September is the season of the second and lovelier youth of the river-
scenery of Scotland. Spring comes but slowly up that way; it is June
before the woods have quite clothed themselves. In April the angler or
the sketcher is chilled by the east wind, whirling showers of hail, and
even when the riverbanks are sweet with primroses, the bluff tops of the
border hills are often bleak with late snow. This state of things is
less unpropitious to angling than might be expected. A hardy race of
trout will sometimes rise freely to the artificial fly when the natural
fly is destroyed, and the angler is almost blinded with dusty snowflakes.
All through midsummer the Scotch rivers lose their chief attractions. The
bracken has not yet changed its green for the fairy gold, the hue of its
decay; the woods wear a uniform and sombre green; the waters are low and
shrunken, and angling is almost impossible. But with September the
pleasant season returns for people who love "to be quiet, and go
a-fishing," or a-sketching. The hills put on a wonderful harmony of
colours, the woods rival the October splendours of English forests. The
bends of the Tweed below Melrose and round Mertoun--a scene that, as
Scott says, the river seems loth to leave--may challenge comparison with
anything the Thames can show at Nuneham or Cliefden. The angler, too, is
as fortunate as the lover of the picturesque. The trout that have hidden
themselves all summer, or at best have cautiously nibbled at the worm-
bait, now rise freely to the fly. Wherever a yellow leaf drops from
birch tree or elm the great trout are splashing, and they are too eager
to distinguish very subtly between flies of nature's making and flies of
fur and feather. It is a time when every one who can manage it should be
by the water-side, and should take with him, if possible, the posthumous
work of Sir Thomas Dick Lauder on the "Rivers of Scotland."
This book, as the author of "Rab and his Friends" tells us in the
preface, is a re-publication of articles written in 1848, on the death-
bed of the author, a man of many accomplishments and of a most lovable
nature. He would lie and dictate or write in pencil these happy and
wistful memories of days passed by the banks of Tweed and Tyne. He did
not care to speak of the northern waters: of Tay, which the Roman
invaders compared to Tiber; of Laxford, the river of salmon; or of the
"thundering Spey." Nor has he anything to say of the west, and of
Galloway, the country out of which young Lochinvar came, with its soft
and broken hills, like the lower spurs of the Pyrenees, and its streams,
now rushing down defiles of rock, now stealing with slow foot through the
plains. He confines himself to the limits of the Scottish Arcadia; to
the hills near Edinburgh, where Ramsay's Gentle Shepherd loved and sang
in a rather affected way; and to the main stream and the tributaries of
the Tweed. He tells, with a humour like that of Charles Lamb in his
account of his youthful search for the mysterious fountain-head of the
New River, how he sought among the Pentland Hills for the source of the
brook that flowed past his own garden. The wandering stream led him
through many a scene renowned in Border history, up to the heights whence
Marmion surveyed the Scottish forces encamped on Borough Moor before the
fatal day of Flodden. These scenes are described with spirit and loving
interest; but it is by Tweedside that the tourist will find his most
pleasant guide in Lauder's book. Just as Cicero said of Athens, that in
every stone you tread on a history, so on Tweedside by every nook and
valley you find the place of a ballad, a story, or a legend. From
Tweed's source, near the grave of the Wizard Merlin, down to Berwick and
the sea, the Border "keeps" and towers are as frequent as castles on the
Rhine. Each has its tradition, its memory of lawless times, which have
become beautiful in the magic of poetry and the mist of the past. First
comes Neidpath Castle, with its vaulted "hanging chamber" in the roof,
and the rafter, with the iron ring to which prisoners were hanged, still
remaining to testify to the lawless power of Border lords. Neidpath has
a softer legend of the death of the lady of the house, when her lover
failed to recognize the features that had wasted with sorrow for his
absence. Lower down the river comes Clovenfords, with its memories of
Christopher North, and Peebles, where King James sings that there was
"dancing and derray" in his time; and still lower Ashiesteel, where Scott
was young and happy, and Abbotsford, where his fame and his misfortunes
found him out. It was on a bright afternoon in late September that he
died there, and the mourners by his bed heard through the silence the
murmuring of Tweed How many other associations there are by the tributary
rivers! what a breath of "pastoral melancholy"! There is Ettrick, where
the cautious lover in the old song of Ettrick banks found "a canny place
of meeting." Oakwood Tower, where Michael Scott, the wizard, wove his
spells, is a farm building--the haunted magician's room is a granary,
Earlstone, where Thomas the Rhymer dwelt, and whence the two white deer
recalled him to Elfland and to the arms of the fairy queen, is noted "for
its shawl manufactory." Only Yarrow still keeps its ancient quiet, and
the burn that was tinged by the blood of Douglas is unstained by more
commonplace dyes.
All these changes make the "Rivers of Scotland" rather melancholy
reading. Thirty years have not passed since Lauder died, and how much he
would miss if he could revisit his beloved water! Spearing salmon by
torchlight is a forbidden thing. The rocks are no longer lit up with the
red glow; they resound no longer with the shouts and splashing of the
yeomen. You might almost as readily find a hart on Harthope, or a wild
cat at Catslack, or a wolf at Wolf-Cleugh, as catch three stone-weight of
trout in Meggat-water. {6} The days of guileless fish and fabulous
draughts of trout are over. No sportsman need take three large baskets
to the Gala now, as Lauder did, and actually filled them with thirty-six
dozen of trout. The modern angler must not allow his expectations to be
raised too highly by these stories. Sport has become much more difficult
in these times of rapidly growing population. It is a pleasant sight to
see the weavers spending their afternoons beside the Tweed; it is such a
sight as could not be witnessed by the closely preserved rivers of
England. But the weavers have taught the trout caution, and the dyes and
various pollutions of trade have thinned their numbers. Mr. Ruskin sees
no hope in this state of things; he preaches, in the spirit of old
Hesiod, that there is no piety in a race which defiles the "holy waters."
But surely civilization, even if it spoil sport and degrade scenery, is
better than a state of things in which the laird would hang up his foes
to an iron ring in the roof. The hill of Cowden Knowes may be a less
eligible place for lovers' meetings than it was of old. But in those
times the lord of Cowden Knowes is said by tradition to have had a way of
putting his prisoners in barrels studded with iron nails, and rolling
them down a brae. This is the side of the good old times which should
not be overlooked. It may not be pleasant to find blue dye and wool yarn
in Teviot, but it is more endurable than to have to encounter the bandit
Barnskill, who hewed his bed of flint, Scott says, in Minto Crags. Still,
the reading of the "Rivers of Scotland" leaves rather a sad impression on
the reader, and makes him ask once more if there is no way of reconciling
the beauty of rude ages with the comforts and culture of civilization.
This is a question that really demands an answer, though it is often put
in a mistaken way. The teachings of Mr. Ruskin and of his followers
would bring us back to a time when printing was not, and an engineer
would have been burned for a wizard. {8} But there is a point at which
civilization and production must begin to respect the limits of the
beautiful, on which they so constantly encroach. Who is to settle the
limit, and escape the charge of being either a _dilettante_ and a
sentimentalist on the one hand, or a Philistine on the other?