"Both are good, the streams of north and south, but he who has given his heart to the Tweed as did Tyro in Homer to the Enipeus, will never change his love." So does Mr. Andrew Lang remind us of his affection for Tweedside and the Border. Elsewhere he speaks of Tweed shrining the music of his cradle song, and the requiem he would most prefer—may that day be long in coming!

Lockhart's description of Sir Walter's death-scene, so touching in its very simplicity, has never been matched in literary biography. From the first years of his life, Scott was wedded to the Tweed. It was his ancestral stream. And it stood for all that was best and fairest in Border story. It was by the Tweed that he won his greatest triumphs, and faced his greatest defeats, where he spent the happiest as well as the most strenuous period of his career. So that, to breathe his last breath by its pleasant banks—a desire oft repeated—was as natural as it was keen and eager. We know how at length he was borne back to Abbotsford, the house of his dreams, and how on one of those ideal days during the early autumn that crowning wish was realised; "It was a beautiful day, so warm that every window was wide 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."

Of course, it is owing, in great measure, to Scott that the Tweed has so exalted a place in literature. To speak of the Tweed at once recalls Scott and all that the Tweed meant to him. Both in a sense are names inseparable and synonymous. It is almost entirely for Scott's sake that Tweedside has become one of the world-Meccas. What Scott did for the Tweed—the Border—renders it (to speak reverently) holy ground for ever. Hence the affection with which the world looks on Scott—as a patriot,—as one who has helped to create his country, and as a great literary magnet attracting thousands to it, and as the medium of some of the most pleasurable of mental experiences. Of the great names on Scotland's roll of honour, Scott, even more than all of them (even more than Burns), has wedded his country to the very best of humankind everywhere. But do not let us forget that Tweed had its lovers many before Scott's day. Burns's pilgrimage to the Border was a picturesque episode in his poetic history. "Yarrow and Tweed to monie a tune owre Scotland rings," he wrote, and other lines represent a warm admiration for the district. Tweed was a "wimpling stately" stream, and there were "Eden scenes on crystal Jed" scarcely less fascinating. James Thomson, the poet of the "Seasons," a Tweedsider, though the fact is often forgotten, pays grateful homage to the Tweed as the "pure parent-stream, whose pastoral banks first heard my Doric reed." Allan Ramsay and Robert Crawford, West-country men both, came early under the spell of the fair river. Crawford's lines are painted with the usual exaggeration of the period:

Hamilton of Bangour, best known for his "Braes of Yarrow," has an autumn and winter description of Tweedside which naturally suggests the like picture by Scott in the Introduction to Canto I. of "Marmion," and it is more than probable that Sir Walter had this in his mind when penning his own more perfect lines.

PLATE 14

VIEW OF BEWCASTLE

FROM A WATER-COLOUR SKETCH

PAINTED BY

JAMES ORROCK, R.I.

(See pp. 44 , 67 , 72 )

Robert Fergusson—Burns's "elder brother in the Muses," had his imagination fired by the memories of the Border, and was one of the first to celebrate that land over which lies the light of so much poetic fancy:

Wordsworth, too, sang of the "gentle Tweed, and the green silent pastures," though his winsome Three Yarrows is the tie that most endears him to the Lowland hearts. Since Scott's day the voices in praise of Tweed have been legion. "Who, with a heart and a soul tolerably at ease within him, could fail to be happy, hearing as we do now the voice of the Tweed, singing his pensive twilight song to the few faint stars that have become visible in heaven?" says John Wilson in his rollicking "Streams" essay (no "crusty Christopher" there, at any rate). Thomas Tod Stoddart, king of angling rhymers,

and all over Scotland, but found not another stream to match with the Tweed:

Remember, too, Dr. John Brown's exquisite Tweed's Well meditation, a prose sermon to ponder over any Sabbath, and Ruskin's homely reverie—"I can never hear the whispering and sighing of the Tweed among his pebbles, but it brings back to me the song of my nurse as we used to cross by Coldstream Bridge, from the south, in our happy days—

One thinks also of George Borrow's fascination for the Scottish Border, when he asks ("Lavengro") "Which of the world's streams can Tweed envy, with its beauty and renown?" and of Thomas Aird's pathetic retrospect—"the ever-dear Tweed, whose waters flow continually through my heart, and make me often greet in my lonely evenings." Nor do we forget John Veitch, that truest Tweedsman of his time, always musing on the Tweed, never at home but beside it, and of whose Romance and History there has been no abler exponent.

