, like Brancepeth Castle, the
very stones of which are part of the national history; of clear reaches
of the river, sweeping under fragments of religious houses, such as
Finchale Priory, gently draped by time with moss, lichen, and ivy; of
old bridges and mills and quaint bright villages and wide stretches of
fertile land. Beyond all these comes a wilder and barer district, where
the hills draw closer to the river, and cultivation and population
become more rare, and where at length, over the massive and rounded
outlines of the fells, as we rise towards the great "dorsal ridge"
of England, we catch glimpses of the Cumberland Mountains and of the
Cheviots.
To trace the Wear upwards or downwards is like ascending or descending
the stream of English history; from the busy present we move back into
the feudal age, and at length into the quietude of primitive Nature.
Primitive Nature holds her ground staunchly on Kilhope Law and the
"Deadstones," and over other great bare tracks of rolling upland, near
the meeting-point of the shires of Cumberland, Northumberland, and
Durham, whence the Welhope, the Burnhope, the Rookhope, and a host of
lesser moorland streamlets, bring down their waters to feed the infant
Wear. In spite of the mining prospector and the railway projector, many
of these fells and dales are more lonely to-day than they were three,
or even ten centuries ago. Of the great tangle of lines that cover like
a cobweb the lower valleys of the Tyne and Wear, only one or two outer
filaments find their way into the neighbourhood of Upper Weardale, and
all of them fail by many miles to reach the solitudes of Kilhope Moor.
[Illustration:
_Walker & Boutall sc._
THE COURSE OF THE WEAR.]
The smoke of one of the great "workshops of England" may hang darkly
upon the eastern horizon, but it is still too distant to pollute the
pure air of the hills. Roads, indeed, cross these wildernesses of
"ling" and peat-moss--west and east from Alston and Nenthead into
Weardale; north and south, from the valleys of the Allen and Derwent
to the Tees--through tracts that, in the early part of the century,
were traversed only by bridle and footpaths; but these serve in a
measure to concentrate any passing traffic, and to leave the open
moors more lonely than before. The travelling chapman with his pack,
the drover, and the gipsy, promise to become as extinct, as wanderers
of the fells, as is the moss-trooper from the Debateable Land, or the
pilgrim on the way to St. Cuthbert's shrine. Their occupants are the
wild creatures of the hills and the flocks of black-faced sheep; with a
sprinkling of shepherds, who preserve in their dialect and customs many
relics of what Durham and the Wear were before the Coal Age. There are
mining communities scattered up the valleys and along the hill-slopes;
and at Burtreeford, a little above the bridge at Wearhead--the old
rendezvous for the wrestling and other sports of Weardale Forest--is
what is reported to be the richest vein of lead-ore in England.
The lead-miners, like the other dalesmen, are in some ways a race
apart, rough and unsophisticated, like the features of the district
they occupy, but hearty, sincere, and full of sturdy independence
of thought, and free from many of the vices which mark their class
elsewhere. It is true now, as it was at the time of the "Raid of
Rookhope," when the Tynedale reivers were seen pricking over the moss
by Dryrig and Rookhope-head to harry the lands of the Bishopric, that
"The Weardale men they have good hearts,
And they are stiff as any tree."
[Illustration: STANHOPE BRIDGE.]
[Illustration: ROGERLEY.]
The Middlehope and the Rookhope flow into the Wear from the north,
below St. John's Chapel in Weardale, through some of the wildest
country in the Forest; and still farther down, upon the same hand,
Stanhope burn meets the parent stream at Stanhope. This ground was the
favourite hunting-field of the old Bishops of Durham, and in Stanhope
Park they had their lodge, where, at stated seasons, they came with a
great crowd of retainers to chase the buck and roe. These gatherings
are not yet wholly forgotten in the legends of the district. It was
the duty of the Auckland vassals of the See to erect the necessary
buildings for the housing of the Bishop and his joyous company,
including a temporary chapel, where, it may be supposed, the rites of
the Church had, on a good hunting day, rather perfunctory performance.
The turners of Wolsingham provided the three thousand trenchers for
the feeding in the open air; and the Stanhope villeins had the task
of carrying the provisions and conveying the surplus venison and game
to the palaces at Bishop Auckland and Durham. Often there was more
serious sport afoot in Weardale Forest--for instance, when Edward III.
hunted the nimble host of Scots whom Lord Moray and the Douglas brought
across the Border in 1327 to pillage the Palatinate. The invaders were
mounted on hardy little horses, and with their bags of oatmeal at their
backs, were themselves as well prepared as their steeds to rough it
and pick up their living on the moors. After having been frightened
from the neighbourhood of Durham by Edward's approach, they led him
a fine wild-goose chase over the hilly country between the Tyne and
the Wear. At last the English van, under Rokesby, descried the Scots
encamped upon a strong height south of the Wear. To the challenge to
come down and fight upon the level, the enemy prudently replied that
they were on English ground, and "if this displeased the King, he might
come and amend it;" they would tarry for him. There were skirmishing
and great noise and bonfires kept up all night; but next morning the
King, surveying the ground from Stanhope Park, found that the Scots
had shifted to another hill. On the twenty-fourth day of the chase,
the English passed the river and climbed the mountain, but found only
three hundred cauldrons and a thousand spits, with meat all ready for
cooking; also ten thousand pairs of old boots and shoes of untanned
hide. The invaders had cleverly outwitted their pursuers, and were
already leagues off on their homeward way over Yadsmoss and the western
extremity of the county, carrying with them hurdles they had made for
crossing the marshy ground where the English could not follow.
[Illustration: WOLSINGHAM.]
[Illustration: HARPERLEY.]
Stanhope is a populous little township on the north side of the Wear,
well sheltered by the hills on both banks. Its church and market
records go back for five hundred years; and its rectory revenues,
mainly drawn from tithes on lead-ore, are among the richest in
England. There are rocks and grottoes and beautiful walks along the
river margin, as well as around Stanhope Castle, which may stand near
the spot where once rose the old forest seat of the bishops. Below
Rogerley and Frosterley the valley begins to open; the bare heathy
hills withdraw to a more respectful distance; and between them and the
river there interpose fine stretches of rich woodland and cultivated
fields. For the scarped faces of limestone and marble quarries and
the crushing-mill of the lead-mine, one begins to see rising here and
there the pit-head machinery of the colliery and the smoke of the
iron furnace; from a moorland stream the Wear changes to a lowland
river. Wolsingham, which now divides its attention between agriculture
and mining, was once on a time the place of hermitage of St. Godric
of Finchale, and the villagers held their lands for the service of
carrying the Bishop's hawks and going his errands while attending
the Weardale Chase. South of Wolsingham is the long dark ridge of
Bollihope Fell, and the spot, marked by a pillar, known as "the Lang
Man's Grave." Here, says tradition, two huge figures were seen one
clear summer evening engaged in mortal strife, until at length one of
them fell; and on the place next day was found the dead body of a tall
stranger, who was buried where he lay. Below Wolsingham the Wear flows
by the grounds of Bradley Hall, an old lordship of the Eures of Witton
and afterwards of the family of Bowes; and beyond Harperley the Bedburn
Beck comes in, after draining the wild moorland tracts of Eggleston and
Hamsterley Commons, and winding through some pretty wooded grounds and
pastures. The scattered houses of Hamsterley are on the brow of a hill
at the junction of the lead-measures with the great northern coalfield,
and for generations its "hoppings," or rural festivals and sports, have
been famous in this part of Durham. Some of the most charming "bits"
on the Wear are around Witton-le-Wear. The stream bends and twines
under the shade of the high wooded banks upon which the village is
placed, and the sides of its tributary brooks are not less richly and
picturesquely clothed. The centre of all this beauty is Witton Castle,
at the meeting of the Linburn with the Wear. It was long the seat of
the valiant race of the Eures, who held it on military service from
the Prince-Bishops. It is now a possession of the Chaytors, who have
preserved part of the old castellated keep, and restored the rest of
the building in something like the original style.
The course of the Wear has now brought us close to Bishop Auckland, and
to Bishop Auckland Palace and Park, all that remains to the Bishops of
Durham out of the score of manors and castles which they once held.
After Durham Castle, however, Bishop Auckland Castle was always their
favourite and most princely seat. It is wedged into a nook between
the Wear and the Gaunless, and from the high ridge sloping down to
the latter stream it commands magnificent prospects of the country
around. The town may be said to have grown up under the shadow of the
Bishop's residence, but has in latter days discovered other and more
dependable means of support, in manufactures and in the mineral wealth
of the district. It is no longer, as in Leland's day, "a town of no
estimation," either in trade or population. Formerly it had an ill name
for insalubrity; but though the steep narrow streets running down to
the Wear remain, it has done something to amend its reputation in this
respect. Its chief architectural boasts, outside the Castle bounds,
are perhaps the great parochial Church of St. Andrews, founded and
erected into a collegiate charge by Bishop Bek nearly six centuries
ago, and the fine double arch of Newton Bridge, erected by Bishop
Skirlaw in 1388, spanning the Wear at one of the most romantic spots in
the course of the river. But with the Park and Palace to be seen, the
visitor does not linger long outside the Gothic doorway--itself a poor
evidence of episcopal taste--that divides the Bishop's demesne from the
Market Place. From the Park and its far-reaching lawns and woodland,
the great group of buildings which have been added to and altered by
a long line of Bishops of Durham is separated by a battlemented stone
screen and arches. Bishop Bek began in earnest the work of beautifying
and strengthening the Castle, which had to serve the prelates as a
fortified place as well as an episcopal residence. His successors have
at intervals zealously, if not always wisely, followed in his footsteps
as a builder and renovator. The Bishops dispensed princely hospitality
at Auckland; and in Rushall's time it was thought only "fair utterance"
for the household to consume a fat Durham ox per week, and to drink
eight tuns of wine in a couple of months; and it was this same Bishop
who built "from the ground the whole of the chamber in which dinner is
served."
The place suffered badly, however, in the hands of Pilkington, the
first Protestant Bishop, who "built nothing, but plucked down in all
places;" and still more deplorable were its fortunes in the storm of
the Civil War, when, after having entertained Charles I. as king, the
Palace received him as a prisoner, and was afterwards committed to the
tender mercies of Sir Arthur Hazelrigg, who pulled down part of the
castle and chapel to erect a mansion for himself. Bishop Cosin, on the
Restoration, repaired this "ravinous sacrilege" to the best of his
ability; and the chapel, as we find it, is largely his work, and fitly
covers his tomb. Hazelrigg's hands also fell heavily on the fine Park,
where he left "never a tree or pollard standing." But this also has
been repaired, though one will look in vain now in the leafy coverts
by the banks of the Gaunless for the herds of wild cattle that once
frequented them. Perhaps the Park is put to better use as the favourite
and delightful resort of the townsfolk and visitors of Bishop Auckland.
[Illustration: WITTON-LE-WEAR.]
Not far below Newton Bridge and Auckland Park is Binchester, marking
the place where the Wear was crossed by the great Roman road of Watling
Street, in its straight course across the county from Piercebridge on
the Tees to Lanchester on the Browney, and Ebchester on the Derwent.
Roman remains, in the form of sculptured stones, of votive altars,
and of baths, have been discovered at Binchester, which may be the
Binovium of Ptolemy; and here a cross-road from the south joined the
old military way, coming past the sites of what are now Raby Castle,
Staindrop, Streatham, Barnard Castle, and other scenes in Langleydale
and Teesdale and on the banks of the Greta, since immortalised by
history and legend. An older seat of the great family of the Nevilles
than Raby Hall itself--Brancepeth Castle, beyond Willington--is near
at hand. It got into their possession when the grandson of the Neville
who "came over with the Conqueror" married the heiress of the Saxon
family of Bulmer. From the Bulmers the Nevilles are supposed to have
derived their badge of the "Dun Bull;" and one of their race may have
been the hero of the legend that accounts for the local nomenclature by
telling how "Sir Hodge of Ferryhill" watched the track of the savage
boar--the "Brawn's path"--from Brandon Hill, and dug a pitfall for him
at the spot still marked by a stone at Cleve's Cross, near Merrington.
Brancepeth was the rendezvous of the "grave gentry of estate and name"
in the North, who came to aid the Northern Earls, Westmorland, and
Northumberland, in the unhappy rising in Queen Elizabeth's time that
cost so many of them their heads as well as their lands. It now belongs
to Viscount Boyne. In spite of its low situation and the too intrusive
neighbourhood of the great Brancepeth Collieries, it is a noble and
massive feudal pile, and in its general effect has been pronounced
"superior to any other battlemented edifice in the North of England."
In the Baron's Hall are memorials of the battle of Neville's Cross; but
for the most interesting memorials of the noble family that ruled the
Borders from Brancepeth or from Raby, and by turns formed alliances
with, and plotted against, the king, one must go to the old church of
St. Brandon, and look at the effigies in carved oak or stone of the
Nevilles.
[Illustration: BISHOP AUCKLAND PALACE AND PARK.]
On the other or south side of the Wear are Whitworth Hall, the
historic seat of the Shaftos, and Spennymoor, made memorable by
a terrible colliery disaster; and by Sunderland Bridge, near the
inflow of the Browney, you cross to the vicinity of deep and haunted
Croxdale. Behind all these rises the high ridge upon which are perched
Ferryhill and the lofty tower of the old Church of Merrington. This
is a commanding historic site for surveying the County Palatine; and
on a clear day the view ranges all up the valley of the Wear to the
mountains of Westmorland and Cumberland, and south-east and east
to the mouth of the Tees and to the Cleveland Hills in Yorkshire.
Near by are many scenes of note in the annals of Durham. It was in
Merrington Church that the usurping Comyn made his last stand in
his "lewd enterprise" of seizing the Bishopric in 1144; and it was
the gathering-place of the English forces that assembled to repel
the Scots before Neville's Cross. Eldon, which gave its name to the
eminent Lord Chancellor; Thickley, where were reared those stout
Cromwellians, General Robert and Colonel John Lilburn; Mainsforth, the
home of Surtees, the historian of Durham and friend of Walter Scott;
and Bishop Middleham, the residence of the Bishops for two or three
centuries after the Conquest, are all within easy reach. To the north
and north-east, Brancepeth and Ushaw College, and the town and towers
of Durham, are in sight, and between the Wear and the sea rise Penshaw,
Wardenlaw, and other heights, and the smoke of collieries innumerable.
Wardenlaw receives most countenance from tradition for the claim
that it is the spot where St. Cuthbert made selection of the last
resting-place for his bones, weary of long wanderings by land and
sea. But, on the ground of situation, the honour might be disputed
by a score of other sites commanding a view of the rich valley, the
winding river, and the "guarded cliff," crowned by the "Cathedral huge
and vast," that is at once a monument and a symbol of the grand old
Saint of the North. To visit Durham, or even to see its three great
square towers rising in stern and severe majesty over the Wear and the
masses of houses and foliage clustered beneath, is to feel that the
Age of Miracle is not yet past. Or, if the ancient phases of faith
and life be indeed dead or dying, there has nowhere in England been
left a more solid and impressive memorial of their former strength
than the Cathedral of Durham. The Apostle among the Angles, dead these
twelve centuries, seems to haunt his ancient fane, and to cast the
influence of his austere spirit over the narrow streets and lanes of
the venerable town. The spell by which these stately arches and massive
towers rose, and which, in other centuries, drew towards Durham great
crowds of pilgrims, and wealth and secular and ecclesiastical power
unequalled in the North, is not yet wholly broken. To this day the town
stands somewhat aside, with an air of proud seclusion, from the rush
and din of the great highways of commerce that pass so near. It gives,
indeed, a part of its mind and time to the manufacture of mustard and
carpets and the raising of coal, but it does not give its whole heart,
like its neighbour cities, to trade. It is a centre of academic culture
and learning, and has its thoughts not unfrequently cast back into a
darker but splendid past. St. Cuthbert's body may follow the way of
all flesh, but his will and his character are still living and acting
powers in Durham.
