  Produced by Al Haines. [image] The Rookhope Ride STORIES OF THE BY Mr and Mrs WILLIAM PLATT WITH SIXTEEN FULL-PAGE ILLUSTRATIONS BY GEORGE G. HARRAP & CO. LTD. First published December 1910 Printed in Great Britain by Turnbull & Spears, Edinburgh Contents
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Illustrations In liquid murmurs Yarrow sings Her reminiscent tune Of bygone Autumn, bygone Springs, And many a leafy June. No more the morning beacons gleam Upon the silent hills; The far back years are years of dream— Now peace the valley fills. No more the reivers down the vale On raid and foray ride; No more is heard the widow's wail O'er those who fighting died. When morning damns with all its joys Then from the meadows rise A hundred throbbing hearts to voice Their anthems to the skies. When noontide sleeps where brackens wave, Ere shadows yet grow long, No sound awakes the echoes save The Yarrow's pensive song. And when the eve, with calm delight, Betokens night is nigh, Beneath the first star's tender light Is heard the owlet's cry. While Yarrow's liquid cadence swells By meadow, moor, and hill, At morn or noon or eve there dwells A mournful memory still. W. CUTHBERTSON. Stories of The Scottish Border Introduction I.—THE CHARACTER OF THE BORDERS The district called the Border is one of the most interesting in Great Britain. It consists of that part of England that is nearest Scotland, and that part of Scotland that is nearest England, mainly the counties of Northumberland, Cumberland, Berwickshire, Roxburghshire, and Dumfriesshire. The country is very picturesque and highly romantic. It abounds in great rolling, breezy hills, with swift streamlets or "burns" running down their sides to swell the rushing rivers. No part of our island has more beautiful valleys than those of the Border. This bold, rough district, well adapted to defence, and situated also just where the island of Great Britain is almost at its narrowest, became, after many a struggle, the boundary between England and Scotland. The character of the country was suited to the rearing of hardy Moorland sheep and cattle; its inhabitants therefore were a tough, open-air race of men, strong, strapping fellows, fearless riders, always ready for an adventure, especially if it meant a fight. In those days of Border strife there was hardly such a thing as international justice, that is to say, the people of one nation were not very particular as to what they did to people of another nation; therefore these bold, hardy Border men, Englishmen and Scot alike, were fond of creeping across the boundary to steal the cattle of their neighbours. Men devoted to such raids were called "Freebooters" or "Mosstroopers," the name "Moss" being given in the North Country to boggy tracts that lie about the hill-sides. So it happened that the Border was in a perpetual state of petty warfare, conducted, it is true, with a certain amount of good-will and a rough approach to chivalry, and with the concurrence of the powerful Border nobles of both nations, who often played an important part therein. At times these raids developed into important warlike expeditions, when a fierce noble, or even a king, had some reckless game to play. Hence, among the ballads which give us so vivid an account of Border strife, we find descriptions not only of the minor doings of picturesque sheep-stealers, but also of pitched battles such as Chevy Chase and Homildon Hill. The union of England and Scotland in 1603 naturally put an end to all the former excuses for raiding, and therefore terminated the true Freebooter period. After this, despite one or two belated attempts, such as Elliot's big raid in 1611, sheep-stealing ceased to be looked upon as an honourable calling, and became mere thieving. The men who would have raided one another's farms in 1602 became friendly neighbours after the Border Commission of 1605. There had been little malice in their former freebooting. Both sides were of one race; and they had the pleasure of finding that their lands went up greatly in value in consequence of the Border peace. To-day, the Border presents scenes of peaceful cattle-farming. But Romance is still in the air, hangs about the fine, breezy moorlands and beautiful dales, and is seen clearly in the faces of the healthy Border-folk. A holiday at any Border farm would prove a most enjoyable one. There are wonderful Roman remains, for here it was that the Romans built their wall; there are castles of the Border barons; the views are wide and grand; the river-valleys are unmatched for beauty, and delightful wild flowers are plentiful, chief among which are fox-gloves, the giant wild Canterbury Bells, the handsome North Country wild geranium, several interesting kinds of wild orchids, and a variety of others too numerous to mention. Last, but not least, it is often possible in the evenings to see the farmers' sons engaged in friendly wrestling in the meadows, when we can realise that these great manly fellows are of the same vigorous race that kept the Borders lively a few centuries ago. II.