Rodono, St. Mary's Loch:
Sept. 5, 1885.
Sir,--In your biography it is recorded that you not only won the favour
of all men and women; but that a domestic fowl conceived an affection
for you, and that a pig, by his will, had never been severed from your
company. If some Circe had repeated in my case her favourite miracle
of turning mortals into swine, and had given me a choice, into that
fortunate pig, blessed among his race, would I have been converted! You,
almost alone among men of letters, still, like a living friend, win
and charm us out of the past; and if one might call up a poet, as the
scholiast tried to call Homer, from the shades, who would not, out of
all the rest, demand some hours of your society? Who that ever meddled
with letters, what child of the irritable race, possessed even a tithe
of your simple manliness, of the heart that never knew a touch of
jealousy, that envied no man his laurels, that took honour and wealth
as they came, but never would have deplored them had you missed both and
remained but the Border sportsman and the Border antiquary?
Were the word 'genial' not so much profaned, were it not misused in easy
good-nature, to extenuate lettered and sensual indolence, that worn old
term might be applied, above all men, to 'the Shirra.' But perhaps we
scarcely need a word (it would be seldom in use) for a character so
rare, or rather so lonely, in its nobility and charm as that of Walter
Scott. Here, in the heart of your own country, among your own grey
round-shouldered hills (each so like the other that the shadow of one
falling on its neighbour exactly outlines that neighbour's shape), it is
of you and of your works that a native of the Forest is most frequently
brought in mind. All the spirits of the river and the hill, all the
dying refrains of ballad and the fading echoes of story, all the memory
of the wild past, each legend of burn and loch, seem to have combined
to inform your spirit, and to secure themselves an immortal life in your
song. It is through you that we remember them; and in recalling them, as
in treading each hillside in this land, we again remember you and bless
you.
It is not 'Sixty Years Since' the echo of Tweed among his pebbles fell
for the last time on your ear; not sixty years since, and how much is
altered! But two generations have passed; the lad who used to ride from
Edinburgh to Abbotsford, carrying new books for you, and old, is still
vending, in George Street, old books and new. Of politics I have not the
heart to speak. Little joy would you have had in most that has befallen
since the Reform Bill was passed, to the chivalrous cry of 'burke Sir
Walter.' We are still very Radical in the Forest, and you were taken
away from many evils to come. How would the cheek of Walter Scott, or
of Leyden, have blushed at the names of Majuba, The Soudan, Maiwand, and
many others that recall political cowardice or military incapacity!
On the other hand, who but you could have sung the dirge of Gordon,
or wedded with immortal verse the names of Hamilton (who fell with
Cavagnari), of the two Stewarts, of many another clansman, brave among
the bravest! Only he who told how
The stubborn spearmen still made good
Their dark impenetrable wood
could have fitly rhymed a score of feats of arms in which, as at
M'Neill's Zareeba and at Abu Klea,
Groom fought like noble, squire like knight,
As fearlessly and well.
Ah, Sir, the hearts of the rulers may wax faint, and the voting classes
may forget that they are Britons; but when it comes to blows our
fighting men might cry, with Leyden,
My name is little Jock Elliot,
And wha daur meddle wi' me!
Much is changed, in the country-side as well as in the country; but
much remains. The little towns of your time are populous and excessively
black with the smoke of factories--not, I fear, at present very
flourishing. In Galashiels you still see the little change-house and the
cluster of cottages round the Laird's lodge, like the clachan of Tully
Veolan. But these plain remnants of the old Scotch towns are almost
buried in a multitude of 'smoky dwarf houses'--a living poet, Mr.