Whether chance or heavenly inspiration directed the choice of site,
the selection of Durham as the stronghold of the religious feeling and
of the temporal power of the North was a happy one. For centuries it
was the core, not only of the Vale of Wear and of the County Palatine,
but of ancient Northumbria. To the credit of the Scots, to whose
account Durham and the Wear had afterwards to set down so terrible an
array of losses and grudges, it has to be said that this region of the
North was originally missionised and converted to Christianity from
the further side of the Tweed. When the greater part of Saxon England
was in heathen darkness, a spark of light was struck at Holy Island
and Lindisfarne, and a little later at Jarrow and Monkwearmouth, and
never after was it extinguished. It was carried thither by apostles of
the Early Scottish Church, and when Oswald, King and Saint, granted
Holy Island, close by his royal residence of Bamborough, to St. Aidan
as a site for a monastic house and a centre of missionary effort, the
germ was planted of the future See of Durham. Cuthbert also came from
the other side of the Border--a Border, however, which did not exist
in those days as a barrier of ecclesiastical and political power. He
was a native of the pleasant vale of Lauderdale, and came as a member
of the brotherhood of Melrose to reinforce the band of holy men whose
home was at Lindisfarne, and whose special field of labour was the
region between Tees and Tweed. The zeal and the austerities of his
companions were not enough to satisfy the ardent soul of Cuthbert;
neither was Holy Island a retreat secluded enough for the practice of
those penances and prayers by which he sought to mortify the flesh
and to propitiate Heaven in favour of his work. His fame for piety
was such that he was promoted to be Bishop of Hexham, and afterwards
to be head of the Monastery of Lindisfarne; but, laying down these
charges, he retired to the surf-beaten refuge of the Farne Islands, and
there spent the solitary close of his days. Even in his lifetime, St.
Cuthbert's fasts and prayers had, according to the belief of that time,
been efficacious in working miracles; and it may be judged whether his
brethren were likely to allow the tales of wondrous cures wrought at
the touch or word of the holy man to suffer in repetition, or to permit
so valuable a power to die with him. On his death-bed, it is said, he
exhorted his companions to hold fast by the faith, and, rather than
submit to the violation of a jot or tittle of the doctrine and ritual
committed to them, to take up his body and flee with it to some spot
where the Church might be free, and finally triumphant.
[Illustration: WILLINGTON.]
[Illustration: BRANCEPETH CASTLE.]
The body of the saint thus became not merely a precious property,
in which resided thaumaturgical virtues, but a symbol and pledge of
monastic and churchly privileges; and it travelled farther and met with
more adventures after death than in life. The pagan Norsemen became
soon after the curse and the terror of the Northumberland coasts. Their
first descent was made exactly eleven centuries ago--in 789--and four
years later they returned and ravaged Lindisfarne, as well as Jarrow
and other churches; but the monks, on coming back to their ruined home,
found the incorruptible body of their saint intact in its shrine. Still
later, in King Alfred's time, the Danes hove down upon the shores of
England, and the brethren had again to flee for their lives from the
marauders. This time, however, because they were not sufficiently
persuaded that another miracle would be vouchsafed for the preservation
of the precious remains, or for some other good reason, they did not
leave the saint to the mercies of the invaders. Church legend has
repeated with many marvellous particulars the story--
"How when the rude Danes burned their pile,
The monks fled forth from Holy Isle--
O'er northern mountain, marsh, and moor,
From sea to sea, from shore to shore,
Seven years Saint Cuthbert's corpse they bore";
how, also, among other strange experiences, the corpse in its
stone coffin floated "light as gossamer" down Tweed from Melrose to
Tillmouth; and how, after an excursion to Ireland and to Craike Abbey,
it was brought back once more to familiar ground by Wear and Tyne, but
never again to Lindisfarne.
[Illustration: DISTANT VIEW OF DURHAM.]
It was perhaps because the saint or his guardians thought that the
risks of disturbance were too great on Holy Island that the relics
sought refuge at Chester-le-Street, and there rested for more than a
century. And now began the period of power of the bishopric, united
to that of Hexham. Alfred the Great had, on regaining the control of
his realm, largely endowed the episcopal seat rendered illustrious by
the sanctity of Cuthbert and the learning of Bede. The lands between
Tyne and Tees became "the patrimony of St. Cuthbert," and to these
were added large possessions or authority in adjoining districts. The
king decreed that "whatever additions the bishopric might acquire
by benefaction or otherwise should be held free of temporal service
of any kind to the Crown"--Cuthbert's dying wish put into the form
of a royal grant. The bishop thus became, within his own domain, a
vice-king, exercising civil as well as spiritual jurisdiction. Lands
and vassals were added by a natural process of selecting the service
least onerous in this world and offering the greatest rewards in
the next; and the nucleus was formed of the County Palatine, which
retained, down to the present century, some of the properties of
an _imperium in imperio_. In the time of Ethelred the Unready, the
spoilers returned, and the monks and the canonised remains were again
driven forth, this time as far as Ripon. There came a time when it
seemed safe to move back to Chester-le-Street, but the saint does not
appear to have relished reinstatement after eviction. The returning
company of monks halted on high ground overlooking the fair Vale of
Wear and the likely site of Durham, then an insignificant village,
and known as "Dunholm." At the top of the hill the precious burden
became miraculously heavy, and the bearers had to set it down. Three
days of prayer and fasting were required before inspired direction was
obtained through a monk, or a dun cow--tradition is contradictory on
the point--and the _cortège_ finally halted in a grove of trees on the
platform of the high peninsula formed by the bend of the river. Here
first rose a "tabernacle of boughs," and then a humble cell--the "White
Church"--on the spot, as is supposed, now occupied by the church of
St. Mary-le-Bow, in the North Bailey. In a few years' time the bishop,
Aldune, set to work to erect, upon the site of the present cathedral, a
"roof divine" to worthily cover the bones of holy Cuthbert; and as the
monkish rhyme (translated) runs:--
"Arch follows arch; o'er turrets turrets rise,
Until the hallowed cross salutes the skies,
And the blest city, free henceforth from foes,
Beneath that sacred shadow finds repose."
All this happened nine hundred years ago. In counting upon rest,
St. Cuthbert and his brethren had reckoned without the Scots and the
Normans. Aldune's low and crypt-like structure did not last a century.
It was rebuilt in statelier form by Bishop William de Carilepho, and
Turgot the Prior; Malcolm of Scotland, then on his way to meet Rufus
at Gloucester, also laying a foundation stone. Normans and Scots thus
set their hands to the work of repairing the ruin they had made. It
was the way of Durham and St. Cuthbert's shrine to thrive more by the
assaults of enemies than by the benefits of friends. In the meantime,
the fame and importance of the place had vastly increased. King Canute
had made a pilgrimage to the shrine of the patron saint, having
travelled the distance from Trimdon to Durham, by way of Garmondsway,
with naked feet and clad in pilgrim's weeds. He added liberal gifts
and fresh franchises to the see, and encouraged the monks to bring the
remains of the Venerable Bede, the father of English Church and secular
history, from Jarrow Monastery to be laid beside those of Cuthbert.
Another great conqueror and sinner--William of Normandy--after he had
wreaked terrible vengeance on the town that had become the centre
of Saxon feeling in the north, and that had slaughtered his Norman
garrison and his Norman Bishop, showed great respect for the shrine
and patrimony of the saint; he even wished to look with his own eyes
upon the incorruptible body, but a timely illness that seized him after
saying mass in the cathedral baulked his purpose. Flambard, Pudsey,
and the other successors of Carilepho, were not so much churchmen
as great feudal lords, exercising almost regal sway on the Borders
and a powerful influence at court. The privileges and revenues of
the Prince-Bishops of Durham were a prize that the Sovereign himself
might covet. They raised armies, coined money, levied taxes, appointed
sheriffs and other judicial officers, and, in spite of their vows,
exercised the right of presiding in court when sentences of life or
death were adjudged upon criminals. In other respects their sacred
office sat lightly upon them, and they caroused and hunted and
intrigued and plotted on a grander scale than any baron of their time.
Besides being Bishops of St. Cuthbert's See, they were titular Earls
of Sadberge, and they found it easy to shuffle off the sacred for the
secular character, or the secular for the sacred, as suited them. At
the same time they never forgot the tradition of their patron saint, or
failed to seize an opportunity of magnifying the office and increasing
the dignity and power that centred in the "Haliwerk," or Castle, and
the Cathedral. Thus Flambard divided his energies between building
strong castles and completing the great church, and endowing public
hospitals and his own bastard children. Hugh de Pudsey's wealth--such
of it as the rapacious hands of the Anjou kings left--was spent on
similar objects; to him Durham town owes its first charter, and the
Cathedral its famous "Galilee Porch," or Lady's Chapel, an ingenious
compromise, as we are told, between the inveterate ascetic prejudice
of St. Cuthbert against the presence of women, and the necessity of
allowing the sex access to the chapel dedicated to the Virgin. In
Bishop Anthony Bek's days the See may be said to have reached the
zenith of its splendour. He was little less than a Sovereign within his
extensive domains; was right-hand man of Edward I. in planning and in
seeking to carry out the subjugation of Scotland; led the van with his
Northumbrian levies at Falkirk, and carried away the Stone of Destiny
from Scone to Westminster; and, dying, left all he had to St. Cuthbert
and the Church.
[Illustration: DURHAM CATHEDRAL AND CASTLE.]
Signal revenge did the Scots work for these wrongs in the time of
later bishops; England was never engaged in foreign war or domestic
broil but they seized the opportunity of crossing the Border, and the
See and the city of Durham caught the brunt of their attack. That was
a crushing check, however, which they suffered in 1346, in the days of
the learned Bishop Hatfield, when David of Scotland, taking advantage
of Edward III.'s absence on his French wars, crossed the Border and
with a great host of hungry horsemen was harrying the country up to
the gates of Durham. England was not altogether defenceless; for the
king had left behind him able guardians of the North Country, in the
persons of his Queen Philippa and the Prince-Bishop. The "Haliwerk
folk" assembled for the protection of their beloved fane, and the
Nevilles and other great lords called together their retainers to fight
under the standard of St. Cuthbert. The two armies met at the Red Hill,
a broken and hilly piece of ground a short distance west of the city;
and after having hung long doubtful, the fortune of war went utterly
against the Scots, who left their king in the hands of the victors.
A group of monks took up their position at the "Maiden's Bower," and
signalled to another company upon the central tower of the Cathedral
how it went with the battle; and when at length the invaders were put
to rout, a solemn "Te Deum" was chanted, and this commemorative custom
was continued almost to our own day. Lord Ralph Neville, who led the
protecting troops, caused the monument to be raised which has given its
name--"Neville's Cross"--to the battle; his body, with that of other
members of the great family that once ruled at Brancepeth and Raby,
is buried in the nave; and over his grave was placed, with his own
standard, the banner wrested from the King of the Scots. Though Queen
Philippa was so good a friend to Durham, yet the churlish patron saint
could not brook her presence near his shrine, and when she took up her
quarters in the Prior's house she had to flee hastily in the night in
her bed-gear. Not more hospitable was the welcome given to Margaret
of Anjou, when fortune went finally against the House of Lancaster
and she fled for refuge to Durham. The town and the Prince-Bishops
had ventured and suffered much for the Lancastrian cause in the Wars
of the Roses; but they dared not risk the vengeance of the victorious
side, and hurried the despairing Queen across the Border into Scotland.
More troubles awaited Durham at the time of the Reformation. For
six years Cardinal Wolsey held the diocese, but confined his duties
to drawing its rich revenues. His successor, Tunstall, was a man of
rare moderation for his time. Though a Reformer, like his friend
Erasmus, he was inclined to remain attached to the "old religion," and
he suffered at the hands of both parties as they successively came
uppermost. In his days the monasteries--including that of Durham and
the older foundations of Monkwearmouth and Jarrow, which had long been
annexed to it as "cells"--were suppressed; and the curious reactionary
movement known as the "Pilgrimage of Grace" may be said to have had its
beginning at Durham. It was renewed, with like disastrous consequences,
in the time of the first Protestant Bishop, Pilkington, in the famous
enterprise of the "Rising of the North," when Queen Elizabeth's
partisans, the Bowes of Streatham, rose to notice over the ruin of
the Nevilles and Percys, Earls of Westmorland and Northumberland. The
Bishopric was temporarily suppressed during the Commonwealth; and the
Cathedral interior suffered from being the place of confinement of the
Scottish prisoners from Dunbar. But amends came at the Restoration,
and whatever can be said against the personal or political character
of Bishops Cosin and Crewe, they were princely builders, entertainers,
and benefactors of the Cathedral and city. Other eminent men have since
occupied the episcopal throne and palace--chief among them for learning
and good works being Butler, the author of the "Analogy"; but since
the year 1836 almost the whole of the old temporal distinctions and
franchises have been stripped from the "Fighting Bishopric," and Her
Majesty is the Countess Palatine of Durham, and keeps "the peace of St.
Cuthbert" as well as that of the Sovereign.
[Illustration: CHESTER-LE-STREET.]
[Illustration: DISTANT VIEW OF LAMBTON CASTLE.]
Durham and its cathedral have an aspect worthy of their history.
No such grandly imposing combination of massive Norman strength and
solemn religious beauty is presented by any other architectural pile
in England. Seen from Framwellgate Bridge or any other of the many
favourite points of view, it looks, what it has been in the past,
"Half house of God, half castle 'gainst the Scot."
About its outward shape there is that air of "rocky solidity and
indeterminate endurance" which so impressed Dr. Johnson in its
interior. Half the majestic effect of Durham Cathedral is derived,
however, from its situation, settled firmly and boldly upon the
highest platform of the rocky promontory washed by the river, its huge
central tower rising sheer above all its surroundings--the focus of
the picture; its two lesser towers squarely fronting the west; the
pinnacles of the eastern transept, or "Nine Altars," balancing them
on the other side; and, grouped around, the Castle and its lowering
Norman keep, and the high masses of other buildings that surmount the
beautiful green "Banks" and walks descending steeply to the Wear.
Nearer at hand, after climbing and threading the narrow streets to
the "Castle Green," the exterior view of the great Cathedral is still
profoundly impressive if somewhat monotonous. On the north door hangs
the knocker and ring, to which the offender against the laws could
cling and claim sanctuary, or "the peace of St. Cuthbert." Within, the
long arched roof and lines of alternate round and cruciform pillars are
almost overwhelming, not so much on account of their height as of their
ponderous strength and massive dignity. Many styles are represented,
as many hands have been employed, in the interior; but the pervading
spirit is the masterful and dominating genius of the Norman. The
original work of Carilepho and Flambard is represented by the nave
and choir. Bishop Pudsey's hand is manifest in the Transition-Norman
of the "Galilee" at the west end, under the light and delicate arches
of which repose the bones of the Venerable Bede. The "Nine Altars,"
extending eastward beyond the choir, is still later work, and was not
completed until about the year 1230. In the graceful elegance of its
slender shafts of stone shooting up to the extreme height of the roof,
and broken only by the rich carvings of the capitals, and in the light
that floods it through the beautiful "rose window" and other inlets,
it forms a contrast to the somewhat sombre and heavy grandeur of the
main portion of the Cathedral, and is one of our finest examples of
the Early English style of church architecture. Here, however, was the
"most holy place" in the Durham fane; for here is the platform of "the
Shrine of St. Cuthbert," and under it the remains of the hermit of
Lindisfarne rest after their long wanderings; and beside them lie other
relics--"treasures more precious than gold or topaz"--among them the
head of St. Oswald, "the lion of the Angles," and bones of St. Aidan.
