MOFFAT Moffat, in these days a neat and quiet townlet relying upon the waters of its Sulphur Well for its prosperity, lies in a hollow of the mountains. As to which is the neater and cleaner of the two—Lockerbie or Moffat—I will not be so rash as to hazard an opinion, but no one is likely to dispute the fact that “Moaffet” is the quieter. For one thing, this quietude is one of its principal assets, and although it has a railway station, the fact of its being merely the terminus of a two-mile branch from Beattock will be sufficient to prove that the quiet is not greatly disturbed by trains. There is nothing very striking in the appearance of Moffat, beyond this remarkable neatness and the breadth of its High Street; the centre of the town, in its mingling of shops and villas, and the ever-present spaciousness, indeed, resembling the ordinary suburbs of less restful places. But one singular object that has claims neither to antiquity nor beauty, stands in midst of the broad street and tells the stranger that Moffat and its neighbourhood are celebrated for something else than a medicinal spa and a great hydropathic establishment. This is the Colvin Fountain, presented to the town by William Colvin, of the The Auld Kirk of Moffat, belonging to an era very different from this, stands appropriately secluded in the old kirkyard that is locked and barred against casual entry. The Auld Kirk is in ruins, and that is appropriate too; for what bond of sympathy can there be between the rather smug, self-satisfied character of the modern hypochondriacs who, metaphorically (and sometimes actually) lapped in cotton-wool, now resort to Moffat, and the stern Covenanters who were dragooned in the surrounding braes and on the inclement fells, and passed a night in prison in the Auld Kirk, before being conducted to the small mercies awaiting them in Edinburgh? No: the historic building is rightly left alone to its memories. But this thorough locking of the old churchyards in Scotland is a little revolting to an Englishman. It seems to emphasise, to the point of callousness, the fact that the day of the dead is indeed done; and hints that they not only have no part in the world, but none in the thoughts of their own kin. Here lies the great road-reformer, John Loudon Macadam, and few are those who, turning aside to seek his epitaph, trouble further to have the gates unlocked. Macadam was born at Ayr in 1756, and died at Duncrieff House, Moffat, in BURNS Situated on one of the two roads from Carlisle to Edinburgh, Moffat had of old-time a goodly number of inns. Among them the “Annandale Arms” and the “Spur” were immediate competitors. There are Burns associations with the “Spur,” but much more intimate ones with the “Old Black Bull” inn, which remains very much the same plain whitewashed stone house it was in the poet’s day. The tale is told how he, with some cronies, was drinking in a window-seat of the inn when they saw two ladies ride by on horseback; one of them so pretty and so small that she was known as “one of the Graces in miniature.” “Odd,” said one of the public-house loungers, “that one should be so little and the other so big”; whereupon Burns wrote on a window-pane: Ask why God made the gem so small, And why so huge the granite? Because God meant mankind should set The greater value on it. A very pretty compliment to the little lady, but uncommonly hard, by implication, on the full-sized one. The pane of glass was long ago removed, and is supposed to be now at Dumfries. The famed Sulphur Well is situated a mile and a half away from Moffat, in a Swiss-like chÂlet on a rugged hillside 300 feet above the town. Some walk to it, others ride, and for two-pence The rugged and forbidding scenery around Moffat culminates on the Edinburgh Road at the gloomy hollow of the hills called the “Devil’s Beef Tub,” which is said to have acquired its name from this being a favourite place among the cattle-thieves of yore to hide their stolen cattle. The “Beef Tub” is really a deeper and more rugged version of the “Devil’s Punch Bowl” on the Portsmouth Road. Sir Walter Scott, who romantically says “It looks as if four hills were laying their heads together to shut daylight from the dark, hollow space between them,” tells in “Redgauntlet” how a prisoner being marched past TRAGEDY OF THE SNOW This wild country was the scene of a mail-coach tragedy on February 1st, 1831, when the Dumfries and Edinburgh mail was snowed up at Moffat. Eager to perform their duty, the driver and guard procured saddle-horses and flung the mail-bags across them, but a few minutes’ effort proved that it was impossible to proceed with the horses, and the two undaunted men sent them back to Moffat, and went on by themselves, afoot. It was an enterprise of the most hopeless kind, impossible to be accomplished. They sank down exhausted, near this gorge, and perished in the snow. Their bodies were found, a week later, and the mail-bags they had carefully hung upon a wayside snow-post, hard by. To-day, in the old kirkyard of Moffat, two stones to the memory of these brave men, “faithful unto death,” may be found, with the inscriptions: Erected by Subscription in 1835. Sacred to the Memory of James MacGeorge, Guard of the Dumfries and Edinburgh Royal Mail, who unfortunately perished at the age of 47, near Tweedshaws, after the most strenuous exertions in the performance of his duty, during that memorable snowstorm 1st February 1831, and In memory of John Goodfellow, Driver of the Edinburgh Mail Coach, who perished on Errick Stane in a snowstorm on 1st February 1831, in kindly assisting his fellow-sufferer, the Guard, to carry forward the Mail-Bags. The local Courier newspaper of the time, with more truth than feeling, described the act of these If you go far enough past the Devil’s Beef Tub and Tweedshaws, where the river Tweed rises, you come, along this old road to Edinburgh, to the “Crook” inn, where the poet Campbell had a curious experience. Taking a generous glass of toddy, he went to bed. Presently there came a knock at the door, and there entered the pretty maiden who had given him supper. “Please, sir, could ye tak’ a neebour into your bed?” “With all my heart,” exclaimed the poet, starting up gaily. “Thank you, sir; for the Moffat carrier’s come in, a’ wat, and there’s no’ a single other place.” This was not what the poet expected. Up came the big reeking man, and exit the little woman. |