Of the name Tweed itself, the meaning and origin are uncertain, and it is hopeless to dogmatize on the subject except to say that there is an apparent connection with the Cymric Tay, Taff, Teith, and Teviot—more properly "Teiott," the common pronunciation above Hawick. Mr. Johnston ("Place-Names of Scotland") traces it to the Celtic twyad—"a hemming in"—from "twy to check or bind," which is a not unlikely derivation. As to the source of the Tweed there is the curious paradox that what passes for its source is not the real fons et origo of the stream. Poetically, the Tweed is said to take its rise in the tiny Tweed's Well among the Southern Highlands, 1250 feet above sea level, and close to where the marches of Peeblesshire, Lanarkshire, and Dumfriesshire meet. But strictly speaking, the correct source is the Cor or Corse Burn, a little higher up, which, dancing its way to the glen beneath, receives the outflow of the Well as a sort of first tributary. For purposes of romance, however, Tweed's Well will always be reckoned as the source, as indeed it must have been so regarded ages ago. The likelihood is that Tweed's Well was one of the ancient holy wells common to many parts of Scotland. And since tradition speaks of a Mungo's Well somewhere in these solitudes, the probability is that we have it here in the heart of these silent lonely hills. There is the tradition of a cross, too, at or near Tweed's Well, borne out in the place-name Corse, which, we know, is good Scots for Cross. That such a symbol of the ancient faith stood here long since "to remind travellers of their Redeemer and to guide them withal across these desolate moors," is more than a mere picturesque legend. It is a prolific watershed this from which Tweed starts its seaward race. South and west, Annan and Clyde bend their way to the Solway and the Atlantic, as the quaint quatrain has it:

Tweed turns its face to the north, and running for the most part, as old Pennecuik puts it, "with a soft yet trotting stream," it pursues a course of slightly over a hundred miles, and drains a basin of no less than 1870 square miles, a larger area than any other Scottish river except the Tay.

PLATE 15

VIEW OF MELROSE

FROM A WATER-COLOUR SKETCH

PAINTED BY

JAMES ORROCK, R.I.

(See pp. 23 , 35 , 39 , 60 , 61 , 89 , 90 , 91 , 123 )

Tweed's Well lies in the bosom of solemn, bare hills. There is nothing attractive about the spot. Grey moorlands, riddled with innumerable inky peat-bogs, the whaups crying as Stevenson heard them in his dreams, and the bleat of an occasional sheep are the chief characteristics. There is little heather, and the hills are hardly so shapely as their neighbours further down the valley. A first glance is disappointing, but the memories of the place are compensation enough. For what a stirring place it must have been in the early centuries! Here, as tradition asserts, the pagan bard Merlin was converted to Christianity through the preaching of the Glasgow Saint Mungo. Here Michael Scot, the "wondrous wizard," pursued his mysteries. And even the Flower of Kings himself wandered amongst those wilds, "of fresh aventours dreaming." One of his twelve battles is claimed for the locality. More historic, perhaps, is the picture of the good Sir James of Douglas (red-handed from dirking the Comyn) plighting his troth to the Bruce at Ericstane Brae, close to Tweed's Well, which latter spot, by the way, Dr. John Brown characteristically describes in one of his shorter "HorÆ" papers. Readers of the "Enterkin" also will remember his reference to the mail-coach tragedy of 1831, when MacGeorge and his companion, Goodfellow, perished in the snow in a heroic attempt to get the bags through to Tweedshaws. At Tweedsmuir, (the name of the parish—disjoined from Drumelzier in 1643)—eight miles down, the valley opens somewhat, and vegetation properly begins. Of Tweedsmuir Kirk—on the peninsula between Tweed and Talla—Lord Cockburn said that it had the prettiest situation in Scotland. John Hunter, a Covenant martyr, sleeps in its bonnie green kirk-knowe—the only Covenant grave in the Border Counties outside Dumfries and Galloway. Talla Linns recalls the conventicle mentioned in the "Heart of Midlothian," at which Scott makes Davie Deans a silent but much-impressed spectator. In the wild Gameshope Glen, close by, Donald Cargill and James Renwick, and others lay oft in hiding. "It will be a bloody night this in Gemsop," are the opening words of Hogg's fine Covenant tale, the "Brownie of Bodsbeck." The Talla Valley contains the picturesque new lake whence Edinburgh draws its augmented water supply. Young Hay of Talla was one of Bothwell's "Lambs," and suffered death for the Darnley murder. At the Beild—regaining the Tweed—Dr. John Ker, one of the foremost pulpiteers of his generation, was born in 1819. Oliver Castle was the home of the Frasers, Lords of Tweeddale before they were Lords of Lovat. The Crook Inn was a noted "howff" in the angling excursions of Christopher North and the Ettrick Shepherd. Mr. Lang thinks that possibly the name suggested the "Cleikum Inn" of "St. Ronan's Well." At the Crook, William Black ends his "Adventures of a PhÆton" with the climax of all good novels, an avowal of love and a happy engagement. Polmood, near by, was the scene of Hogg's lugubrious "Bridal of Polmood," seldom read now, one imagines. Kingledoors in two of its place-names preserves the memory of Cuthbert and Cristin, the Saint and his hermit-disciple. Stanhope was a staunch Jacobite holding, one of its lairds being the infamous Murray of Broughton, Prince Charlie's secretary, the Judas of the cause. Murray, by the way, was discovered in hiding after Culloden at Polmood, the abode of his brother-in-law, Michael Hunter. Linkumdoddie has been immortalized in Burns's versicles beginning, "Willie Wastle dwalt on Tweed"—a study in idiomatic untranslateable Scots. Here is the picture of Willie's wife—a philological puzzle.