It was long believed that the place of the patron saint's sepulture was
a mystery, revealed alone to three brothers of the Benedictine Order,
who, under oath, passed on their knowledge, upon their death-bed, to
other members of the monastery.
"Deep in Durham's Gothic shade
His relics are in secret laid,
But none may know the place."
But excavations made in 1827 have left little doubt that the spot
pointed out in this Eastern Transept is that which contains the
veritable remains of the "Blessed Cuthbert." Above it hung his banner
and "Corporax Cloth," carried before the English host to victory
at Falkirk, Neville's Cross, Flodden, and other fields; and the
miraculous "Black Rood of Scotland," another of the spoils of war of
the Bishopric, was among the treasures of Durham Cathedral until it was
lost at the Reformation.
The chapter-house, the cloisters, and the dormitory represent most
of what remains of the Monastery of Durham. Its priors took rank as
abbots, and vied with the bishops of the See in piety and spiritual
influence if not in temporal power. In the library and treasury are
preserved many valuable manuscript relics of the monastic days, and
in the great kitchen of the Deanery one may form an idea of the scale
on which the old Benedictines lived and feasted. Other interesting
ecclesiastical and secular buildings are collected upon the rocky
platform above the Wear; but next to the Cathedral, the Castle takes
first rank. It has long ceased to be the seat of episcopal state, as
it has ceased to fulfil any warlike purpose in the land. It has been
rebuilt, restored and added to many times since the Conqueror founded
it to hold in check the Scots and to overawe the burghers; and it now
helps to accommodate the Durham University--an institution which Oliver
Cromwell first sought to establish, but which was only brought finally
into existence upon the redistribution of the revenues of the See in
1837. Norman strength and solidity, so majestically exhibited in the
interior and exterior of the Cathedral, become grim and sinister in
the lines of the Castle, and in what remains of the fortifications
that enclosed the ancient "Ballium." Bishop Hatfield rebuilt the
Great Keep and the Hall named after him, in which Bishop Anthony Bek,
that "most famous clerk of the realm," feasted Edward Longshanks on
his way to conquer Scotland--the Hall which, before or since, has
royally entertained a score of different Sovereigns as guests of the
Prince-Prelates of Durham. But these restorations were made on the
earlier foundations, and Keep and Hall and Norman Chapel retain many of
the old features, and something of the old spirit.
Feudalism and romance quickly disappear from the scene when Durham is
left behind, and the Wear, now becoming navigable for small craft, is
followed farther on its course to the sea. There is an air of mournful
solitude about the fragmentary ruins of Beaurepaire, or Bear Park, the
retreat of the Priors of Durham, and of seclusion at the Roman Catholic
College at Ushaw, founded for the use of the French refugees from
the Revolution, and even at Sherburn Hospital, Bishop Pudsey's great
foundation for lepers, now converted to other charitable purposes. But
the squalor of colliery rows intrudes upon the picturesque, and the
clash of machinery puts to flight the old spirit of monastic calm.
This eastern side of the county of Durham is a vast busy workshop--a
Northern "Black Country;" and earth and air and water, and even the
minds and thoughts of the inhabitants, seem to have an impregnation
of coal-dust and engine-smoke. Finchale, three or four miles below
Durham, is still, however, a lonely and retired spot; and a charming
road through Kepyer Wood leads to the interesting ruins of the
Priory erected by Bishop Pudsey's son, near the place where the good
Saint Godric dwelt in hermitage. There are still some remains of the
beautiful Decorative work to be seen through the screen of ivy; and the
effect is deepened by the situation, on a promontory round which the
river makes a bold sweep, and by the fine woods of Cocken that enclose
and form a background to the buildings.
[Illustration: MONKWEARMOUTH CHURCH.]
Chester-le-Street and Lumley and Lambton Castles are the next places
of note by the Wear. Something already we know about Chester, and how
narrowly it escaped being the civil and ecclesiastical capital of the
County Palatine, and the custodian of the bones of St. Cuthbert. Its
business is now mainly with coal and ironstone; but it grumbles a
little still over the golden chance it missed, and the baser minerals
it has to put up with:--
"Durham lads hae gowd and silver,
Chester lads hae nowt but brass."
It is supposed to have been a Roman station; but at all events its
importance was considerable in Saxon times. The Church of St. Mary and
St. Cuthbert is six hundred years old; and the most remarkable of its
features is perhaps the "Aisle of Tombs," a row of fourteen recumbent
effigies supposed to represent the ancestors of the Lumley family, who
have lived or had possessions hard by since before the Norman Conquest,
and whose pedigree is so long that James I., compelled to listen to
its recital, conjectured that "Adam's name was Lumley." Camden has it,
however, that a Lord Lumley of Queen Elizabeth's time, who brought this
collection of monuments together, "either picked them out of demolished
monasteries or made them anew." The family are now represented by the
Earl of Scarbrough whose seat, Lumley Castle, overlooks the Wear and
the deep wooded valley through which, coming from Houghton-le-Spring
and Hetton-le-Hole, runs the Lumley Beck. It is a goodly and in parts
an ancient pile, but since the collieries have crowded around it,
Lumley sees little of its owners, and has to be content with the range
of old family portraits in the Grand Hall, a companion set to the stone
effigies in the church.
[Illustration: LOOKING UP THE RIVER, SUNDERLAND.]
Lambton Castle is not only surrounded but undermined by pit workings
to such an extent that the ground and the fine semi-Norman, semi-Tudor
building upon it--the home for many centuries of the Lambtons, now
Earls of Durham--threatened to collapse, and are partly supported by
the solid brickwork with which the old mines were filled. Lambton
belonged of old to the D'Arcys; but, according to the legend, it was
after it came into the hands of the present family that the famous
fight between the heir of the estate and the "Worm" took place. The
county, as would appear from its traditions, once swarmed with loathly
"worms" or dragons; and this one took up its station by coiling
itself around the "Worm Hill," and also frequented the "Worm Well."
The heir of Lambton encountered it in armour "set about with razor
blades," and the monster cut itself to pieces, the penalty of victory,
however, being that no chief of Lambton was to die in his bed for nine
generations. The most eminent name in the Lambton pedigree is that
of John, first Earl of Durham, the champion of Reform, and the Greek
temple that crowns the summit of Penshaw Hill, on the opposite or south
side of the Wear, is erected to his memory.
At Biddick the great Victoria Railway Bridge crosses the Wear by a
series of large spans at a height of 156 feet above the stream. The
"Biddickers," now good, bad, and indifferent, like other "keelmen" of
their class, were a wild set last century, and among them the Jacobite
Earl of Perth found refuge after Culloden. The banks of the stream,
crowded with busy and grimy colliery rows and coal staithes, the
lines of rail and tramway that run up and athwart the inclines, and
the fleets of coal-barges ascending and descending, help to announce
the close neighbourhood of Sunderland. Before we reach the seaport of
the Wear, however, Hylton Ferry is passed. In spite of the increasing
sounds and sights of shipping industry and manufacture, a little bit of
superstition and romance continues to linger about dilapidated Hylton
Castle, for a fabulous number of centuries the home of the fighting
race of Hyltons, now extinct as county landlords: the countryside has
not quite forgotten the family goblin or brownie--the "Cauld Lad"--the
eccentric ghost of a stable-boy who was killed in a fit of anger by a
former lord of Hylton; though it remembers and points out with more
pride Ford Hall, where the Havelocks, a martial race of later date and
purer fame, were born and bred.
It is not easy in these days to associate the three townships
comprehended within the municipal and parliamentary bounds of
Sunderland with cloistral seclusion or warlike events, or with romance
or mystery in any form--more especially when the place is approached
by road, rail, or river from the colliery districts that hem it in on
the land side. Yet busy, smoky, and in some spots ugly and squalid as
it is, Sunderland hardly deserves the censure that has been heaped
upon it as a town where "earth and water are alike black and filthy,"
through whose murky atmosphere the blue sky seldom shows itself, and
whose architectural features are utterly contemptible. Sunderland
has a number of fine buildings and handsome thoroughfares, and a
large part of the town is lifted clear of the dingy streets by the
wharves and river-bank. The animation on water and shore, the passing
stream of coasting and river craft, and the other signs of shipping,
shipbuilding, and manufacturing trade, spanned by the huge arch of
the Cast Iron Bridge; the larger vessels--evidences of an ocean-going
commerce--in and around the docks on either hand; even the smoke and
shadows, and the dirt itself in the streets and lanes, might have been
reckoned fine pictorial elements of interest in a foreign seaport.
Coal, lime, and iron; timber, glass, and chemicals; ship stores, ship
fittings, and fishing, are the businesses to which modern Sunderland,
Bishop Wearmouth, and Monkwearmouth, chiefly give mind and time. It was
very different when they first began to be mentioned in history. The
little harbourage at the mouth of the Wear was a shelter for ships, but
it was also a place of refuge for studious and pious men. We hear of it
first in the seventh century, when, soon after Aidan became Bishop of
Lindisfarne, St. Hilda, or Bega, obtained a grant of land on the north
side of the river and founded the convent of St. Bee's. Biscopius, a
Saxon knight in the service of King Oswyn of Northumberland, resolved
to renounce war and the world, and having prepared himself by making
a pilgrimage to Rome, whence he brought back many precious books and
relics, he obtained from the pious King Ecgfrith a grant of land near
the nunnery--the modern Monkwearmouth--and set to work in 674 to build
the monastery of St. Peter's; and a few years later he founded St.
Paul's, at Jarrow. It has to be noted that Biscopius, who took the name
of Benedict, brought over from France masons and glaziers to instruct
the natives in these arts, and that glass-making has ever since
flourished on the Wear and Tyne. All this we know from the Venerable
Bede, who, when quite a young boy, resided in St. Peter's, under the
Abbot Ceolfrid, before he took up his abode for life in the sister
monastery at Jarrow. It is thought by archæologists that part of the
original building is to be seen to this day in the west porch and west
wall of the old church of Monkwearmouth. Sunderland already existed at
that date; and the name was probably confined to the peninsula between
the natural harbour on the south side of the Wear and the sea. Of
Bishop Wearmouth, or "the delightful vill of South Wearmouth," as it
was called, we do not hear until Alfred's time, when large additional
grants were made to Benedict's monastery, partly in exchange for a
"Book of Cosmogony," which had been brought from Rome. The Danes, the
pest, and the Scots troubled much the place, and reduced the number of
the inmates of the house. Sometimes these were as many as six hundred;
sometimes they were like to have perished altogether, and for two
centuries the place lay "waste and desolate." Malcolm was here on a
plundering excursion when St. Margaret and her brother, the Atheling,
happened to be in the Wear, waiting for a fair wind to carry them to
Scotland--a meeting that probably changed the rude monarch's life and
the national history. In 1083 the brethren of both Wearmouth and Jarrow
were removed to Durham, and, as we have seen, both houses were reduced
to cells dependent on the monastery of St. Cuthbert.
The mouth of the Wear had compensation in the growth of other and
more secular interests. Seven centuries ago Bishop Pudsey granted a
charter to Sunderland; and the liberties and privileges of the borough
were extended by subsequent holders of the See, in consideration of
its increasing trade and consequence. In the sixteenth century, as we
learn, the coal trade was already of some importance, and Sunderland
was "enriched every day thereby;" grindstones also became a far-famed
article of export from the Wear. Its industrial development was
temporarily checked during the Civil War, when Sunderland became
a centre of fighting between Cavaliers and Roundheads. The Scots
army, under Leslie, Earl of Leven, encamped on what is now part
of the long High Street of Bishop Wearmouth, and not far from the
Building Hill, which local tradition points out as a Druidical place
of worship. The King's forces from Newcastle drew out to face the
"blue bonnets," first on Bolden Hill and afterwards at Hylton; and
skirmishing took place, which was not attended with decisive results.
The commercial development of Sunderland has since been steady and
often rapid. Including Bishop Wearmouth and Monkwearmouth, it now
contains some 130,000 inhabitants, and it ranks high among British
ports in shipbuilding tonnage and coal output. It has other claims to
distinction: Paley was rector of Bishop Wearmouth last century, and
wrote his "Evidences" there; and further proofs could be given that
learning and piety did not come to an end at Wearmouth in Biscopius's
and Bede's time, any more than did the worldly enterprise of the
"canny" inhabitants.
Outside, the North Sea beats against the long piers and lighthouses,
and rocks the fleets of steamers and sailing craft lying at anchor, or
plying between the Wear and the Tyne; and on either hand, at Roker and
Whitburn, Ryhope and Seaham, are the bold cliffs and bathing sands, the
caves and cloven "gills" and wooded "denes," to which the dwellers by
the Wear resort to fill their lungs with fresh air.
JOHN GEDDIE.
[Illustration: CROSS FELL.]
THE TEES.
Among the Fells--The Weel--Caldron Snout--High Force--Gibson's
Cave--Bow Leys--Middleton-in-Teesdale--The Lune and the
Balder--Scandinavian Names--Cotherstone Cheese--History
in Teesdale--Scott's Description of the Tees--Egliston
Abbey--Greta Bridge--Dickens and Mr. Squeers--Brignal Banks and
Rokeby--The Village of Ovington--Gainford--Pierce Bridge--High
and Low Coniscliffe--Croft--Yarm--The Industries of the
Tees--Stockton--Middlesbrough--The Sea.
"You can stand in fower keaunties at yance at Caldron Snout," said the
companionable whip whom I had engaged to drive me, for such distance as
the roads went, towards the first joyous springing up of the Tees at
Cross Fell. The statement was a palpable exaggeration; no mere biped
can stand in four counties at once; the most that is practicable is
to straddle from one county to another. But from Caldron Snout the
nearest point of Cumberland is distant at least five miles; so that
only the counties of Durham, Yorkshire, and Westmorland touch each
other where this marvellous waterfall pours through its rocky and
precipitous gorge. However, the information was passably accurate. From
the natives of Upper Teesdale no exact knowledge is to be extracted,
by hook or by crook. They are chiefly remarkable for what they don't
know. From Middleton, Cross Fell was five miles away--six miles, ten
miles, fifteen miles, and so on, through an ever-lengthening road. A
landlord, who was really not stupid-looking, and who was certainly not
indifferent to matters of business, was unable to name the beck which
flows within a few yards of his own door. "You will have h'ard o' th'
High Force?" queried a Middletonian. "It's a famous place, is th' High
Force. Well, no; I've never seen it myself; but I've lived five miles
from it all my life, an' it's a fine, famous place is th' High Force."
A fair sample of what the inhabitant of Upper Teesdale knows, or cares
to know. This singular incuriousness is almost general. The facts of
Nature are accepted as matters of course, and without inquiry. The
report of the adventurous traveller is enough. In the first fifty miles
of wandering by Tees-side I encountered only one man who was proud of
his information, and this related exclusively to the places of public
entertainment in the village of Yarm. Mr. Samuel Weller's knowledge
of London was not more extensive and peculiar. In a slow, cautious,
and yet eager style of speaking, he gave a detailed and exhaustive
account of every public-house in the village, with sidelong glances at
the characters of the various landlords, and an evidently cultivated
criticism of the quality of the refreshment supplied by each.