Matthew Arnold, has found the fitting phrase for these dwellings, once
for all. All over the Forest he waters are dirty and poisoned: I think
they are filthiest below Hawick; but this may be mere local prejudice in
a Selkirk man. To keep them clean costs money; and, though improvements
are often promised, I cannot see much change for the better. Abbotsford,
luckily, is above Galashiels, and only receives the dirt and dyes of
Selkirk, Peebles, Walkerburn, and Innerlethen. On the other hand,
your ill-omened later dwelling, 'the unhappy palace of your race,'
is overlooked by villas that prick a cockney ear among their larches,
hotels of the future. Ah, Sir, Scotland is a strange place. Whisky is
exiled from some of our caravanserais, and they have banished Sir John
Barleycorn. It seems as if the views of the excellent critic (who wrote
your life lately, and said you had left no descendants, _le pauvre
homme_) were beginning to prevail. This pious biographer was greatly
shocked by that capital story about the keg of whisky that arrived at
the Liddesdale farmer's during family prayers. Your Toryism also was an
offence to him.
Among these vicissitudes of things and the overthrow of customs, let
us be thankful that, beyond the reach of the manufacturers, the Border
country remains as kind and homely as ever. I looked at Ashiestiel some
days ago: the house seemed just as it may have been when you left it for
Abbotsford, only there was a lawn-tennis net on the lawn, the hill on
the opposite bank of the Tweed was covered to the crest with turnips,
and the burn did not sing below the little bridge, for in this arid
summer the burn was dry. But there was still a grilse that rose to a big
March brown in the shrunken stream below Elibank. This may not interest
you, who styled yourself
No fisher,
But a well-wisher
To the game!
Still, as when you were thinking over Marmion, a man might have 'grand
gallops among the hills'--those grave wastes of heather and bent that
sever all the watercourses and roll their sheep-covered pastures from
Dollar Law to White Combe, and from White Combe to the Three Brethren
Cairn and the Windburg and Skelf-hill Pen. Yes, Teviotdale is pleasant
still, and there is not a drop of dye in the water, _purior electro_, of
Yarrow. St. Mary's Loch lies beneath me, smitten with wind and rain--the
St. Mary's of North and of the Shepherd. Only the trout, that see a
myriad of artificial flies, are shyer than of yore. The Shepherd could
no longer fill a cart up Meggat with trout so much of a size that the
country people took them for herrings.
The grave of Piers Cockburn is still not desecrated: hard by it lies,
within a little wood; and beneath that slab of old sandstone, and the
graven letters, and the sword and shield, sleep 'Piers Cockburn and
Marjory his wife.' Not a hundred yards off was the castle door where
they hanged him; this is the tomb of the ballad, and the lady that
buried him rests now with her wild lord.
Oh, wat ye no my heart was sair,
When I happit the mouls on his yellow hair;
Oh, wat ye no my heart was wae,
When I turned about and went my way! (1)
Here too hearts have broken, and there is a sacredness in the shadow and
beneath these clustering berries of the rowan-trees. That sacredness,
that reverent memory of our old land, it is always and inextricably
blended with our memories, with our thoughts, with our love of you.
Scotchmen, methinks, who owe so much to you, owe you most for the
example you gave of the beauty of a life of honour, showing them what,
by Heaven's blessing, a Scotchman still might be.
(1) Lord Napier and Ettrick points out to me that, unluckily, the
tradition is erroneous. Piers was not executed at all. William Cockburn
suffered in Edinburgh. But the _Border Minstrelsy_ overrides history.
_Criminal Trials in Scotland_ by Robert Pitcairn, Esq. Vol. i. part I.
p. 144, A. D. 1530. 17 Jac. V.
May 16. William Cokburne of Henderland, convicted (in presence of the
King) of high treason committed by him in bringing Alexander Forestare
and his son, Englishmen, to the plundering of Archibald Somervile; and
for treasunably bringing certain Englishmen to the lands of Glenquhome;
and for common theft, common reset of theft, out-putting and in-putting
thereof. Sentence. For which causes and crimes he has forfeited his
life, lands, and goods, movable and immovable; which shall be escheated
to the King. Beheaded.
Words, empty and unavailing--for what words of ours can speak our
thoughts or interpret our affections! From you first, as we followed the
deer with King James, or rode with William of Deloraine on his midnight
errand, did we learn what Poetry means and ali the happiness that is in
the gift of song. This and more than may be told you gave us, that
are not forgetful, not ungrateful, though our praise be unequal to our
gratitude. _Fungor inani munere!_