At Drumelzier Castle the turbulent, tyrannical Tweedies reigned in their day of might. Of their ghostly origin, the Introduction to the "Betrothed" supplies the key. They were constantly at feud with their neighbours, specially the Veitches, and were in the Rizzio murder. See their history (a work of genuine local interest) written quite recently by Michael Forbes Tweedie, a London scion of the clan. In the same neighbourhood, the fragment of Tinnis Castle (there is a Tinnis on Yarrow, too,) juts out from its bold bluff, not unlike a robber's eyrie on the Rhine. Curiously, this is a reputed Ossian scene (see the poem, "Calthon and Colmal.") The "blue Teutha," is the Tweed—"Dunthalmo's town," Drumelzier. Merlin's Grave, near Drumelzier Kirk, should not be forgotten. Bower's "Scotichronicon" narrates the circumstances of his death: "On the same day which he foretold he met his death; for certain shepherds of a chief of a country called Meldred set upon him with stones and staves, and, stumbling in his agony, he fell from a high bank of the Tweed, near the town of Drumelzier (the ridge of Meldred), upon a sharp stake that the fishers had placed in the waters, and which pierced his body through. He was buried near the spot where he expired."

A prophecy of Thomas the Rhymer—

is affirmed to have been literally fulfilled on the coronation day of James VI. and I. Passing on, we reach the resplendent Dawyck Woods. Here are some of the finest larches in the kingdom, the first to be planted in Britain, having that honour done them by the great Linnaeus himself, it is said. Stobo—semi-Norman and Saxon—was the plebania or mother-kirk of half the county. Here lies all that is mortal of Robert Hogg, a talented nephew of James Hogg. He was the friend and amanuensis of both Scott and Lockhart, whom he assisted in the Quarterly. Possessed of a keen literary sense, he would almost certainly have taken a high place in literature but for the consumption which cut short his promising career. (See "Life of Scott," vol. ix). At Happrew, in Stobo parish, Wallace is said to have suffered defeat from the English in 1304. One of the most perfect specimens (recently explored) of a Roman Camp is in the Lyne Valley, to the left, a little above the Kirk of Lyne. On a height overlooking the Tarth and Lyne frowns the massive pile of Drochil, planned by the Red Earl of Morton, who never lived to occupy it, or to finish it, indeed, the "Maiden," in 1581, cutting short his pleasures, his treacheries and hypocrisies. Now we touch the Black Dwarf's Country—in the Manor Valley, to the right. Barns Tower, a very complete peel specimen, stands sentinel at the entrance to this "sweetest glen of all the South." It is around Barns that John Buchan's "John Burnet of Barns" centres. The Black Dwarf's grave is at Manor Kirk, and the cottage associated with his misanthropic career is also pointed out. Scott, in 1797, visited Manor (Hallyards) at his friend Ferguson's, and foregathered with David Ritchie, the prototype of one of the least successful and most tedious of his characters. (See William Chambers's account of the visit). St. Gordian's Cross, mentioned in a previous chapter, is further up the valley, where also are the ruins of Posso, a place-name in the "Bride of Lammermoor." Presently we come to Neidpath Castle, dominating Peebles, the key to the Upper Tweed fastnesses. When or by whom it was built is unknown. In 1795, it was held by "Old Q," fourth Duke of Queensberry. Wordsworth's sonnet on the spoliation of its magnificent woods (an act done to spite the heir of entail) stigmatises for all time the memory of one of the worst reprobates in history.