—A BRIEF HISTORY OF THE BORDER Before dealing in detail with the stirring stories of Border history and legend, to retell which is the purpose of this book, we will first inquire—What is it that settles exactly the position of the border-line between two countries? To find the answer we must think what happens when a country is invaded. If the invaders are stronger than the people whom they attack, they go on thrusting back their foes till these reach some strong position where, by the aid of mountain, river, or marsh, they are able, at any rate for a time, to hold their own. Thus, a border-line is always determined by some natural feature of the country which gives the defenders an advantage. The attackers will not always operate from the same locality, and the defenders will not always fall back in the same direction; the two sides, also, will vary in power from time to time. For these reasons a border-line, especially in the old fighting days, was often altered. When the Romans invaded Britain they gradually conquered the southern part of it, but they could not subdue the wilder north; one of their boundary lines was drawn from the Solway to the Tyne; then they fought their way further north and their next definite boundary was a line running from the Forth to the Clyde. Along each of these boundaries they built a great wall, and to this day parts of these Roman walls remain. But it is worth noting that neither of these wall border-lines stands upon the present border, one being all in England and the other all in Scotland. When the Romans left Britain, called back to defend their own native land from invasion, there followed a brief period for which we have no definite record of events in this island. This is the period of King Arthur, and none can say how much is true in the Arthurian legends. But history begins to become clear again about the time that the Angles came in their ships across the North Sea, bent on conquest. They landed on all the natural harbours of the east coast, driving the Britons back and taking the land for themselves. The fact that they landed on the East and drove the Britons westward, leads us to think that sooner or later a boundary would have been formed dividing the island into the east side (for the Angles) and the west side (for the Britons). Now that is exactly what did happen. The border-lines were nowhere like the present ones. The northern kingdom of the Angles reached to the Forth, where these people founded Edinburgh (Edwin's burgh). On the west the Britons had sway in Cornwall (Corn-Walles), Wales, Cumbria (which stretched from the Mersey to the Solway), and Strathclyde (from the Solway to the Clyde). North of the Forth was the country of the Picts; while the Scots were a race recently come from Ireland, and they only owned what we now call Argyleshire, and the islands lying near to it. Not one inch of the present Border was at that day in the border-line! Of the various races that lay round about where the Border now is, the Northumbrians seemed at first to be the strongest. The capital of their kingdom was Bamburgh, a place still famous for its castle, though to-day it is not important enough to have a railway station! But it still looks very picturesque on the wild coast, with the Farne Islands, the first seat of Northumbrian Christianity, in the near distance. Ambition had much to do with the downfall of Northumbria. The famous King Eadbert would not rest content till he had scaled Dumbarton, the capital of Strathclyde. This was to his career what the march to Moscow was to Napoleon's, for, though Eadbert got safely to Dumbarton (756) his army was cut to pieces in getting back again. The Northumbrians seem to have lost some of their northern lands, for they moved their capital further south, to the old Roman city of Corbridge which stood on the Tyne just where the delightful country town of that name stands to-day. In 844 a king of the Scots, named Kenneth MacAlpin, became (we don't quite know how) king of the Picts also, joining two strong races under one ruler, and thus was powerful enough to give great trouble to the weakened kingdom of Northumbria. He several times led his army through Lothian, the district belonging to the Angles between the Forth and the Tweed, but was never quite able to conquer it. It is important to remember that up to that date Lothian had never belonged to Scotland. The appearance of the Danes added to the confusion of those restless days. For some few years it was doubtful whether Scot, Dane, or Angle would get the best of it in Northumbria. But at last the genius of Athelstan of Wessex revived the power of the Angles over the whole of that large part of the island which they had settled, right up to the Forth itself. Edinburgh was still English in 957, and the border-line was still very far from the present one. But there was no longer a king of Northumbria; only an earl, who was subject to the will of the West-Saxon kings. This fact of the dominance of the West Saxons, whose capital was far to the south at Winchester, must have added to the weakness of the Northumbrian border. By the year 963 the Scots had conquered Edinburgh, and it was now never again to return to English rule. Before very long the whole of Lothian had passed under Scottish control; but it was not yet held to be part of Scotland. Nor must it be thought that this conquest of Lothian fixed the border-line in its present position, for the king of the Scots was at that time ruler over Cumberland, which had never yet been English and was all that was left of the old British kingdom of Cumbria. Frontier wars with varying successes between Scot, Angle, and Dane mark the stormy history of this time. The power of Cnut held back the Scotch attempts upon Nothumberland; but during a lull in the wars the grand-son of the Scottish king married the sister of Earl Siward, and received as her dowry twelve towns in the valley of the Tyne, an astonishingly imprudent arrangement. At the time of