To the present writer, the valley of the Leader, or Lauderdale, has attractions and memories that are second to none in the Border. "Here, first,"—to use Hogg's lines—

Lauderdale constitutes one of the "three parts" into which Berwickshire, like Ancient Gaul, is divided. The others are the Merse, (i.e., March-Land)—often a distinctive designation for the entire county, but applicable especially to the low-lying lands beside the Tweed; Lammermoor, so named from the Lammermoor Hills ranging across the county from Soutra Edge and Lammer Law in the extreme north-west, to the coastline at Fast Castle and St. Abbs. Lauderdale, the westernmost division, running due north and south, embraces simply the basin of the Leader and its tributaries so far as the basin is in Berwickshire. Its total length is not more than twenty-one miles, from Kelphope Burn, the real origin of the Leader, to Leaderfoot, about two miles below Melrose, where it meets the waters of the Tweed. Leaderdale and Lauderdale are but varieties of the name. A little off the beaten track, perhaps, it can be easily reached by rail to St. Boswells and Earlston, or to Lauder itself, from Fountainhall, on the Waverley Route, by the light railway recently opened. Its upper course among the Lammermoors is through bleak, monotonous hill scenery; but the middle and lower reaches pass into a fine series of landscapes—the "Leader Haughs" of many an olden strain—- flanked by graceful green hills and swells, and plains, that are hardly surpassed in Scotland for agricultural wealth and beauty. Of Berwickshire generally, it may be said that it has few industries and no mineral wealth to speak of. Its business is chiefly in one department—agriculture. For that the soil is particularly well adapted. Especially is this true of the Merse and Lauderdale districts, where the farmers take a high place in agricultural affairs, many of them being recognised experts and authorities on the subject. Thousands of acres on the once bald and featureless hill-lands of Lauderdale have been brought within the benign influence of plough and harrow, and are choice ornaments in a county famous for its agricultural triumphs all the world over. But Romance, rather than agriculture, is the true glory of the Leader Valley. It will be difficult to find a locality—Yarrow excepted—which is more under the spell of the past. May not Lauderdale, indeed, be claimed as the very birthplace of Scottish melody itself? Robert Chambers styled it "the Arcadia of Scotland," and was not Thomas of Ercildoune the "day-starre of Scottish poetry?"

This, too, is the country of St. Cuthbert. At Channelkirk, he was probably born. At all events the first light of history falls upon him here, as a shepherd lad, watching his flocks by the Leader, and striving to think out the deep things of the divine life, with the most ardent longings in his soul after it. The traditional meadow, whence he beheld the vision which changed his career, is still pointed out, and his reputed birthplace at Cuddy Ha' keeps his memory green amongst those sweet refreshing solitudes. It is interesting to note Berwickshire's connection with the three most famous Borderers of history—St. Cuthbert, Thomas the Rhymer, and Walter Scott, of Merse extraction, whose dust Berwickshire holds as its most sacred trust.

Lauder and Earlston are the only places of importance in the valley. The former—it is, by the way, the only royal burgh in the shire—boasts a considerable antiquity. It is still a quaint-looking but clean town, with long straggling street, and one or two buildings—the parish kirk and Tolbooth—offering decidedly Continental suggestions. Lauder's old-worldness and isolation are at an end, however. After much agitation, a railway-line now connects it with the rest of the world, and already the signs of a new life are apparent. Within a very few years the inevitable changes will be sure to have passed over this once quiet and exclusive little town. It is the "Maitland blude," which dominates Lauder, and Thirlestane Castle, built, or renovated rather, in the time of Charles II., is still a place to see. Amongst Scottish families, the Maitlands were first in place and power. Not a few of them were greatly distinguished as statesmen and men of letters—the blind poet and ballad-collector, Sir Richard; William Maitland, the celebrated Secretary Lethington; Chancellor Maitland, author of the satirical ballad, "Against Sklanderous Tongues;" Thomas, and Mary, Latin versifiers both; and the infamous "Cabal" Duke, the only bearer of the title. Within the well-kept policies of Thirlestane, tradition has located the site of the historic Lauder Bridge, so fatal to James III.'s favourites in 1482. Dr. John Wilson, of Bombay, Orientalist and scholar, was born at Lauder in 1804, and James Guthrie, the first Scottish martyr after the Reformation, was its minister for a short period.