The long ridge of Cross Fell was grey and cloudlike, as seen in the
morning sunshine, from where our pair of horses finished their journey
at the Green Hurth Mines. The intervening space of undulating moor was
as parched and brown as if some sudden flame had swept across it; and
where the clouds moved slowly across the grey-blue of the sky, long
bands of dark shadow fell, so intense as to lend the brightness of
contrast to what otherwise might itself have seemed to be a mass of
shade. Not a single tree was in sight, but only whin-bushes and their
yellow bloom. A white gleam of water in occasional hollows of the hills
indicated the sluggish beck which divides Durham from Cumberland; and
to the left, in a winding course well marked by the depression of the
moorlands, the Tees wandered towards Caldron Snout, flanked by the
steep side of Dufton Fell. It is here but a thin and narrow stream on
dry summer days, but in times of rain it broadens and swells with an
amazing suddenness, rushing downwards with a great roar and tumult
of waters, so unexpected, sometimes, and with a character so much
resembling the opposite phenomenon of the bore on the Severn, that
holiday visitors, inapprehensive of calamity, have before now been
carried headlong over the terrible cataract of High Force.
[Illustration:
_Walker & Boutall sc._
THE COURSE OF THE TEES.]
The guide-book accounts of Upper Teesdale are mainly remarkable for
their singular inattention to facts, and their following of each other.
"Murray" confidently places High Force at a distance of five miles
below the source of the river at Cross Fell. As a plain matter of
fact, it is five miles from High Force to Caldron Snout, a much more
amazing waterfall, and there are more than seven miles as the crow
flies between Caldron Snout and Tees Head. It is a country bare of
inhabitants and abounding in game. There is no village beyond Langdon
Beck, where we begin the ascent of the moors. The Tees is joined by
numerous little streams before it leaves Cumberland, and flows through
the four or five miles of stern valley where Westmorland and Durham
face each other. Just before reaching the wild extremity of Yorkshire
it thrusts out a broad arm through a deep, long recess of the hills,
and "as with molten glass inlays the vale." The Weel is the odd and
unaccountable name which has been given to this winding lake. It lies,
white and weird and still, where scarcely even the winds can reach it;
and so deserted is it that not so much as a single wild fowl breaks
the surface of its ghastly calm. There is henceforth no more rest to
the Tees water during the whole of its curiously devious journeying to
the sea. Below the Weel it tumbles with desperate tumult over Caldron
Snout, foaming down into a pool two hundred feet beneath. Had Southey
beheld this waterfall when it was in flood he would scarcely have had
the heart to write of the Falls of Lodore. Here there are no mossy
rocks or sheltering trees to dapple the scene with their brightness and
shadow. The river dashes in a succession of leaps over the bare basalt,
swirling and boiling after such manner as easily explains the name
given to this most lonely and most splendid of English cataracts, where
the creamy waters--
"With many a shock
Given and received in mutual jeopardy,
Dance, like a Bacchanal, from rock to rock,
Tossing her frantic thyrsus wide and high!"
Here the Tees, in a succession of violent cascades, makes a descent,
as we have seen, of two hundred feet. At High Force it falls by only
seventy-five feet; but, whereas the lonelier cataract is a long
and broken slope, the water at High Force falls with plummet-like
directness, in a vast broad sheet when the river is in flood, in two
straight white columns when the floods are subsiding, and in a single
glittering fall when the river is at its normal height. Here the
contrast between the Yorkshire and the Durham side of the Tees first
makes itself decisively felt. The steep but still gradual declivity of
the Durham side is veiled in woods of birch and beech and fir; on the
Yorkshire side the basalt descends sheer to the river's bed, and beyond
and above it there is a bare expanse of unprofitable fields, darkened
here and there by patches of whin-bush and long streaks of broom. This
barren character is maintained, with a gradual decrease of sternness,
until the little town of Middleton-in-Teesdale comes in sight.
[Illustration: HIGH FORCE.]
[Illustration: FROM YORK SIDE.]
Middleton is a long, straggling town, starting away from a stone
bridge over the Tees, and climbing far away up the sides of the hills.
It is built entirely of stone, even to the roofs and the chimneys.
This is a peculiarity of all the houses in Upper Teesdale. Slates,
in small quantities, have penetrated thus far into the wilds; but
of baked clay, otherwise than in the form of pottery, there is no
suggestion until the village of Cotherstone is reached, whence emanates
the famous Cotherstone cheese. Below the bridge at Middleton the Tees
leaves behind it the stern Yorkshire moorlands and scaurs, the hills
on either bank withdrawing themselves that it may glitter in the
sunbeams over a pebbly bed. Henceforth, until it approaches the large
towns, and when it encounters the sea-tides, it flows, broad and open,
past richly-wooded banks. In all England there is no more pleasant
valley than that which the Tees waters between Middleton and Pierce
Bridge. There is an almost equal beauty in the valleys of its numerous
tributaries. "All the little rills concealed among the forked hills"
have their individual features of loveliness, and hide sweet secrets of
their own. About a mile below Middleton the river Lune ripples sunnily
down into the Tees. Rising in Westmorland, it flows across that portion
of Yorkshire which interposes itself between Westmorland and Durham,
wearing one of the deepest of channels for itself, and giving token
of frequent floods in the large stones by which its bed is thickly
strewn. The river Lune is a favourite stream for trout, but it is still
more renowned as a spawning ground for salmon; for as that kingly fish
cannot ascend the Tees beyond the seventy-foot precipice at High Force,
and as some of the higher tributaries are polluted with water from the
lead mines, the Lune and the Balder, a smaller stream which flows into
the Tees at Cotherstone, are almost the only accessible breeding beds.
[Illustration: BARNARD CASTLE.]
"Fish! I should think so!" says a man who has fishings to let. "Why,
there are times in the year when you could take salmon out by the
armful." To the remark that this is not the time when salmon ought to
be taken, he replies that there are good trout at any time of the year;
and a very cursory observation of the Tees proves this to be true. The
keen observation of Sir Walter Scott led him to remark on the blackness
of this river. Coming down from the moorlands, it is thickly stained by
the peat; but the peaty colour does not in fact obscure the clearness
of the water, and looking down from above, one may everywhere see
the fish shooting athwart the stream in little shoals. The river is
exceedingly well preserved; indeed, on one side it is in the hands of
the Duke of Cleveland, on the other it is well tended by Mr. Morritt of
Rokeby, the Earl of Strathmore, and Sir Talbot Constable. Nevertheless,
fishing is to be had on easy terms--from Henry Ludgate, of Winston, for
example, who was formerly gamekeeper to the Earl of Brownlow, and who
now keeps a public-house and writes verses. His political ideas take
that turn, he observes, and the visitor to Henry's hostelry may hear
some of the verses repeated if he should be so minded as to listen to
them.
There are no towns on the Tees until one of the most horrible in
all England is reached--Stockton, to wit; but there are innumerable
villages. Some of these are quite remarkable for their cleanliness and
beauty. Romaldkirk, the second village from Middleton, on the Yorkshire
side, is an incomparable village, far scattered, but bound together
by a plenitude of trees. Romaldkirk--anciently "Rum auld kirk," a
serious-minded old villager observed, with a trenchant faith in his
etymology--is noticeable not only for its combination of all the charms
that an English village can possess, but also on account of its parish
church and its parish stocks. The stocks are unique, indeed. Shackles
of this ancient description are usually of wood; but the stocks at
Romaldkirk are bars of iron, fastened in stone posts, and ingeniously
bent so that one of the bars, locked down on the other, will imprison
two pairs of feet. In winter the parish stocks of Romaldkirk must have
been the most uncomfortable parish stocks in all England. The villagers
preserve them now with genuine and reasonable pride, and the oldest
inhabitant sits upon them and relates sad stories of the last persons
who were imprisoned therein. The church has been so little restored
that it remains one of the finest examples of early ecclesiastical
architecture. It is unusually large for so small a village, a fact
which is explained by its erection by the Barons Fitzhugh, who were
buried here whenever they chanced to die in their beds. The building
dates from the twelfth century, and is in the Early English style.
One of the Lords Fitzhugh is kept in remembrance by a statue in
chain-armour, still contemplated by the villagers with a mixture of awe
and delight.
The Fitzhughs are again in evidence at the village of Cotherstone, two
miles further down the Tees. They had a castle there, of which a small
portion still remains, bearing the same proportion to a complete feudal
castle that an odd brick will bear to a modern house. Cotherstone is a
smart, businesslike village, for these parts. Some of its stone roofs
have a coping of red tiles, the first to be seen in Upper Teesdale. It
has recently built itself a very pretty little church. Above all, it is
renowned for its cheese. This cheese of Cotherstone is in shape similar
to Stilton; but, however long Stilton cheese may be kept, it can never
approach that of Cotherstone in aroma. A Cotherstone cheese, truly,
requires a large room all to itself; it is not the kind of cheese that
one can live with, even for the short space of lunch; it is a militant
sort of cheese--fit to defeat armies. Those who produce it were
formerly thought to be rather pronounced rustics by the inhabitants of
Teesdale. They were called "Cotherstone calves," and uncomplimentary
references were made to the strength of their heads; but the School
Boards have changed all that, and a young Cotherstone calf now speaks
with a certain air of refinement, and is not above feeling pleasure in
giving information to the intruding stranger.
The Tees is not a river of traditions and memories. It must have a
marvellous history, indeed, but it is, for the most part, unknown.
Up among the fells, where it rises, one is constantly in danger of
falling into pits in which the Romans or the Britons worked for lead;
there is scarcely a space of fifty yards by the present roadside
which does not bear traces of former mining; from which one surmises
that the very road over which one travels has existed from the time
when Rome conquered Britain for the sake of the metals which it was
supposed to contain. The Watling Street approached the Tees at Greta
Bridge; the Leeming Lane went through the river at Pierce Bridge, to
cross the Watling Street near Middleton Tyas, in Yorkshire. There
are almost innumerable remains of Roman camps and British defences;
but, nevertheless, there is no history to speak of. When Sir Walter
Scott sought a story with which to connect the scenery of the Tees he
went back no further than to the conflict between the Cavaliers and
Roundheads. The records of this wide district have, in fact, perished;
between the present population and that of the earlier centuries of the
Christian era there is no relationship of blood and no inheritance of
tradition. The solitary fragment of the Castle of the Fitzhughs is more
like a satirical commentary on the past than its memorial.
The Balder joins the Tees at Cotherstone; it is a shady little river
flowing through a deep ravine. The Tees itself is at this point
exceedingly lovely, streaming in a fine curve from beneath overhanging
woods, and winding past a quaint old mill, which nestles by the
waterside under high banks that are crowned by a tall fringe of trees.
There is, probably, no English river which journeys for so many miles
through such beautiful and unbroken woods. From the slope which is
occupied by the village of Cotherstone one may see the domes of the
Bowes Museum at Barnard Castle, rising out of what appears to be a vast
forest, interspersed here and there with patches of cultivated ground.
No sparkle of water is anywhere visible in the whole wide landscape,
but the course of the Tees may be traced by a wavy and depressed line
in the woodland verdure; and one guesses how, over many a mile, the
bright river is making a sunshine in the shady place.
"Romantic Deepdale" joins the Tees a little above Barnard Castle. It is
such a tributary as Wordsworth speaks of, a
"----torrent white,
The fairest, softest, loveliest of them all!
And seldom ear hath listened to a tune
More lulling than the busy hum of noon,
Swollen by that voice whose murmur musical
Announces to the thirsty fields a boon
Dewy and fresh, till showers again shall fall"
Deepdale Burn winds away across Yorkshire, over Bowes Moor, and to the
borders of Westmorland, through one of the most lovely valleys in the
whole of the north country.
"Barnard Castle standeth stately upon Tees," says Leland. Stately it
is to this day, though it is no more than a group of ruined towers and
crumbling walls, and though where the Tees must have flowed deep and
wide from below the castle rock there is now at ordinary seasons only a
thin stream, threading its way through what might very well be mistaken
for a stone-yard. Before the castle is reached we have, in fact, come
to the first salmon weir, which, besides its other purpose, is employed
to divert the river to the service of industry.
From Barnard Castle these weirs become very frequent, and are, in
all cases but this, an addition to the attractions of the stream. It
was the weir just below Barnard Castle that supplied Creswick with a
subject for one of his most famous and successful pictures. The artist
visited the town very frequently, and stayed there for weeks on end;
wherefore he is still well remembered by some of the older inhabitants,
not always with that kindliness which one would have been glad to
associate with his name.
Barnard Castle is one of the oddest and most interesting towns in the
North. There is a wholly individual character in its buildings, as if
its architects had devised a style of their own. Few of the houses are
older than the period of Elizabeth, but they are almost all of them of
respectable age. The building material is stone in all cases, and the
houses are unusually high and substantial, often of four and sometimes
of five stories. On either bank below the castle they are built down
into the bed of the river, and as, in Scott's words, the Tees here
"flows in a deep trench of solid rock," the houses by the riverside
descend as much below the level of the street as they rise above it.
Yet despite the stoutness and the elaboration of these buildings, the
riverside streets present that appearance of misery and squalor which
seems inevitable in every manufacturing town, however limited may be
the field of its industry. Dwellings which were clearly built for
persons of wealth and position are let as tenements, and, there is,
consequently, an odd contrast between their stateliness and the dress
and appearance of those who lounge about their doors. However, the wide
central street of Barnard Castle, sloping down from the Market Place to
the river, still preserves an air of old-time respectability, and has
the sleepy aspect of a country town, as if it had dozed away a century
or two without activity or change. There is in this street a remarkable
old Elizabethan house, in which Oliver Cromwell is said to have lodged
himself for a while.
[Illustration: BARNARD CASTLE: THE TOWN.]
The Castle, which enclosed a circuit of six acres or more, was built
by Bernard Baliol, a son of that Guy Baliol whom I have had occasion
to mention in connection with Bywell-on-Tyne. A descendant of Bernard
climbed to the Scottish Throne, doing homage for the Crown at Newcastle
to the first Edward. Edward Baliol did like homage to Edward III. for
the crown and kingdom of Scotland. It was a short and unfortunate
dynasty which the Baliols founded, brought to an end by the battle of
Bannockburn. John Baliol presumed too much on his independence as a
king, wherefore his patron, Edward I., seized upon his castle and his
English estates, and the stately building on the banks of the Tees
was given to the Beauchamps of Warwick. Thence it passed by marriage
into the hands of the Nevilles, and was part of the dower of Anne
Neville, the daughter of the King-maker, when she married the scheming
politician who was to become Richard III. Gloucester not only dwelt
here for some time, but left decided marks of his tenancy, the latest
portions of the building being held by antiquarians to have been
erected under his superintendence. Since 1592 Barnard Castle has been a
ruin, the survey of that year exhibiting it as tenantless, mouldering,
and weather-worn, "the doors without locks, the windows without glass."