the battle of Hastings, the earldom of Northumberland was so far distant from Winchester as to be somewhat out of the control of the King of England; the power of the Scottish kings threatened it; they held twelve towns in Tynedale, and Cumberland was a part of Scotland. The Northumbrians refused to accept William the Conqueror as their king; and had they been able to make good their refusal, they must sooner or later have been conquered by the Scots, and the border-line between England and Scotland would then most probably have been formed by the Tees, the mountain boundary of Westmoreland, and Morecambe Bay. But William was not a king to be played with. He reduced Northumberland to subjection and carried his army into Scotland as far as the river Tay, where he forced the King of Scotland to admit that he, William, was his overlord. Notwithstanding this humiliation, when King William returned to Winchester, the Scots several times went back to their favourite amusement of raiding unhappy Northumberland. One of these invasions took place in the reign of William Rufus (1093), who went north in person. He doubtless recognised the fact that owing to the Scots possessing Cumberland they were in the strong position of being able to attack Northumberland on two sides. He took Cumberland by force of arms, and thus for the first time it became a part of England (the word "Cumberland" means the land of the Cumbrians or Welsh, a Saxon form of the Welsh word Cymry). Rufus rebuilt the strong fortress of Carlisle to defend his new border at its weakest corner. For the most part this border is excellently protected by the natural rampart of the wild Cheviot Hills, and is in every way as good a border as could be devised. It runs in a fairly straight line from south-west to north-east, across a narrow part of the island. But although this border-line proved to be a permanent one, it must not be thought that it remained undisputed. The times were rough, and hardy fighting folk lived on the Border. They had many grounds for quarrel, and took advantage of them all. For one thing, the exact boundary of North Cumberland was never quite defined till 1552; up to which year there was a tract of land between the rivers Esk and Sark, which was claimed by both countries, and therefore called the "Debateable Land." Then the Scots maintained that they were overlords of Northumberland, while the English kings cherished the notion that they were overlords of the whole island of Britain, and the wild spirits on both sides were always ready to fight. Out of this fighting spirit sprung the stirring history of the Border, which forms the theme of the deathless Ballads, the stories of which it is now our purpose to retell. III.—WHAT THE BORDER NAMES TELL US Many a name holds a meaning wrapt up within itself like a nut in its shell. For instance, "Edinburgh" is a Saxon name—Edwin's burgh—and the word tells us that this noble city, though now the capital of Scotland, was originally founded by and belonged to a Saxon king of Northumbria. The Highlanders, in their own Gaelic language, called it Dunedin. This has the same signification as Edinburgh, but, like most Gaelic names, it is arranged in the reverse order to that in which an English name is generally put together. "Dun" means burgh, "Edin" is Edwin. This is the same Dun that we have in "Dundee," which means the burgh on the Tay, and might be translated as "Tayburgh." "Dumbarton" means the burgh of the Britons, and teaches us another notable lesson, namely, how far north in the old times the British influence extended. For "British" in this case means "Welsh." Nowadays we associate the Welsh with Wales only. Formerly there must have been a numerous colony of Welsh in Scotland, as the name "Dumbarton" testifies, as also many Scottish family names. The great name of Wallace itself, for instance, suggests such an origin, for "Wallace" is merely a corrupt form of the word "Welsh," and proves that the great national hero was of Welsh extraction. Then "Cumberland"—Cymry land—means the land of the Welsh, or Cymry, as they call themselves. The county of Cumberland did not really belong to the English till the time of William Rufus. The first syllable of "Carlisle" denotes a Celtic fortified town, and must be compared with the first syllable of "Carnarvon." The presence of the Roman wall is shown in many names in Northumberland, such as "Wallsend," "Walltown," "Wallridge," "Heddon-on-the-Wall," "Wallhouses," and "Thirlwall." For a very interesting instance of what a name tells us we may leave the Border for a moment and consider why the northernmost part of Scotland is called "Sutherland." It must have been so named by people living in the Orkney and Shetland isles, of a different race from the Scotch—that is, Norse settlers in those islands. With regard to surnames, how many stop to think that "Oliphant" is merely a form of "elephant," and was originally an allusion to a big, burly ancestor? "Grant," which is the same as "grand," must also have been once applied to one who was a giant in size. The Frazers somehow got their name from the French word for a strawberry, fraise. The odd-looking "Scrymgeour" means simply a scrimmager or skirmisher. "Turnbull" recalls one who turned the bull at a bull-baiting. The well-known "Gladstains" or "Gladstone" has nothing to do with "glad," but is from "glede," an old word for the kite, and commemorates some stone where these birds frequented. "Buccleuch" is from the killing of a buck in a cleugh or ravine. The