Earlston is seven miles down stream from Lauder. Before reaching the town of the Rhymer some spots of interest call for notice. At St. Leonard's—a little way out—a hospital off-shoot of Dryburgh, lived Burne the Violer, the last of the minstrel fraternity, a supposed prototype of the Minstrel of the "Lay," and author of the fine pastoral poem, "Leader Haughs and Yarrow," the verse-model for Wordsworth's "Three Yarrows." One verse was a great favourite with Scott and Carlyle, both of whom were known to repeat it frequently:—

Blainslie, famous for its oats ("There's corn enough in the Blainslies"), and Whitslaid Tower, a long ago holding of the Lauder family, are passed a mile or two on. At Birkhill and Birkenside the road forks leftwards to Legerwood, where Grizel Cochrane of Ochiltree (afterwards Mrs. Ker of Morriston), heroine of the stirring mail-bag adventure narrated in the "Border Tales," sleeps in its lately restored kirk chancel. Chapel, and Carolside with a fine deer park, and most charming of country residences—at the latter of which Kinglake wrote part of his "Crimean War"—sit snugly to the right, in the bosky glen below.

PLATE 24

CRIFFEL AND LOCH
KINDAR

FROM A WATER-COLOUR SKETCH

PAINTED BY

JAMES ORROCK, R.I.

Earlston, the Ercildoune of olden time—name much better suited to the quiet beauty of its charming situation—has no unimportant place both in Scottish history and romance. It has been honoured by many royal visits. Here David the Sair Sanct subscribed the Foundation Charter of Melrose Abbey in 1136, and his son the Confirmatory Charter in 1143. Other royal visitors followed; there James IV. encamped for a night on his way from Edinburgh to Flodden; Queen Mary made a brief stay at Cowdenknowes as she passed from Craigmillar to Jedburgh; and lastly came Prince Charlie (unwelcome) on his march to Berwick-on-Tweed. But above all it is renowned as having been the residence (and birthplace probably) of Thomas the Rhymer, or True Thomas, or simply, as literary history prefers to call him, Thomas of Ercildoune. The Rhymer's Tower, associated with this remarkable personage, stands close to the Leader. Only a mere ivy-clad fragment remains (some 30 feet in height), but the memories of the place stretch back to more than six centuries, when Thomas was at the height of his fame as his country's great soothsayer and bard—the vates sacer of the people. His rhymes are still quoted, and many of them have been realised in a manner which Thomas himself could scarcely have anticipated. Scott makes him the author of the metrical romance "Sir Tristrem," published from the Auchinleck MS. in 1804, but the Rhymer is unlikely to have been the original compiler. With his Fairyland adventures and return to that mysterious region, everybody is familiar. A quaint stone in the church wall carries the inscription:

and the probability is that Thomas sleeps somewhere amidst its dark dust, unless, indeed, he be still spell-bound in some as yet undiscovered cavern underneath the Eildons, waiting with Arthur, and Merlin, the blast of that irresistible horn which is to "peal their proud march from Fairyland."

Mellerstain in Earlston Parish, is the burial-place of Grisell Baillie, the Polwarth heroine and songstress, and author of the plaintive "Werena My Heart Licht I wad Dee." Cowdenknowes, "where Homes had ance commanding," one of the really classical names in Border minstrelsy is the scene of that sweetest of love lyrics, the "Broom o' the Cowdenknowes":—

Sandyknowe, Scott's cradling-ground in romance, and Bemersyde, one of the oldest inhabited houses in the Tweed Valley (partly peel), still evidencing the Rhymer's couplet:—

are both in the near neighbourhood.

A charming bit of country road lies between Earlston and Dryburgh, passing Redpath, the Park, Gladswood, and round by Bemersyde Hill, from which Scott had his favourite view of the Tweed—the "beautiful bend" shrining the site of the original Melrose, and the graceful Eildons—and by which his funeral procession wended its mournful way just seventy-four years ago. Half-way between Earlston and Melrose (by road 4½ miles), and close to

the latter stream blends its waters with those of the Tweed, where the foliage is ever at its thickest and greenest; and looking up the glen towards Newstead and Melrose, another vision of rare beauty meets the eye. Framed in the tall piers of the railway viaduct (150 feet high)—not at all a disfigurement—the gracefully-bending Tweed, no more fair than here, with the smoke rising above the Abbeyed town, Eildon in the foreground, and the blue barrier of the hills beyond, make up a picture such as may come to us in dreams.