PLATE 16

MELROSE AND THE
EILDONS FROM BEMERSYDE
HILL: SCOTT'S
FAVOURITE VIEW

FROM A WATER-COLOUR SKETCH

PAINTED BY

JAMES ORROCK, R.I.

(See pp. 89 and 123 )

Both Scott and Campbell have sung of the unhappy Maid of Neidpath spent with grief and disease, waiting her lover on the Castle walls, and beholding him ride past all unconscious of her identity.

The literary associations of Peebles—a charming township—are outstanding. William and Robert Chambers (founders of Chambers's Journal) were natives. So were Thomas Smibert and John Veitch, poets and essayists both. Mungo Park (a Gideon Gray prototype) was the town's surgeon for a time—an eternal longing for Africa in his soul. "Meg Dods," the best landlady in fiction, was one of its heroines. And "Peblis to the Play," probably by James I., is a Scots classic. Traquair is poetic ground every foot of it. At its "bonnie bush" how many singers have caught inspiration from Crawford of Drumsoy in 1725, to Principal Shairp in our own day! Shairp's lyric may well be quoted in full. It is by far the finest contribution to modern Border minstrelsy. "Thank ye again for this exquisite song; I would rather have been the man to write it than Gladstone in all his greatness and goodness," was the exuberant "Rab" Brown's compliment to the author:

PLATE 17

DRYBURGH ABBEY AND
SCOTT'S TOMB

FROM A WATER-COLOUR SKETCH

PAINTED BY

JAMES ORROCK, R.I.

(See pp. 35 , 39 , 91 , 92 , 103 )

Traquair House—possibly Scott's Tully-Veolan, "pallid, forlorn, stricken all o'er with eld," claims to be the oldest inhabited house in Scotland. It certainly looks it. The great gate, flanked with the huge Bradwardine Bears, has not been opened since the '45. There seems no reason to question the legend. It is not so "foolish" as Mr. Lang supposes. Innerleithen, Scott's "St. Ronan's," is near at hand, and the peel of Elibank—a mere shell. Harden's marriage to Muckle-mou'ed Meg Murray was not quite accounted for in the traditional way, however,—a choice between the laird's dule-tree and the laird's unlovely daughter. The legend is not uncommon to German folk-lore. At Ashestiel, thrice renowned, Scott spent the happiest years of his life (1804-1812), writing "Marmion," the "Lady of the Lake," and the first draft of "Waverley." In many respects the place is more important to students of Scott than Abbotsford itself. Yet for a thousand who rush to Abbotsford only a very few find their way up here. Yair, a Pringle house, and Fairnalee, comfortable little demesnes, lie further down the Tweed. At the latter, Alison Rutherford wrote her version of the "Flowers of the Forest"—"I've seen the smiling of Fortune beguiling." Abbotsford was Cartley Hole first—not Clarty—which is a mere vulgar play on the original. From a small villa about 1811 it has grown to the present noble pile. After Scott's day, Mr. Hope Scott did much for the place. But it is of Sir Walter that one thinks. What a strenuous life was his here! What love he lavished on the very ground that was dear to him—in a double sense! And what longing for home during that vain sojourn under Italian skies! "To Abbotsford; let us to Abbotsford!"—a desire now echoed on ten thousand tongues year by year from all ends of the earth. Behind Abbotsford are the Eildons, the "Delectable Mountains" of Washington Irving's visit, "three crests against a saffron sky" always in vision the wide Border over. Scott said he could stand on the Eildons and point out forty-three places famous in war and verse. "Yonder," he said, "is Lammermoor and Smailholm; and there you have Galashiels, and Torwoodlee, and Gala Water; and in that direction you see Teviotdale and the Braes of Yarrow, and Ettrick stream winding along like a silver thread to throw itself into the Tweed. It may be pertinacity, but to my eye these grey hills, and all this wild Border Country have beauties peculiar to themselves. When I have been for some time in the rich scenery about Edinburgh which is like ornamented garden land, I begin to wish myself back again among my own honest grey hills; and if I did not see the heather at least once a year, I think I should die." Melrose is the "Kennaquhair" of the "Monastery" and the "Abbot." Its glory, of course, is its Abbey, unsurpassed in the beauty of death, but all grace fled from its environment. Were it possible to transplant the Abbey together with its rich associations to the site of the original foundation by the beautiful bend at Bemersyde, Melrose would sit enthroned peerless among the shrines of our northern land. Within Melrose Abbey, near to the High Altar, the Bruce's heart rests well—its fitful flutterings o'er. Here, too, lie the brave Earl Douglas, hero of Chevy Chase; Liddesdale's dark Knight—another Douglas; Evers and Latoun, the English commanders at Ancrum Moor, that ran so deadly red with the blood of their countrymen; and, according to Sir Walter, Michael Scot—