Below Barnard Castle there is an open space of greensward extending
over a few acres, and then the river, after falling over Creswick's
salmon pass, plunges once more into the woods. Between this point and
the village of Wycliffe lies the most lovely scenery of the Tees. At
about a mile from Barnard Castle, on the Yorkshire side, Thor's Gill
flows into the river through a deep ravine, and out of the neighbouring
trees rise the impressive ruins of Egliston Abbey. Tired indeed of the
world must have been those who came to this wild and lonely place for
service and prayer. With Thor's Gill beside them, and the Tees far
down below, in the front of their dwelling, they would look in all
other directions over miles of barren moor, now subdued and cultivated
by the plough. In time of flood the noise of waters must have drowned
the intoning of their psalms, for at this section of its course the
river is confined between rocky precipices, and ploughs its way over an
amazing bed of that marble for which Barnard Castle formerly had a sort
of fame.
There is a fine stone bridge below the Abbey, of one enormous span,
with the river flowing a hundred feet beneath,
"Through paths and alleys roofed with sombre green."
The Abbey of Egliston was founded about the beginning of the
thirteenth century, and was dedicated to St. Mary and St. John the
Baptist. Its inhabitants were the Premonstratensian or White Canons,
whose alleged object was to ensure a pure and contemplative life,
and who, in coming here, certainly removed themselves from the reach
of worldly temptations, and secured plenteous leisure for meditative
calm. They must have seemed like ghosts amid these woodlands, their
dress being a long white cassock, a rochet, a white cloak, and a
white cap. They are supposed to have been the schoolmasters of John
Wycliffe, who was born some four or five miles away, and who would
find only one other place of education within his reach. In Scott's
time some portions of the religious house attached to the Abbey were
still habitable, and until quite recently a hermit dwelt in one of
the chambers; but the progress of decay has, during the last five or
six years, been exceedingly rapid, and before long, probably, this
interesting ruin will be no more than a heap of grey stones. At my own
recent visit parts of the walls were being removed lest they should
fall in, and the materials were being employed in some farm buildings
near. There were signs of impending collapse elsewhere, and only such
restorations as would be a disfigurement could now save what remains of
the Abbey for future generations.
[Illustration: ON THE GRETA AT ROKEBY.]
About two miles from Egliston, still on the Yorkshire side, is the
fine domain of Rokeby Park, along one side of which the Greta flows to
the Tees. Greta Bridge is known to all lovers of literature through
the mention of it which is made by Dickens. It was there that Nicholas
Nickleby descended from the coach which had brought him thus far on
his way towards Dotheboys Hall. "About six o'clock that night he and
Mr. Squeers and the little boys and their united luggage, were all put
down together at the George and New Inn, Greta Bridge." Dickens insists
that whilst he was not exaggerating the cruelties practised on boys at
schools resembling Dotheboys Hall, Mr. Squeers was the representative
of a class and not of an individual. This is a view of the facts
that the people around Greta Bridge cannot be induced to accept, and
there is no doubt that the novelist really did--without intending it,
probably--very serious injury to one who is held by those who knew him
to have been a very estimable man.
[Illustration: JUNCTION OF THE GRETA AND THE TEES.]
There is now no one living to whom a relation of the facts can give
pain, and so they shall be stated briefly here. The school which
has been generally accepted as the subject of the great novelist's
savage exposure was situated at Bowes, four miles from Greta Bridge.
Bowes is no more than one straggling street, stretching away towards
the desolation of Stanmore, and the school which was identified with
Dotheboys Hall is the last house in the village, which lies along the
Roman road of the Watling Street. The place was kept by a Mr. Shaw,
who is said to have died of a broken heart. He had "only one eye," as
Dickens remarked of his grim tyrant; he had also a wife and a daughter
who assisted him in the management of the school. So far he "realises
the poster," as an actor would say. There is no doubt, either, that
his school was visited, and that he was seen by Dickens and by Hablot
Browne. The one eye was in itself, unfortunately, a sufficient means of
identification, there being no other one-eyed schoolmaster within any
known distance of Greta Bridge. Dickens may have meant no more than to
make use of this personal characteristic, combined with characteristics
derived from other sources, as in the almost equally unlucky Miss
Moucher case; but he had so associated a one-eyed schoolmaster with a
place not far from Greta Bridge that no amount of explanation could
remove the impression that Mr. Squeers was intended for Mr. Shaw, or
could repair what was unquestionably an injury to one who stood high
in the good opinion of his neighbours. All the members of the Squeers
group of characters, indeed, were identified with persons then living
in or around Bowes. John Browdie, for instance, is said to have been a
farmer named Brown, and of the Browns there are still several families
among the substantial farmers of the district. Of the good-feeling of
which Mr. Shaw was the subject there are evidences still remaining
in the resentment which is felt by the older inhabitants of Bowes
when any inquiry is made as to Dotheboys Hall. "You'd better gan and
inquire somewheere else," one of these remarked when questioned on the
subject. "Yow folks come here asking all manner of questions, and then
you gan and write bowks about us." The name of Dickens is absolutely
detested by some of those who know the circumstances. As to the lady
who was identified with Fanny Squeers, and who died but recently, she
is declared to have been distinguished by great kindness of heart,
"the sort of woman a dog or a child leaps to instinctively." In fact,
however true it may have been that "Mr. Squeers and his school are
faint and feeble pictures of an existing reality," it seems to be
placed beyond question by common testimony that this reality did not
exist at the village of Bowes, though nothing whatever can now remove
the impression that Dickens intended to represent the school of Mr.
Shaw.
[Illustration: WYCLIFFE.]
Besides the "George," mentioned by the novelist, there is at Greta
Bridge another well-known place of entertainment, the "Morritt Arms."
The village is scarcely of consequence, except as the site of a Roman
station, of which the remaining indications are now "a grassy trench,
a broken stone." The Greta is between here and the Tees so beautiful a
river that Scott exhausted upon it all his powers of description, both
in verse and prose. Having skirted Rokeby Park, it sweeps over a shelf
of rock under a moss-covered bridge half-hidden in trees, and there
meets with the obstacle of gigantic rocks, which seem as if they had
been carried down in some tremendous flood and piled together in the
central bed of the stream. Round these the Greta swirls to the Tees
in two long rushing curves when the river is high, but in quiet, dry
seasons it has one channel only, down which it rushes impetuously out
of the leafy shade into the open sunlight.
Two miles above Rokeby are those Brignal banks of which the poet sings--
"O, Brignal banks are wild and fair,
And Greta woods are green,
And you may gather garlands there
Would grace a summer queen."
The present mansion of Rokeby is modern, and occupies the site of a
manor house which was burned down by the Scots after the battle of
Bannockburn. The Rokebys were a powerful family in these parts up to
the occurrence of the civil wars. It was a Rokeby who, according to
Holinshed, defeated the insurrection of the Earl of Northumberland,
in the time of Henry IV., and slew the earl. Scott gives the whole of
the family pedigree in the notes to his poem, showing how the Rokebys
were High Sheriffs of Yorkshire through many generations, as well as
justiciaries, Secretaries of State, and members of Council. They were
destroyed by their loyalty and the bad faith of the Stuarts, as was
the case with so many other ancient families, and their estates, after
passing through the hands of the Robinsons, have been in the possession
of the Morritts through several generations.
There is a remarkable peel tower, with singularly light and graceful
battlements, broken into varying heights, on the ridge of a hill just
beyond the junction of the Greta with the Tees. It is now surrounded by
farm buildings, but is much visited on account of the spectre called
the Dobie of Mortham, a murdered lady whose blood the eye of strong
faith may still see on the steps of the tower.
High above the Tees on the Durham side, when Mortham has been passed,
may be seen the pretty village of Whorlton, the first red-tiled village
that we have so far encountered on Tees-side. It is approached by an
iron suspension bridge, which crosses the river at a point where its
broad bed of solid rock is curiously broken into long uneven steps,
giving it the appearance of having been quarried at some remote time,
and making a series of falls that, instead of crossing the river, as
ordinarily occurs, shelve along one side of it, and continue for long
distances, turning the current in an almost indescribable way.
[Illustration: GAINFORD.]
These singular breaks in the river bed mark the course of the Tees
until the Yorkshire village of Wycliffe is reached, something over a
mile from Mortham Tower. Except for the fact that the great Reformer
was born here, the place is as unimportant as a newly-planted city
in the American wilds; it consists, indeed, of no more than four or
five scattered cottages, a parsonage, a church, and Wycliffe Hall. The
parsonage is very large, and the church is very diminutive, seeming to
be only an ornament of the parsonage grounds. But around this little
church many of the Wycliffes lie buried, and among the monumental
brasses there is one recording the death and the burial of the last of
the name. Even yet, however, the Wycliffe blood is not extinct, for
it flows in the veins of Sir Talbot Clifford Constable, the owner and
tenant of Wycliffe Hall. If the "Morning Star of the Reformation" did
not receive his first teaching at Egliston Abbey, as Dr. Vaughan has
surmised, he must have ascended the hill from Wycliffe to where now
stands the pretty village of Ovington, for here was formerly a priory
of Gilbertine canons, though no traces of it now remain. Ovington
stands higher than any other village on Tees-side, and from the level
of its green the woods through which the river surges are far down
below, so that even their highest tops do not reach to the crown of the
ridge. Ovington is a right sweet and pleasant and prosperous village,
much beloved of anglers, there being abundant fish. Nowhere is the Tees
more shaded and beautiful, with its stream broken up into many currents
by a series of wooded islands, on which the easy-going inadventurous
fisher may lie under the leafy branches through torrid summer days.
[Illustration: CROFT.]
[Illustration: BLACKWELL BRIDGE.]
Ovington is a village with a maypole in the middle of its green--a
maypole with tattered garlands still clinging to its iron crown. The
neat cottages all have their little gardens in front, and are roofed
with rich brown tiles. There is a hostelry with the curious sign of
"The Four Alls," where one may find such entertainment as few villages
in England can provide, and sit in rooms over the decoration of which
an obviously æsthetic taste has presided. The sign of "The Four Alls"
is weather-stained unduly, but one may still discern pictures of a
crowned king, with the motto, "I govern all;" of a soldier, with the
motto, "I fight for all;" of a bishop, with the motto, "I pray for
all;" and of a husbandman, with his motto of "I pay for all." This is
possibly a product of the native Yorkshire wit, of the same variety as
that which has designed the Yorkshire coat of arms, "A flea, a fly, a
flitch of bacon, and a magpie."
[Illustration: YARM.]
The Tees has much loveliness but little variety between Ovington and
Yarm; it has lost most of its wilder features, and--through many a
winding curve, for it is an erratic river, bending and turning with a
strange wilfulness--its deep woods
"in seeming silence make
A soft eye-music of slow waving boughs,
Powerful almost as vocal harmony."
At Gainford, which clusters round a large village green, there is
an air of rustic fashion and luxury, for here reside many prosperous
persons who have places of business in Darlington, which is seven
miles away. Gainford boasts of a medicinal spring, or spa. It is a
pretty strong fountain of water, situated about half a mile from the
village, and close to the banks of the Tees, which at this place has
a pathway through the woods. It is affirmed of the Gainford spa that
whilst the water has the usual "smell of rotten eggs" it is innocent
of unpleasant taste, an asseveration which, having tested it, I cannot
conscientiously confirm. The church of Gainford, it is stated in all
the guide-books, is of great antiquity, having been built by Egred,
Bishop of Lindisfarne, between the years 998 and 1018; but as a matter
of fact scarcely anything of this old church remains, except a few
sculptured stones and fragments of crosses which have been built, in
an exceedingly _olla podrida_ manner, into the porch of the present
building, where I found displayed a carefully detailed statement of
the week's revenue, amounting to the sum of fifteen shillings and
eightpence-halfpenny. On the Yorkshire bank, opposite to Gainford,
there is the end of an ancient earthwork, which runs across country
from the Swale to the Tees, and which is surmised to be older than the
Roman conquest of Britain. At Gainford, Samuel Garth, the poet of the
"Dispensary," was born.
Two miles from this village, and by so much nearer to the wealthy
"Quaker town" of Darlington, a noble stone bridge crosses the Tees,
connecting the Yorkshire bank with the site of the ancient Roman
station of Magis. Pierce Bridge carries the old Roman road--the Leeming
Lane--from Durham to Yorkshire. Careless antiquaries call it the
Watling Street, which, however, we left behind us at Greta Bridge. For
twenty miles or so, or for an equal space on either side of the Tees,
the Leeming Lane, which has various local designations, is probably
the straightest road in all England. One may see it rising and falling
for miles in front, always keeping the direct course, whatever may
be the depressions in the land. At Pierce Bridge, which is famous
for its fishing, and where the trout may be seen lightly disporting
themselves, the forces under the Earl of Newcastle had a skirmish with
those of Lord Fairfax in 1642, at the hottest period of the civil war.
A mile further down the river is High Coniscliffe, which is quaintly
situated above a sudden cliff, so that it seems as if the first
buildings erected here must have been intended for defence. It is but
a very little cluster of buildings, this High Coniscliffe, taking its
name, perhaps, from the fact that the river banks hereabouts are much
frequented by rabbits, as, indeed, is the case with the banks of the
Tees from Rokeby downwards. The one prominent building is the church,
which has the peculiarity of being seven times as long as it is broad.
The other singularity is that the pillars supporting the arches of the
nave are no more than six feet in height. Low Coniscliffe, two miles
away, is a more humble place, with no appearance of a cliff to account
for its designation, and with an aspect of old-world poverty such as is
presented by no other place with which we have, so far, met. At this
point the interest of the river is, for the present, exhausted, and its
beauty is gone, for just beyond Low Coniscliffe there is a quarter of a
mile or so of waterworks, stretching on either side of the main road to
Darlington, the three towns of Stockton, Darlington, and Middlesbrough,
here pumping their water from the Tees. Darlington itself we leave to
our left, but pass the mansions of some of its wealthy men--the Peases,
the Backhouses, the Frys--who, however much they may retain of the old
Quaker simplicity, certainly make no striking exhibition of it in the
character of their dwellings.
Three miles from "the Quaker town," and a much greater distance from
High Coniscliffe, as the river winds, is the ancient village of Croft,
occupying both banks of the Tees. On the Yorkshire side is the famous
spa, to which invalids resort to drink the waters and to take the
baths, and where marvellous cures are said to have been effected in
times past. There are four sulphureous springs, of a much more decided
character than the one already visited at Gainford, and owing, it
may be, some part of their attractiveness to the sweetness of their
situation. Croft is very commonplace on the Durham and very lovely on
the Yorkshire side. The stone bridge which connects the two portions of
the village, built in 1676, is the finest which crosses the Tees at any
part of its course. It is on the site of an older structure, which was
deemed greatly important by Henry VIII., as "the most directe and sure
way and passage for the king our Sovereign Lord's army," when it was
necessary to march against the Scots. The present bridge has a series
of seven ribbed arches of fair width, and is so substantial that it is
likely to endure until it can boast a more than respectable antiquity.
Croft Church is a half-brown, half-grey old building of mixed materials
and of most evident age. It has an appearance more worn and dilapidated
even than its years warrant, though it was built at least as early as
the fifteenth century, seeing that it contains a tomb of one Richard
Clervaux, who died in 1492. The interior of the church has great
architectural interest, and the exterior is, in its quaint way, one of
those "things of beauty" which deserve to remain "joys for ever." In
this church Bishop Burnet may have listened to his first sermon, for it
was at Croft that he was born.
