There is nothing at all of the “Caledonia stern and wild” description of scenery along these first few miles. The country becomes pleasantly undulating, villages are placed here and there along the road, and a railway runs companionably by, with the stream of Kirtle Water neighbouring it. Kirkpatrick is the first village. Beyond it the old road of pre-Telford days goes off to the right, for nearly two miles, and joins the modern road again at Merkland, passing an ancient granite boundary-cross surrounded by holly-bushes. A very great deal of highly untrustworthy “history” may be acquired about this cross by him who seeks wayside information. At the roadside smithy, hard by, the blacksmiths tell you it is the memorial of a man who was shot from Robgillt Tower—or “Toe-er,” in the local pronunciation. Whether the man who was shot was worth the memorial is more than any one can say, but the shot itself certainly would deserve a monument. A long shot, indeed, for it is a good mile away to Robgillt Tower! Bonshaw Tower, closer at hand, seems more likely. Another story, very popular in the neighbourhood, is that the men of this district sold their wives here.

Passing Kirtlebridge and its railway station, and crossing Kirtle Water and Mein Water, we come by some very pretty woodland and parklike scenery, to Ecclefechan: a very celebrated place now, and a place of pilgrimage since Thomas Carlyle died, in 1881. For Ecclefechan was the native village of that latter-day prophet, hero-worshipper, and apostle of work.

But there lies to the left of the road at the approach to Mein Water and the park of Burnfoot, a little-known Carlyle landmark that should be noted. The little graveyard of Pennersaughs contains the tombs of his grandfather and great-grandfather, among others.

A great deal of argument has been expended upon the meaning of Ecclefechan. “Ecclesia Fechanis” is said to be the origin of the name; but who St. Fechan was, who is supposed to have founded the original church here, is more than any one is prepared to definitely say. The sceptical stoutly declare him a myth: a saintly “Mrs. Harris”; while Welshmen might declare that “Ecclefechan” is “Eglwys vychan,” i.e. “Little Church,” and none would be able to prove himself correct.

Carlyle once, in a memorable outburst, declared that “the picturesque” to him was “a mere bore,” and that “simple knolls and fields, with brooks and hedges among them,” were best of all for his taste. If this was genuine, and not sheer Carlylean perversity, why then Ecclefechan, his native village, was the ideal birthplace, for it is the mere negation of beauty and the picturesque. Yet it has a certain interesting quality. It has “character.” For you could not pick out any individual house and point to its comeliness, but although Ecclefechan is in its component parts made up of precisely the same materials as fifty other Annandale villages, there is a distinctive personality in it which would be evident even if the stimulating association with Carlyle were not present. A rushing burn goes down one side of the street and the swifts fly and scream overhead. Among the unassertive white-faced and grey houses is one with an archway and above it a quaint window of quasi-Jacobean character. It is the dwelling-house built by Thomas Carlyle’s father and uncles about 1791, and over the doorway is the plain inscription, “Birthplace of Carlyle, 4 Dec. 1795.” Beside the doorway itself stands a boulder-stone, now graven with a characteristic Carlylean quotation: “That idle crag”; and always, above the shrilling of the swifts, you hear the murmur of the stream a few feet away: “the little Kuhbach gushing kindly by.”

“The arch-house,” as it is known locally, was built with that central archway for the convenience of those three mason-brothers, James, Frank, and Tom, in storing the materials of their trade. There they reared their several families.

“This umbrageous Man’s nest,” Carlyle styles it: and a very well-filled nest it was, too. To-day it is freely open to all comers, and many and diverse are those who come here. In the year ending August 31st, 1905, the house was visited by 1,700 people, who gazed with reverence, with curiosity, or with mere vacuity of mind—after their several sorts—upon the humble interiors.

“And is this really the room in which Carlyle was born?” asked one in that first category, a good many years ago, in an awestruck voice.

“Aye,” said the gudewife, who to be sure did not rightly comprehend the inner meaning of all this hero-worship; “an’ oor Maggie was born here, too.”

Homeric laughter, doubtless, at this, in that place where the literary immortals foregather.