One is not surprised at Scott's love for Melrose. As the grandest ecclesiastical ruin in the country, it must be seen to be understood. Mere description counts for little in dealing with such a subject. Every window, arch, cloister, corbel, keystone, door-head and buttress of this excellent example of mediÆval Gothic is a study in itself—all elaborately carved, yet no two alike. The sculpture is unequalled both in symmetry and in variety, embracing some of the loveliest specimens of floral tracery and the most quaint and grotesque representations imaginable. The great east oriel is its most imposing feature. But the south doorway and the chaste wheeled window above it are equally superb. For what is regarded as the finest view of the building, let us stand for a little at the north-east corner, not far from the grave of Scott's faithful factotum, Tom Purdie. Here the coup d'oeil is very striking; and the contour of the ruins is realised to its full. Or if it be preferred, let us look at the pile beneath the lee light o' the moon—the conditions recommended in the "Lay."

Three inscriptions—one inside, two in the churchyard, are worth halting by. "Heir lyis the Race of ye Hovs of Zair," touches many hearts with its simple pathos. "The Lord is my Light," is the expressive text (self-chosen) on Sir David Brewster's tomb—the greatest master of optics in his day; and the third, covering the remains of a former Melrose schoolmaster was frequently on the lips of Scott:

If half the grace of Melrose is lost by reason of its environment, the situation of Dryburgh is queenly enough. It is assuredly the most picturesque monastic ruin in Great Britain. Scott's is the all-absorbing name, and as a matter of fact he would himself have become by inheritance the laird of Dryburgh, but for the financial folly of a spendthrift grand-uncle. "The ancient patrimony," he tells us, "was sold for a trifle, and my father, who might have purchased it with ease, was dissuaded by my grandfather from doing so, and thus we have nothing left of Dryburgh but the right of stretching our bones there." So here, the two Sir Walters, the two Lady Scotts, and Lockhart, await the breaking light of morn. Dryburgh, be it noted, is in Berwickshire—in Mertoun parish, where (at Mertoun House) Scott wrote the "Eve of St. John." Not far off is Sandyknowe (not Smailholm, as it is generally designated) Tower, the scene of the ballad, and the cradle of Scott's childhood, where there awoke within him the first real consciousness of life, and where he had his first impressions of the wondrously enchanted land that lay within the comparatively small circle of the Border Country. Ruined Roxburgh, between Tweed's and Teviot's flow, and the palatial Floors Castle represent the best of epochs old and new, and even more than in Scott's halcyon school days is Kelso the "Queen of the South Countrie." Coldstream, lying in sylvan loveliness on the left bank of the Tweed—a noble river here—has been the scene of many a memorable crossing from both countries from the time of Edward I. to the Covenanting struggle. So near the Border, Coldstream had at one time a considerable notoriety for its runaway marriages, the most notable of which was Lord Brougham's in 1819. Within an easy radius of Coldstream are Wark Castle, the mere site of it rather—where in 1344 Edward III. instituted the Order of the Garter; Twizel Bridge, with its single Gothic arch, cleverly crossed by Surrey and his men (it is the identical arch) at Flodden, that darkest of all dark fields for Scotland,

Of Norham Castle, frowning like Carlisle, to the North, and set down as it were to over-awe a kingdom, Scott's description is always the best. Ladykirk Church was built by James IV. in gratitude for his escape from drowning while fording the Tweed. Last of all, we reach Berwick, at one period the chief seaport in Scotland—a "second Alexandria," as was said, now the veriest shadow of its former self. Christianized towards the close of the fourth century, according to Bede, as a place rich in churches, monasteries and hospitals, Berwick held high rank in the ecclesiastical world. Its geographical position, too, as a frontier town made it the Strasburg for which contending armies were continually in conflict. Century after century its history was one red record of strife and bloodshed. Its walls, like its old Bridge spanning the Tweed, were built in Elizabeth's reign, and its Royal Border Bridge, opened to traffic in 1850, was happily characterised by Robert Stephenson, its builder, as the "last act of the Union."

PLATE 18

THE REMNANT OF
WARK CASTLE

FROM A WATER-COLOUR SKETCH

PAINTED BY

JAMES ORROCK, R.I.

(See pp. 39 and 92 )

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