The Lord of the Manor of Croft, by the way, formerly held his lands
on the peculiar condition that he should meet every newly-appointed
Bishop of Durham on Croft Bridge, and, presenting him with a rusty old
sword, declare--"My lord, this is the sword which slew the worm-dragon,
which spared neither man nor woman nor child." Traditions of these
worm-dragons are plentiful in the north of England. There was, for
example, "the Lambton worm," slain by an ancestor of the present Earl
of Durham, which used to devour a maiden at a meal; and there was
"the loathly worm of Spindleston Haugh," with a similarly voracious
appetite. The lands of Croft had evidently been given to some supposed
dragon-slayer, and were continued to his descendants by the yielding up
and the immediate return of the famous sword.
We are now more than ever reminded that the Tees is the dividing line
of two counties. Though the river has constantly increased in width,
all the towns from Croft downwards are situated more or less on each
side of the stream. The first of these is the quiet and sleepy town
of Yarm, with a single broad street on one side of the river, and a
few scattered houses and windmills on the other. Up to Yarm the tide
reaches, and here also the net-fishing for salmon begins, small cobles,
with salmon-nets on board, being plentiful in the neighbourhood of Yarm
Bridge. What else the people of Yarm do for a living in these days is
not readily discernible. In former times they were shipbuilders on a
limited scale, though they must have been exceedingly small vessels
which could be launched in such a situation. Yet there must have been
some period of great prosperity in the previous history of the place,
as will be guessed from the fact that the houses are almost all of
great width and height, and--as is evident from a peculiarity of style
not seen elsewhere--were built with some thought of show. The one
street of the place is of the width of three or four streets in the
more crowded quarters of the larger towns lower down the Tees, and
has in its centre an odd sort of Town Hall, like a large sentry-box
on arches. At Yarm we set our faces towards the great, growing
Tees-side towns, passing the pretty bridge at Blackwell, where Sir
Henry Havelock-Allan has a beautiful seat. Already the smoke of great
industries is darkening the atmosphere, and when the wind is still and
the clouds are low, a black, unpleasant haze creeps over the face of
the country and spreads itself far inland.
[Illustration: STOCKTON.]
By the time it reaches Stockton Bridge the Tees has been transformed
from one of the most wild and lovely to one of the most tame and
repellent of existing rivers. Its soiled waters henceforth flow between
banks of blast-furnace slag; unpleasant odours float about its shores;
it is ploughed by great steamships; all around there is the smoke of
furnaces, the noise of hammers, the ugliness of trade. Stockton is a
town of ancient foundation, which, after sleeping beside the Tees for
ages, suddenly woke up to find itself in the nineteenth century, and,
full of the nineteenth century desire to "get on," shook off its old
apathy, measured itself against the age, deepened its river, built
ships, smelted ironstone, cast and forged and manufactured, until it
found itself accepted as one of the most spirited and enterprising of
English towns. In the process of growth everything that may have been
beautiful in its surroundings has been destroyed, and now, glorying in
its ugliness, it flaunts its frightful aspect as one of its claims to
consideration.
[Illustration: HIGH STREET, STOCKTON.]
Stockton Manor was granted to the see of Durham after the Conquest. A
fortress was built, as was so necessary in those days, and the place
was visited in 1214 by King John. In the sixteenth century Stockton
was a town to which a Bishop of Durham might retreat from the Plague.
The castle was taken by the Parliamentarians in 1644, and destroyed,
the only stone houses in Stockton a few years ago being such as were
built from the castle walls. There is one fine street and a Borough
Hall, but every other part of Stockton bears witness to the fact that
a town which is engaged in growing and prospering has neither time nor
inclination to attend to its looks. As to the growth of the last half
century, there is only one town--the neighbouring Middlesbrough--by
which it has been excelled.
At the beginning of the century Stockton had already a shipping trade,
but one that could seem important only in the eyes of its 11,000
inhabitants. At that time the river kept a tortuous, shallow course
until it arrived at the wide, sandy flats which stretched far eastward
to the sea. The first improvement was a straightening of its course,
which dates back to the year 1810. The effect was a heightening of
the tide from eight to ten feet at Stockton Quay, and little short
of a doubling of the shipping trade. The construction of the first
public railway came just in time to encourage the town in its efforts
at development. A Tees Conservancy was formed, with the consequence
that the river was so dredged, banked up, and reformed generally,
that Stockton is now not only a considerable port and an important
manufacturing town, but a centre of shipbuilding, the vessels built
here being as large as many of those which are constructed on the Tyne.
Wealth and population have increased enormously, and there seems no
necessary limit to further industrial development.
Any accurate description of Stockton is in many respects applicable to
Middlesbrough, a still more wonderful town, which has, within living
memory, sprung up close to the estuary of the Tees. Fifty years ago
there was only a single farmstead where the great town of Middlesbrough
now stands. The United States have few examples of such marvellous
growth. At the census of 1831 there were 154 persons in Middlesbrough,
and at the census of 1881 the population was 55,281. It was in 1830
that the present town was founded, on 500 acres of marshy land. It
has been assisted both by enterprise and good fortune. Originally
it was intended as a port for the shipping of coals; but iron was
discovered in the Cleveland hills, and blast furnaces were built where
it was supposed that only coal-staithes would be seen. The first ton
of Cleveland ironstone was mined in 1850, and in sixteen years the
output was no less than two and three quarter millions of tons. When
the iron trade was declining, a decade since, Middlesbrough men set
themselves to devise new methods of manufacturing steel, with the
result that Middlesbrough steel is now in demand all over the world.
Talent, enterprise, the bounty of Nature, have all combined to make of
Middlesbrough one of our large centres of population and industry, and
to bring about a growth so rapid as has not previously been witnessed
in the history of our country.
The brief voyage down the Tees from Stockton to below Middlesbrough
should be made in the night time, when clouds of smoke are shot
through by columns of flame; when the furnace fires are blazing out
into the darkness; when seething bars of iron, crushing and straining
through the rolling-mills, make the forges look like some huge
Vulcan's smithy; when the steel converters are sending out a fiery
rain; and when the Tees is reflecting all manner of strange lights
and weird coruscations--an appalling sight to one not accustomed to
such spectacles, but grand and deeply impressive and wonderfully
characteristic of the age in which we live.
Middlesbrough has its fine docks, crowded with shipping. Where, a few
years ago, the Tees spread itself over a broad estuary, the channel
of the river has been divided from the wide stretch of mud and sand
and creeping waves by a curving groin of slag; lines of light stretch
downward as far as the eye can follow, guiding ships to the desired
haven. Henceforth the Tees--
"Not hurled precipitous from steep to steep;
Lingering no more 'mid flower-enamelled lands
And blooming thickets; nor by rocky bands
Held; but in radiant progress towards the deep"--
flows broadly onward to the Northern Sea.
[Illustration: FERRYBOAT LANDING, MIDDLESBROUGH.]
During the last quarter of a century the river below Stockton has
been constantly undergoing a process of enlargement and improvement,
necessarily accompanied by a destruction of its former picturesque
beauty. The work done is in the highest sense creditable to northern
enterprise. The foundation stones of two great breakwaters were laid
in 1863, these defences against the incoming waves being appropriately
built of slag from the furnaces of Middlesbrough and Stockton. The
large quantity of 443,000 tons of this material was deposited in a
single year, and by 1874, when close upon £100,000 had been spent, it
was possible to report that a shifting bed of sand had been replaced
by a solid and immovable wall. The breakwaters have cost close upon a
quarter of a million sterling at the present date, a sum well expended,
for a fine harbour has now been constructed only less important than
that of the Tyne. On good authority it has been declared that the
recent improvements on the Tees are to be ranked amongst the most
successful engineering works of the century.
Messrs. Besant and Rice have made the marvellous development of
Middlesbrough the leading motive of one of their most striking novels.
The mere history of the place is in itself a romance. So recently as
in 1831 the place had only 154 inhabitants, and it has now, it is
believed, considerably more than 60,000. Until iron was discovered
in the Cleveland Hills the smelting works of the North of England
were situated almost solely on the Tyne and the Wear. The finding of
Cleveland iron made a vast change in the _locale_ of a great industry,
and covered the low-lying and desolate lands near the estuary of the
Tees with mighty forges, and blast furnaces, and iron shipbuilding
yards and crowded streets. Where, sixty years ago, a shallow stream
wound down to the sea, with only an occasional house discernible along
its banks, there is now one of the finest outlets of our commerce and
manufactures, and a deep river flowing through thickly populated towns.
And as regards development the end is not yet. It has seemed more
than once that Middlesbrough would collapse almost as rapidly as it has
grown up, but it has risen stronger from every depression, and some
new invention or discovery has at each crisis brought its assurance of
continued life and growth.
However, it is an unlovely Tees that the eye alights upon since the
smoke of the blast furnaces came in sight. It would scarcely be
possible for a river so beautiful in its upper reaches to undergo a
more surprising and spirit-depressing change. Yet standing on the lofty
quays at Middlesbrough and looking seaward, one is conscious of a throb
of exhilaration, such as the hero of "Locksley Hall" must have felt
when, imagining the future, he--
"Saw the heavens fill with commerce, argosies of magic sails,
Pilots of the purple twilight, dropping down with costly bales."
In the perpetual coming and going of great steamers, bringing in
cargoes of "wheat and wine and oil," and carrying out to all lands the
produce of English industry and skill, there is a spectacle which very
well atones for the destruction of some little picturesqueness here and
there. What was bright and pleasant only is often enough in these cases
replaced by what, when properly considered, is sublime.
AARON WATSON.
[Illustration: BLAST FURNACES, FROM THE RIVER, MIDDLESBROUGH.]
[Illustration: IN THE POTTERIES.]
THE HUMBER AND ITS TRIBUTARIES.
CHAPTER I.
THE TRENT, FROM THE SOURCE TO NEWTON SOLNEY.
The Course of the Trent--A Lowland Stream--Etymological--A
Fish-Stream--The Source--The Potteries--Burslem,
Etruria, and Josiah Wedgwood--Stoke-upon-Trent--Trentham
Hall--Stone--Sandon--Chartley Castle--Ingestre and its
Owners--The Sow--Tixall--Essex Bridge--Shugborough--Cannock
Chase--Rugeley--Beaudesert--Armitage--The Blyth--Alrewas--The
Tame--Burton-upon-Trent--Newton Solney.
Some of our chief English rivers seek out paths for their waters,
the motive of which is by no means easy to explain. Father Thames,
indeed, goes about this work in a fairly businesslike way. Born on
the eastern slopes of the Cotswolds he makes his way to the sea by a
tolerably direct course. Not so Trent. Rising on the western slopes of
the backbone of England, one would have expected that, like the Weaver
on the one side of it, and the Dane on the other, it would have made
its way towards the estuaries of the Dee or the Mersey; but it flows
first of all nearly south, parallel with the trend of the great hill
district of Derbyshire and North Staffordshire, and then after this has
sunk down to the lowlands of the latter county, Trent bends towards
the east, until the hills are left behind, when it sweeps round to the
north, and so makes its way towards the Ouse and the Humber. Thus its
course, like that of Dee, still more of Severn, may be roughly likened
to a fish-hook. But, unlike these rivers, and like Thames, Trent,
throughout its whole course, is a lowland rather than an upland stream.
The hill region already mentioned is, indeed, drained by some of its
tributaries, and its western slopes give birth to the little stream
which first bears the name of Trent, and for a time traverses the
North Staffordshire coalfield, but the river soon enters the district
composed of sandstones, gravels, and marls (referred by geologists
to the Trias), and as these are but rarely either hard or durable,
the scenery is neither bold nor conspicuously varied. Such change as
it exhibits is due rather to difference of productiveness than to
diversity of physical features. In regard to the latter the extremes
are only from level plain to undulating hills of moderate elevation,
but the former affords every variety between barren moorland and
densely wooded or richly cultivated ground.
Michael Drayton thus explains the etymology of Trent, and assigns to it
a mystic significance when he tells the tale of
... A long-told prophecy, which ran
Of Moreland, that she might live prosperously to see
A river born of her, who well might reckoned be
The third of this large isle: which saw did first arise
From Arden, in those days delivering prophecies.
* * * * *
To satisfy her will, the wizard answers, Trent.
For, as a skilful seer, the aged forest wist,
A more than usual power did in that name consist,
Which thirty doth import; by which she thus divined,
There should be found in her of fishes thirty kind;
And thirty abbeys great, in places fat and rank,
Should in succeeding time have builded on her bank;
And thirty several streams from many a sundry way
Unto her greatness should their watery tribute pay.
On the same side may be quoted Camden and Spenser and Milton, yet
philology is too strong for poetry, and modern scholars declare that
the name Trent has nothing to do with the Latin word for thirty or any
of its modifications in the Romance languages, but is of Celtic origin,
is only a contracted form of Derwent, and means river-water. The first
of the two words which compose the dissyllable Derwent, and enter into
the monosyllabic Trent, is that which appears in the Doire, Dora,
Douro, Durance, and other European rivers; the second is indicated by
the Latin Venta, a name borne by more than one riverside town in Roman
Britain.
The Trent and its tributaries were noted of old as fish-streams,
and even now, after years of neglect and poaching, it would not be
difficult to make up the "thirty kinds of fish" which were once said
to people its waters. Isaak Walton has made the upper reaches of the
Dove classic ground; and there, as in the Blyth, and in gravelly parts
of the main river, one may yet see "here and there a lusty trout and
here and there a grayling." Eels were and still are numerous in the
more muddy parts of its bed; pike are also common, though the giants of
olden days are vanished like the Rephaim; for in the last century, a
county historian tells us, fish weighing more than twenty pounds were
not seldom caught, and one monster of thirty-six pounds is said to have
been found dead. The barbel also is a Trent fish, and the stream may
claim the salmon. One was caught many years ago so far away from the
sea as Rugeley, but it was white and out of season. Swans in several
districts add to the beauty of its waters, and build their nests by its
side among the willow-beds and reeds.
The river is navigable only as far as Burton, for above that town it is
interrupted by weirs and by shallows; but canals follow the valley, and
in the year 1849 the railroad uniting Rugby with Stafford passed along
it for a few miles, and directed through a district, hitherto secluded,
the traffic between London and Holyhead or the great towns of western
Lancashire. This railway quitted the Trent near its junction with the
Sow, but a few years later the towns higher up the river, forming
the important district of the Staffordshire Potteries, were reached
by a line which branches off from the main system of the London and
North-Western Company at Colwich.
[Illustration:
_Walker & Boutall sc._
THE TRENT, FROM THE SOURCE TO NEWTON SOLNEY.]
The birthplace of Trent, like that of many persons afterwards famous,
is inconspicuous. The river, according to Erdeswick, "hath its first
spring in the moorlands between Bidulph and Norton, and divideth the
shire almost into two equal parts, north and south." There is little
to note in its earlier course. One or two of the adjacent villages
possess some link with our older history, notably "Stanleghe," of
which the author just quoted says, "of this small village do all the
great houses of Stanley take their name." But before long a district
is entered, unpleasing indeed to the artist, but welcome to the man
of commerce--a land of chimneys and smoke, of kilns and furnaces, not
only for earth but also for metal. This is the district popularly
called the Potteries, a group of towns often so nearly confluent
as to defy distinction by all but residents. Tunstall and Burslem,
Newcastle-under-Lyme, Hanley and Stoke-upon-Trent: these, with such
suburbs as Etruria, occupy a strip of country some ten miles long,
drained by the youthful Trent and its tributaries, a composite or
confluent hive of human bees. We will venture but on one positive
statement, that Stoke-upon-Trent is the last of these towns, and below
it the river emerges into more attractive scenery. In this district the
smelting furnaces and ironworks are industries comparatively modern,
but for centuries it has been noted for its earthenware. Burslem, one
of the towns more distant from the Trent, appears to be the oldest,
for under the name of Bulwardsleme it is mentioned in Domesday Book,
and its "butter-pots" were noted in the days of the Stuarts. When Dr.