Professor Wilson, “Christopher North,” and his fellow-contributors to the Edinburgh Review, claimed to cultivate literature on a little oatmeal, but the claim might better be made for the author of “Frederick the Great” and “Sartor Resartus.” Plain living and high-thinking, you cannot fail to see, formed his life. A very simple-living, homely man indeed, as all his intimate belongings clearly show. His plain, commonplace inkstand, with the last pen he used, his simple writing-table with its original table-cloth, his tobacco-jar, together with a tobacco-cutter with which he sliced his own tobacco, are all of the least expensive kind, and, looking upon them, I feel vicariously ashamed for the modern authors of “masterpieces” who, according to the literary journals of the day, cannot feel “inspired” unless they are lapped round with every luxury. Carlyle’s felt hat is enclosed under glass: his straw hat hangs upon the wall, and you may put it on your own head. Most people do. Prominent among the many tributes to his genius is the great laurel wreath sent in 1895 by the German Emperor to mark the centenary of his birth. It was, of course, primarily a tribute to the hero-worshipping author of “Frederick the Great.”

Carlyle himself lies in the dour little graveyard of Ecclefechan, among his kin and away from his wife, whose grave is in the roofless nave of Haddington Abbey. Like most Scottish kirkyards, the gates of it are chained and locked.

“Entepfuhl” as Carlyle in “Sartor Resartus” styles Ecclefechan, is proud of him, largely, I suspect, because it perceives that the world beyond Annandale thinks so much of “Tam Carl.” There is a “Resartus Reading Room,” rather shabby with decrepit chairs, themselves sadly wanting reseating, or, better still, renewing altogether.

An oddly designed old house-tablet recently uncovered from the many coats of plaster and whitewash that had long concealed it, is now a feature of the house adjoining the Carlyle birthplace, and is perhaps the only curious item in the village.

There is a railway station nowadays at Ecclefechan, but the village is probably a quieter place than it was in Carlyle’s early days, when the Glasgow Mail dashed by, and the local coaches enlivened the street twice a day. For one thing, the station lies at a considerable step away, up along what was the new road when Telford made it, so long ago, and called new to this day.

It is a kind of mild hog’s-back ascent out of Ecclefechan and so along the six miles to Lockerbie, passing on the way the farmhouse of Mainhill, where Thomas Carlyle’s father at the age of fifty-seven started to be a farmer, striving there ten years, from 1815 to 1826. Then comes the beautiful park of Castlemilk, seat of the Jardine family, followed by Milk Bridge crossing the river of that name, and the smart suburban entrance to Lockerbie.

The town of Lockerbie is a thriving place, of a neatness and cleanliness altogether remarkable: a change indeed from the time when this rhyme was possible:

New in appearance, with a modern Town Hall in a florid version of the Scotch baronial style, and an air of abounding prosperity. Here, in this considerable place of shops, the Southron who knows not Scotland first discovers what the Scottish nation can do in the way of scones, seed-cakes, plum-cakes, baps, and bannocks, to say nothing of shortbread. It is a liberal education, in its especial way.

Five miles north of Lockerbie, Jardine Hall is passed, with the haunted ruin of Spedlin’s Tower away across the park. In another mile, at Dinwoodie Green, the road again divides into old road and new. The old road, running to the right hand, through the town of Moffat, over Ericstane Brae and down to Elvanfoot Bridge, a distance of twenty-three miles, is an excellent road still, but it ascends rugged and mountainous heights, while the “new road,” avoiding Moffat altogether, is at its highest altitude 500 feet below the summit of the old. Between the two roads on the way to Moffat runs the river Annan, and here and there are glens that at different times gave shelter to Covenanters and horse-stealing rascals. Wamphray Glen was one of the fastnesses of the Johnstones: the locality having from time immemorial been rich in Johnstones and Jardines. There was a Johnstone who lived in the old days at Lockerbie, in one of the numerous defensible towers of the district. He bore a more or less knightly part in the battle of Dryfe Sands, hard by, while at home his gentle lady with her own fair hands dinged in the head of Lord Maxwell with the castle keys.

The new road continues, with few features on the way, on a gradual rise, to Beattock, crossing the Annan at Johnstone Bridge, a pretty wooded scene, with wayside post-office. Beattock was important in the old coaching days, for here, beside the road, in a spot otherwise lonely, stood Beattock Inn. Two miles down the road was Moffat. There was nothing else but that change-house for mail-coach and stage. The house remains even now, but no longer an inn, and adjoining it stands the Beattock station of the Caledonian Railway, which abolished coaching on this road over fifty years ago.

Nowadays there is no house of public entertainment in all the thirty miles between Lockerbie and Crawford, on this modern road avoiding Moffat, except the refreshment room at Beattock station: the village that has in latter days sprung up here being quite innocent of anything of the kind.