Plot wrote his History of Staffordshire--that is, during the short
reign of James II.--it was the chief place for the potter's industry,
and he tells us that "for making several sorts of pots they have as
many different sorts of clay, which they dig round about the town, all
within half a mile's distance, the best being found near the coal."
This earthenware was all coloured, for the white clay from Cornwall had
not yet been imported into the district. The most marked advance was
due to one man--Josiah Wedgwood, who was born to the trade in 1730.
The effect of an illness in youth led him to turn his thoughts to the
more delicate work, and he soon exhibited great skill in manufacturing
ornamental pottery. When nearly thirty years old he established himself
in business at Burslem, and produced such results as the white-stone
ware, green glazed earthenware, cream-coloured Queen's ware, and the
unglazed black porcelain. The works, however, at Burslem soon proved
too small for his needs, and in 1766 he purchased an estate, built
a large establishment on the bank of the Grand Trunk Canal, between
Hanley and Newcastle, calling it Etruria, in remembrance of the
so-called "Etruscan vases," which were among his favourite models.
Aided in business by his partner, Bentley, in art by the talent of
Flaxman, Wedgwood prospered, and Etruria under his management surpassed
the fame of Worcester, and rivalled that of Sèvres or Dresden.
Wedgwood, in fact, by the graceful form and harmonious decoration of
his wares, did not a little to educate the national taste and raise it
from the easy contentment with opulent ugliness which is the general
characteristic of the "Hanoverian period" of British Art. Since his
days the village has become a town; the ironworks of Shelton have
helped in blackening the precincts of Etruria Hall, which Wedgwood
built, and in the cellars of which he made his experiments; Spode and
Minton and Copeland have added to the fame of the Potteries; villages
and towns have grown beyond recognition, and houses have hid what once
were fields; but though these and other makers have produced, or still
produce, many admirable and characteristic works, "old Wedgwood ware"
maintains a unique position among the masterpieces of ceramic art.
[Illustration: ETRURIA.]
[Illustration: JOSIAH WEDGWOOD.]
We must not linger over the Grand Trunk Canal, nor the fame of
Brindley, the engineer, a native of this part of Staffordshire, nor
shall we be much tempted to tarry in Stoke-upon-Trent--at any rate,
for æsthetic reasons--unless we confine ourselves to the interior of
its show rooms, though there is many a worse place to live in. It is
mightily changed since the days when Erdeswick wrote of it, "Of Stoke I
can report no more but that the parson of the parish is the best man in
the town, being lord thereof, and it being one of the best parsonages
in the county." The parson now is a bishop and a baronet, but the town
is yet more important.
[Illustration: TRENTHAM.]
It contains many buildings which larger towns could not despise: a
handsome modern church, a fine town-hall, and a school of science
and art, which is a memorial to the late Mr. Minton. Statues, or
monuments of some kind, to several members of the great potter
families--Wedgwood, Spode, Minton, and others--will be found here,
and the town itself is regarded as the centre and show place of the
district.
Below Stoke, and almost within sight of its chimneys by the side of
Trent, stands one of the "stately homes" of England--Trentham Hall,
a seat of the Duke of Sutherland. The mansion lies low on the flat
bed of the valley; the park mounts the slopes on the right hand, thus
affording great variety of scenery, from richly-wooded meadows to
rather open moorland. There is nothing to suggest a settlement of great
antiquity, yet a monastery was founded here in the days of Alfred.
Enlarged by Ranulf Earl of Chester, it passed, after the Dissolution,
into the hands of the Levesons, ancestors of the present duke. One of
them built on its site a fine Jacobean house, of which Plot gives a
plate together with the following quaint note: "The stone-rail upon
the wall built about the green-court before Trentham House is a pretty
piece of work, it being supported with Roman capital letters instead of
ballisters, containing an inscription not only setting forth the name
of the ancient Proprietor and builder of this Seat, but the time when
it was done, the Numeral Letters put together making up the year of our
Lord, when it was finish't, viz., 1633."
This house was pulled down early in the last century, when the nucleus
of the present mansion was erected, which, however, was greatly
enlarged and altered by Sir Charles Barry in the time of the late duke.
The church, which adjoins the house, contains remnants of very early
work and some interesting monuments. There is a large sheet of water in
the gardens, which are famed for many a mile round for their beauty,
and surpass any that will be found elsewhere near the margin of the
Trent.
After passing Trentham the river gradually loses the traces of the
grime of the potteries and coalfields, and glides along through
pleasant pastoral scenery till it reaches Stone. This, for long a
sleepy little country town, has been awakened by the railway and
other causes, and seems now to be a fairly busy and thriving place,
devoted chiefly to malting, brewing, and shoemaking. There is little to
indicate antiquity, except a few fragments of an old nunnery, for the
church dates from the last century, when that which had once served the
religious house tumbled down.
Stone, nevertheless, begins its history more than twelve centuries
ago. There lived then a certain Wulfere, king of Mercia, who had a
residence somewhere near Stone: tradition asserts at Bury Bank, rather
higher up the Trent, where an earthwork still exists. Wulfere was a
heathen and a persecutor, but a holy hermit, named Ceadda, better known
as St. Chad, who died bishop of Lichfield, was dwelling hidden in the
neighbouring forest. The king's two sons were hunting one day, and were
led by the chase to the saint's abode. The young men felt the charm of
his words, repeated their visit, and became converts. Of course this
was soon made known to their father; the parent was forgotten in the
persecutor, and the young men were put to death. But time brought its
revenges, though in this case merciful. Before many years were over
Wulfere himself became a Christian, and then, as a monument of sorrow
and penitence, he founded a monastery at Stone, where also a nunnery
was established by his queen.
The last statement, as to the date of the foundation, is probably
true, but all the rest of the story, like many another concerning
Chad, is only legend. Since then Stone, as is the case with many other
country towns, has shared in the beatitude of having no history. The
suppression of its convents, the ruin of its church, and a connection
with the Rebellion of 1745--the latter events happening in the same
decade--appear to have been the chief incidents that have ruffled its
even existence. The last-named incident might have given it a place in
national history, had things taken another course. The young Pretender
Charles Edward, after his triumph in Scotland, had crossed the Solway,
and begun his invasion of England. He was expected to advance upon
London along the line of the main road from Manchester, so the Duke
of Cumberland encamped in the neighbourhood of Stone to dispute his
passage. Charles, however, as is well known, struck eastward, and on
arriving at Derby, was a long day's march nearer London than the duke's
army. The inherent weakness of his forces averted the danger, and the
Hanoverian troops had only to pursue the retreating enemy till he made
his last hopeless stand on the moor of Culloden.
Below Stone the river passes Sandon, an old village. There are not many
prettier places in all the valley of the Trent than the park of the
Harrowbys with its slopes of grove and sward, the higher parts of which
command views of unusual extent, not only over the rich river valley of
the Trent, but also as far as the Wrekin and Caradoc hills. On elevated
ground, at the edge of the park, is the parish church, containing
several interesting remains of olden time, the most conspicuous, though
by no means the most ancient, being the monument to Sampson Erdeswick,
the historian of Staffordshire, and former owner of the estate, who
died in the year 1603. The property ultimately passed into the hands
of the Duke of Hamilton, and a law-suit in regard to it is reported to
have occasioned the quarrel between the duke and Lord Mohun which, as
is well known, had so tragic an ending. Erdeswick's house, of which
the site is still marked, was a fine old brick and timber edifice,
surrounded by a moat; but in the last century a new and uninteresting
mansion was erected by Lord Archibald Hamilton, which was burned down
in 1848, and replaced by a more handsome building in the Tudor style.
From him the property was purchased by an ancestor of the present
owner, the Earl of Harrowby.
Rather below Sandon, near the little village of Shirleywich, brine is
obtained. Fortunately, however, for the beauty of the scenery, there
has been no temptation to establish extensive salt works. The quiet
little villages on the lowlands, near the river, offer nothing to delay
the traveller; but the grey ruins, high on the left bank, mark a place
of some note. Those two broken towers, those fragments of curtain-wall,
are remnants of Chartley Castle; the moorland, which extends back from
the park, is one of the few spots in England where the descendants of
_bos primigenius_ still linger on in a semi-wild condition. The castle,
though it carries back its history to early in the thirteenth century,
makes little figure in history. The present house is on lower ground,
and parts of it are older than the reign of Elizabeth, who not only
visited it herself, but made it one of the prisons of Mary Queen of
Scots. The estate formerly was included among those of the great Earls
of Chester, but has for long been part of the family property of the
present owner, Earl Ferrers. There is a tragic tale about a former
earl, who was a man of ungovernable temper--probably insane, and shot
his own steward. Feudal times were then too far away, and his coronet
could not save him from the halter.
[Illustration: INGESTRE HALL.]
The wild cattle, of which it is not generally easy, and, at certain
seasons, not always safe, to obtain a near view are, according to Shaw,
the historian of Staffordshire, "in colour invariably white, muzzles
and ears black, and horns white, fine-tipped with black." If a black
calf be born it is promptly destroyed, not only because it might alter
the constancy of the breed, but also because it is deemed an evil omen,
for its birth, so folk believe, is followed by the death of a member of
the family.
[Illustration: WOLSELEY BRIDGE.]
[Illustration: SHUGBOROUGH.]
Some distance away, on the opposite bank of the Trent, just where the
ground begins to rise from the level of the valley, stands one of the
most picturesque, and formerly one of the most interesting, mansions
along the whole course of the river. This is Ingestre, the home of the
Chetwynd-Talbots, now Earls of Shrewsbury. Formerly it was a perfect
specimen of an Elizabethan mansion, but in the year 1882 it was reduced
by fire to a mere shell of masonry, and many family relics of interest
were destroyed. It has, however, been rebuilt, and as in many places
the old walls had remained uninjured, the external appearance is little
changed. The plate in Plot's "Staffordshire" represents a formal garden
and courtyard in front, with the church close at hand, near the eastern
end of the house, to which some additions have been subsequently made.
The other features, though they can still be traced in part, have been
modified in compliance with the less formal taste of later ages; but
the church is unaltered--a grey stone structure of little architectural
beauty, erected in the latter part of the seventeenth century by the
owner of the estates in place of one which occupied a less convenient
situation, and was in a dilapidated condition. This is the history of
its consecration, as it is given by Plot, who tells us that milled
shillings, halfpence, and farthings "coyn'd that year (1673) were put
into hollow places cut for that purpose in the larger corner-stone of
the steeple." Afterwards he continues, "The church being thus finisht
at the sole charge of the said Walter Chetwynd, in August An. 1677 it
was solemnly consecrated by the right Reverend Father in God Thomas
Lord Bishop of Coventry and Lichfield; the Dean of Lichfield preaching
the Sermon, and some others of the most eminent Clergy reading prayers;
baptizing a Child; Churching a woman; joyning a couple in Matrimony and
burying another; all which offices were also there performed the same
day. The pious and generous Founder and Patron offering upon the Altar
the tithes of Hopton a village hard by, to the value of fifty pounds
_per Annum_, as an addition to the Rectory for ever: presenting the
Bishop and Dean at the same time, each with a piece of plate double
guilt, as a gratefull acknowledgment of their service: and entertaining
the Nobility, Clergy, and Gentry, both Men and Women, of the whole
County in a manner, which came that day to see the solemnity performed,
with a most splendid dinner at his house near adjoyning."
The owners of Ingestre were descendants of the great Talbot family
which fills so large a space in English history during the middle
ages. The titles of Earl Talbot and Viscount Ingestre were conferred
in the eighteenth century, and in the year 1856, in the lifetime of
the third earl, the great law-suit was begun to establish his right
to the earldom of Shrewsbury, and the large estates covered by the
entail. For at least a century and a half the Earls of Shrewsbury had
been Roman Catholics, and during all that time the title had not gone
by direct descent, so it had become a saying in the county that so
long as a Romanist held the title, no heir would be born to him. Thus,
on the death of Earl Bertram, while still a young man and unmarried,
great doubt existed as to the succession. The suit "involved two
separate questions, namely, who was really the next-of-kin, and whether
the estates were separable from the earldom. These had been entailed
by an Act of Parliament obtained by the Duke of Shrewsbury, in the
beginning of the eighteenth century, but it was doubtful whether the
entail did not expire in the person of the young Earl Bertram. He
was of opinion that it did, and being an ardent Roman Catholic, left
the estates and all the art treasures contained in Alton Towers (the
principal seat of his ancestors) to the Duke of Norfolk, so that they
might still be owned by an obedient son of the Pope of Rome. It was,
however, contended that the entail was yet valid and the estates were
inseparable from the title. For the latter two claimants appeared, the
one Earl Talbot of Ingestre in Staffordshire, the other Major Talbot
of Castle Talbot, county Wexford. The former claimed as descendant of
a son of the second wife of a certain Sir John Talbot of Albrighton,
grandson of the second Earl of Shrewsbury; the latter as a descendant
of a son of the first wife of the same person. If Major Talbot could
have proved his pedigree, obviously he would have succeeded. This,
however, he failed to do to the satisfaction of the House of Lords,
who decided that Henry John Chetwynd, the Earl of Talbot, had made out
his claim. He accordingly took the oath and his seat as eighteenth
earl, June 10th, 1858. The important suit about the estates was not
decided till 1860, when the Court of Exchequer pronounced the will of
the late Earl Bertram, as far as concerned the entailed property, to be
invalid."[2]
Neither the winner, nor his son and successor, lived long to enjoy
their victory, and the title devolved upon the present earl when he was
still a boy. However, the charm seems broken, and the popular belief
has been confirmed, for the earldom has already twice descended in the
direct line.
Beautiful as is Ingestre Hall, its situation is hardly less attractive.
The ground swells up from the old-fashioned garden into low hills,
carpeted with grass, and shaded by fine old trees and clustering
copses, which at last sink down into the rich meadows, through which
the Trent winds slowly on. Rather below Ingestre it receives its first
important affluent, which bears the prosaic name of the Sow. It is
a stream of hardly less magnitude, but of less beauty and interest,
which comes down a broad and well-marked valley from Stafford; this,
though the chief town of the county, possesses little to interest
the traveller; it is, however, an important railway junction, and
is, besides, busied in shoemaking. The Sow also, before reaching the
Trent, receives an affluent which is hardly less than itself. This is
the Penk, which rises on the edge of the industrial district of South
Staffordshire, and follows a northerly course through pleasant scenery
on the western border of Cannock Chase until it meets the Sow.
Between the latter river and the Trent lies the estate of Tixall, once
the property of the Astons and then of the Cliffords, but purchased
some forty years since by the Talbots. The house, which stands nearer
to the Sow, is a comparatively modern stone structure, plain and
heavy in style, very inferior to the picturesque old dwelling which
is represented by Plot, and of which he remarks that "the windows,
though very numerous, are scarce two alike;" but the grey and ivy-clad
old gateway "a curious piece of stone-work," built in 1589, though
dismantled, still remains much as it was when his plate was engraved.
It stands just at the foot of the slope, where the low hills die away
to the river plain, which here is perhaps half a mile in width; fine
old trees cluster thickly in the neighbourhood of the house and around
the little village, almost masking its cottages and its tiny church.
Down the valley we see the woods of Shugborough closing the view and
clothing the opposite slope beyond the union of the two rivers, and
above them rises a triumphal arch, a memorial of a former owner of the
hall, who was a man of note in his day and generation.
[Illustration: RUGELEY, FROM THE STONE QUARRY.]
The Trent, after it has taken large tribute from the Sow, flows
through the park of the Earls of Lichfield, which is certainly not the
least beautiful of those on its banks. The house, indeed, is not well
situated, for it is built on the valley plain near the river, and is
an uninteresting structure in the plainest Hanoverian style, but the
scenery of the park is no less varied than beautiful. Here are broad
and level meadows, shaded by groups of aged trees, and extending to
the margin of the river; the plain gradually breaking into picturesque
undulations as it approaches either border of the valley. On the left
bank this is quickly reached. Here the slopes descend steeply to the
river; on the opposite side, at a greater distance, the park begins to
climb the outlying moorlands of Cannock Chase, on which, at intervals,
cultivation wholly ceases.
The ancestors of the present earl have resided on this estate since
the reign of James I., but the first to reach the peerage was Admiral
George Anson, who, in 1740, began a protracted voyage, during which he
circumnavigated the globe, and inflicted great injuries on the Spanish
settlements in the New World. Afterwards he defeated the French in
a naval engagement. As a reward for these and other services he was
created Baron Anson, but the title expired with him. A nephew, however,
who succeeded to his estate, was ultimately created Viscount Anson, and
the earldom of Lichfield dates from 1831.
Shortly below its junction with the Sow the Trent is crossed by a
curious old bridge, which, if only for its view of the valley, is worth
a visit. Just above it the stream is divided by a wooded island and
the western branch tumbles over a tiny weir: then the united waters,
after passing beneath the bridge, contract as they flow between banks
overhung by trees; these are backed on the left by the steep slopes
already mentioned, but on the right stretch away till the wooded plain
mounts to the uplands of Cannock Chase. The Essex Bridge, as it is
called, from some connection with the family of Devereux, once owners
of Chartley, even now consists of fourteen arches, but, according
to the old county histories, was formerly of greater length. It is,
however, difficult to see on which side the bridge has been cut short;
but possibly the road across the valley may have been continued by a
causeway, which was included with the bridge. This is a singularly
picturesque old structure of grey sandstone, only about four feet in
width, with an angle of refuge for foot passengers at every one of the
piers--a convenience which will be appreciated by the traveller even if
he encounter only a tricycle in crossing.
[Illustration: CANNOCK CHASE, FROM THE TRENT.]
In the park of Shugborough, and for a short distance below this,
Trent approaches nearest to the edge of Cannock Chase. Indeed, for
rather more than a mile above Wolseley Bridge, opposite the villages
of Great Heywood and Colwich, a walk of a furlong, through a mere belt
of cultivated land, leads on to an open moor which in some directions
extends without a break for miles. The Chase is an undulating upland
rising some three or four hundred feet above the valley of the Trent,
and often not far from six hundred feet above sea level, a plateau
consisting of rolling hills and narrow valleys with steeply shelving
sides, composed almost wholly of the "pebble beds"--thick masses of a
rather hard and sandy gravel containing pebbles which often are three
or four inches in diameter. There is practically no surface soil, and
thus the moors offers little temptation to the "land-grabbers." Of
late years indeed its area has been diminished, and its beauties not
augmented, by considerable enclosures in the neighbourhood of Rugeley
and Hednesford, and by the opening of collieries near the latter
place. But the new fields do not seem likely to do much more than pay
interest on the first expenditure, and the collieries have not been so
uniformly successful as to cause apprehensions that, at any rate in the
present generation, the moorland will become a "Black Country." Another
danger has lately threatened its solitudes, for a tract of Cannock
Chase was one of the sites proposed for the meeting of the National
Rifle Association in succession to Wimbledon Common. Bisley has been
preferred, but there is still a possibility that this tract may be used
as a practice ground for the Volunteers of the Midland and Northern
counties, in which case the charm of another large segment of the Chase
will quickly vanish.
At present, notwithstanding the occasional prospect of distant
collieries, there are few districts in the Midlands which offer more
attractions than Cannock Chase. The contour of the ground, it is true,
does not exhibit much variety. It is, as has been said, an undulating
plateau from which fairly well-marked valleys, gradually deepening,
descend towards the lowlands, but there is much diversity in the minor
details. Here sturdy oaks are scattered or graceful birches cluster
close on slope or valley. Here only some weather-beaten sentinel of
either tree, or a wind-worn thorn breaks the barrenness of the hill,
or a few Scotch firs crown its crest. Almost everywhere the bracken
flourishes, and heath or ling grows thick on the stony soil. So, in
the late summer, the Chase for miles glows with the crimson bloom
of the heath, or is flushed with the tender pink of the ling, while
as autumn draws on the fern turns to gold on the slopes, and on the
barer brows the bilberry leaf changes to scarlet, and the moor, soon
to don the russet hue of its winter garb, seems to reflect the rich
tints of the sunset sky. But this is not all. Among its many charms is
the contrast of scenery: one moment you may be quite shut in by the
undulations of the moorland--sweeps of fern and heath and ling bounding
the view on every side--seemingly as far from the haunts of man as
among the Sutherland Hills; but the next, on gaining the crest of some
rounded ridge, many a mile of fertile lowland spreads out before your
eyes--many a league of the rich vales of the Trent and the Sow, one
vast and varied tapestry of woodland and cornfield and pasture, while
beyond and above, rise, in this direction, the Wrekin dome and the
Caradoc peaks, in that the great rounded uplands of Derbyshire, and in
that the more broken outlines of the Charnwood Forest Hills. Deer once
were common, black-game and grouse abundant, the snipe and even the
woodcock made their nests in the valleys, and other rare birds were
to be seen. But now the deer are few and the game is scanty. Cannock
Chase, like the rest of Great Britain, suffers from the congestion of
humanity.
But we must return to the Trent, from which we have wandered away
into the moors. For a few miles, after leaving Shugborough Park,
though it affords much pretty scenery, there is no place of special
beauty or of historical interest near its banks. It passes under a new
bridge, close to one of the approaches to the Chase; it leaves on the
left the village of Colwich and its neat church, on the right Oakedge
Park, from which the residence has now disappeared. This, more than a
century since, was the scene of a local scandal--a fascinating widow,
a midnight marriage, and a verification of the old proverb about haste
and leisure in regard to that bond. Then the river glides beneath the
three arches of Wolseley Bridge--deservedly held in repute for its
graceful though simple design--and passes at the back of Wolseley
Hall. The estate has been owned by Wolseleys from before the Norman
Conquest--but the house is comparatively modern, is of little interest,
and is placed too near the water. Of this family Viscount Wolseley is a
member, tracing back his descent to a younger son of a former baronet,
and is thus a distant cousin of Sir Charles Wolseley, the present owner
of the estate.
About half a mile from the Trent, and almost at the foot of the uplands
of Cannock Chase, lies Rugeley, a small market town, the chief industry
of which is a tannery. This place some thirty years ago acquired
an unenviable notoriety as the scene of a case of poisoning, which
attracted much attention and presented points of legal interest. The
chief railway station is near the river, and so at some distance from
the town, of which little is seen. The slender spire which rises above
its houses is that of the Roman Catholic Church; the Anglican Church is
at the nearer entrance of the town. It was built early in the century,
and if ugliness were a merit might claim the first rank, but on the
opposite side of the road are the tower and some portions of the old
church, which are not without a certain picturesqueness. The tall
chimneys on the hill slopes, a mile or more beyond the town, indicate
the northern boundary of the South Staffordshire coalfield. Here the
escarpment of the moorlands is not very far away from a fault by which
the coal measures are thrown down for so many hundred feet that no
attempt has yet been made to sink shafts in the valley of the Trent.
Also on the uplands, and rather further away from Rugeley, is another
of the great houses which are the chief interest of this part of
the Trent. This is Beaudesert. Once a country seat of the Bishops
of Lichfield, it passed into the hands of the Pagets in the reign
of Henry VIII. A peerage has been long in the family, but the first
Marquis of Anglesey was a dashing officer, who highly distinguished
himself in the great war with France, and lost his leg at the battle
of Waterloo, where he commanded the cavalry. The house, which stands
in a commanding position high up on the slope of the uplands, is built
of brick, and not a little of it dates from the reign of Elizabeth,
though it is not a striking example of the architecture of that era.
Several small villages are dotted over the lowlands near Trent side,
each offering some little bit of antiquity or fragment of history,
such as Armitage, with its church looking down on canal and river, or
Mavesyn Ridware, with some tombs of interest in its highly restored
Trinity aisle, and its story of a feud between Mavesyn de Ridware and
Sir William of Handsacre; though over these we must not linger, but
follow the Trent as it pursues its course through grassy meadows in a
widening valley, leaving the old cathedral town of Lichfield some four
miles away amidst the undulating ground on its southern bank. It glides
by various small villages, and receives the tributary stream of the
Blyth, which traverses one of the prettiest districts of Staffordshire,
coming down by the park of the Bagots, and the remnant of the ancient
forest of Needwood, where many a grand oak still flourishes. By the
water side are many fair pictures--pleasant groupings of trees, and
reeds, with wide straths of grass and glimpses of scattered farmhouses,
or grey towers of village churches--each with its little cluster of
memories, sometimes of more than local interest. Of these perhaps the
most noteworthy is Alrewas, once famed for its eels. Excerpts from its
registers are quoted by Shaw, and make interesting reading. Here they
tell of a murder, there of a suicide, now of a death by drowning in
Trent or Tame, now of heat, or drought, or frost. Fires and storms also
figure in the record, even an earthquake, but the strangest tale of
all is the following: "This 21st day of December, anno 1581, was the
water of Trent dryed up and sodenly fallen so ebb that I, John Falkner,
vicar, went over into the hall meddow, in a low peare of showes,
about 4 of the clocke in the afternoone: and so it was never in the
remembrance of any man then living in the droughtest yeare that any man
had knownen, and the same water in the morning before was banke full,
which was very strange."
[Illustration: FROM THE MEADOWS NEAR ALREWAS.]
[Illustration: ARMITAGE.]
[Illustration: BURTON-UPON-TRENT.]
The Tame, which joins the Trent near Alrewas, coming down by "Tamworth
tower and town," nearly doubles the volume of the latter, which
afterwards flows towards the north, that is in prolongation of the
course of the former river. The valley widens yet more between the low
hills of Leicestershire and the upland which formed part of Needwood
Forest--that region "richly placed," as Drayton says, "'twixt Trent
and battening Dove," which, though curtailed of its ancient extent
by enclosure, still exhibits more than one grand old oak, and many a
choice nook of forest scenery, while the views from the hilly district
between the Blyth and the Dove are often of singular variety and beauty.
But now chimneys begin to bristle from the river-plain, and smoke
to dim the brightness of the air. Is it fancy, or does a pleasant
odour of brewing mingle with the scent of meadow-sweet and riverside
herbs? It may well be, for we are approaching Burton-upon-Trent, the
metropolis of beer. The description written of it for other pages may
be given here:--"If the visitor to Burton care neither to drink of
beer nor think of beer, he will not find much to detain him there.
Though an old place, it possesses little of antiquity; nor is there
any picturesqueness either in its houses or in its streets. It gives
one the idea of a typical Staffordshire town--that is to say, a very
uninteresting one--which during the last half century has developed
into an important mercantile centre. There is thus a certain air
of incompleteness about it. Homely buildings of the times of our
grandfathers are mixed with handsome modern structures; a fine church,
school, or institute rises among dwellings of the most ordinary
type; one shop is appropriate to the quiet country town of the last
generation, another to the bustling country town of the present. But
there is one dominant characteristic--Burton is wholly given over to
beer. The great breweries occupy whole districts of the town, and are
intersected by the streets; these are traversed again and again by
rails; and locomotives, dragging laden wagons--trains of beer--pass and
repass in a way unprecedented in any other English town. Great piles of
barrels--the Pyramids of the Valley of the Trent--greet the traveller's
eye as he halts at the station, and the air is redolent with the fumes
of brewing."[3]
The development of this industry is comparatively of late date, though
the ale of Burton has long enjoyed a local reputation. Even the monks
of its abbey were noted for the excellence of their beer; but Leland
and Camden speak only of its alabaster works. "But in the earlier part
of the seventeenth century, beer from the district--which, probably,
was in part brewed at Burton--was introduced into London. This,
however, bore the name of Derby ale, and by that name is favourably
spoken of by Camden. He, however, states that there were diversities of
opinion, for a Norman poet had termed it 'a strange drink, so like the
Stygian lake.'" The original Burton ale was, however, very different
from that for which it is generally celebrated, for it was a strong
drink, the India pale ale dating only from the present century. "In
the year 1822, one Hodgson, a London brewer who had settled at Burton,
brewed something like the present bitter ale, which he accomplished in
a teapot in his counting-house, and called it 'Bombay beer.' A retired
East India captain named Chapman improved on this, and Burton ale soon
attained the celebrity that has made the names of Bass and Allsopp
household words all over the world." The heads of each of these firms
(now converted into limited companies) have mounted on steps of barrels
to the peerage; but there are other firms of slightly younger standing
though of hardly less importance.
One noteworthy fact in the later history of Burton is the liberality
of these its leading citizens. Not a few of the principal public
buildings--churches, schools, baths, and other institutions--are gifts
from members of this or that firm; the latest is a suspension bridge
for foot passengers over the Trent, at the southern end of the town,
which is the gift of Lord Burton. Previous to this the river was only
bridged in one place. At this spot a bridge has existed for several
centuries; but the present structure is quite modern. It is far more
commodious, but to the artist less attractive, than its predecessor.
That was narrow, built on a curve, consisting of thirty-six arches,
hardly any two of which were alike; this is wide, uniform, and strikes
straight across the broad valley from bank to bank. Like most old
bridges, the former had above its piers the usual nooks for the retreat
of passengers, and few who remember it will not feel some regret at the
change. But this was inevitable; the old bridge was totally inadequate
for the needs of the new Burton, which had become a very different
place from the little town pictured by Shaw at the end of the last
century, and sentiment was obliged to yield to utility. As might be
supposed, the old bridge, in early days, was the scene of more than one
conflict.
But the history of Burton Town goes back earlier than that of Burton
Bridge, even if this, as some have asserted, dated from the reign of
William the Norman. Full a thousand years ago there dwelt at Bureton,
or Buryton, a noted lady of Irish birth, Modwena by name, who, for
curing Alfred, son of Ethelwolfe, of some disease, received a grant of
land. Her home for some years was the island between the two branches
of the Trent, and the well from which she had been wont to drink
sympathetically retained healing virtues, being in repute, as Plot
tells us, with those who suffered from the "king's evil." A monastery
was afterwards founded by Ulfric Spot, Earl of Mercia, to which her
body was translated, and which endured till the suppression of such
institutions. The church which was attached to it has been rebuilt, and
only some fragments of the conventual buildings remain about the house,
which still bears the name of Burton Abbey.
The arms of the Trent unite below Burton, and the right bank of the
river affords some varied and pleasant scenery, the ground sloping
rapidly down to the level water-meadows, with scattered houses,
hamlets, and groves of trees. A castellated mansion of pretentious
aspect stands on the hill above fine old trees; beyond, on lower
ground, embosomed in yet larger and not less ancient groves, is Newton
Hall, near the village, called for distinction Newton Solney, which
stands nearly opposite to the junction of the Dove with the Trent.
T. G. BONNEY.
[Illustration: DOVE HEAD.]
THE HUMBER AND ITS TRIBUTARIES.