Christian names of the Borderers are full of life and local colour, and differ much from those of Southern England. "Barthram" is the northern form of "Bertram," "Nigel" of "Neil," "Jellon" of "Julian," "Ringan" of "Ninian." It was the general custom to abbreviate Christian names or use them in the diminutive form, as is constantly the practice in these Border ballads. "Hobbie" stands for "Halbert," a fine old name which must not be confused with "Albert." "Dandie" or "Dandrie" is "Andrew," "Eckie" is "Hector," "Lammie" is "Lambert," "Lennie" is "Leonard." "Adam" becomes, in the familiar form, "Aicky," "Christian" becomes "Christy," "Gilbert" becomes "Gibby." Another peculiarity of the ballads is the regular recurrence of such phrases as "the Laird's Jock," "the Laird's Wat," "Ringan's Wat," etc. These expressions mean, "John the son of the Laird," "Walter the son of the Laird," "Walter the son of Ringan or Ninian." Chapter I Bamburgh and its Coast The little town of Bamburgh has two striking features—the great castle upon its stern rock, and the wild coast-line at its feet where dash the storms of the North Sea. To-day it is not important enough to have a railway station of its own; yet once it was the capital of the great Saxon kingdom of Northumbria. Its original name was Bebbanburgh, so called after Queen Bebba; of its Saxon fortress hardly a trace remains, the present building being partly the old Norman castle, with repairs and additions of a later date. The ancient pile has a strength, dignity, and grandeur which accords well with its truly noble situation. The North Saxons in choosing such a spot for their capital showed a very evident desire to keep in touch with the sea. Over the sea they had come; and over the sea would come both friends and enemies. Many a meeting of both friend and foe has taken place at Bamburgh! Perhaps the fiercest of the enemies was Ragnar of the hairy-breeches, a famous viking who plundered, ravaged, and burnt without mercy. These vikings, powerful men and fearless sea-rovers, were a standing terror to Northumbria. Men with frames and muscles strong as iron; at home both on the sea and on the battle-field; fair-haired, blue-eyed men, guarded by helmet, breast-plate, and shield, armed with heavy weapons, because at that date the art of the smith was not equal to making them sharp, light, and strong at once. So these mighty warriors hewed their way through the field of battle with great strokes, and when their foes fled in terror, the vikings took back to their ships all the treasure they could find, and away they went across the sea again. But with all their fierceness they loved poetry (wild war-poetry, most of it) and they loved their strong, brave women. Ragnar was a thorough viking. He loved fighting, and his handsome wife, and the battle songs he made. But the Saxons had no cause to love him, and when his ship ran aground near Jarrow, they bound him and cast him into a pit of snakes, and watched him slowly die. The viking had no fear of death. He sang as he lay there, of his life and his deeds—of the great banquets he had given to the wolves and the vultures and the fierce battles he had won, spreading the terrors of his name from the Orkneys to the Mediterranean; of his beautiful wife and strong sons, and of how they would avenge him; and of how Woden, the lord of all warriors, was calling him to his Hall. Many a battle has been fought on that wild coast since Ragnar died; much history has been made thereabouts, and many legends have attached themselves to Bamburgh. Like most famous places, it had its own special dragon, the "Laidly Worm" or loathsome serpent of the ancient ballad.
And yet, when the gallant knight gave her "kisses three," she changed at once into a beautiful lady! But despite its castle, its battles, and its legends, Bamburgh slowly declined in importance. As the capital of Northumbria it had been one of the chief towns in England. But the gallant Northumbria of the Saxons was more open to enemies than any other part of the country; Cumbrians were on the west and Scots on the north, and this was of all Saxon kingdoms the most exposed to the ravages of the Danes. From the capital of a kingdom it became the capital of a county (Bamburghshire), returning two members to Parliament in the reign of Edward I.; but it grew of less and still less importance, till at last it was known only to the student of history. It shared this fate with Lindisfarne, called Holy Island, once the Canterbury of the North, on whose rocky shores still stand the ruins of the fine Norman cathedral which took the place of the old Saxon one. Lindisfarne and Bamburgh—neighbours, divided only by a narrow belt of sea—two names that conjure up vivid pictures of romantic history. Yet suddenly, early in the nineteenth century, the great deed of a splendid heroine lent new glory to the wild, sea-girt town. Grace Darling was born at Bamburgh in 1817, in a cottage on the south side of the village street, which can still be seen to-day. Her father became keeper of the lighthouse on the Langstone, a rocky islet five miles from the coast, guarding ships from the dangerous Farne Islands, a group of iron-bound rocks where seabirds dwell. In the early morning of September 7, 1838, during the raging of a most terrible storm, she heard the crash of a ship dashed upon the rocks, and anguished cries; as soon as dawn enabled them to see, the girl and her father made out the dark outline of the wreck, and the miserable forms of the mariners crouching on rocks from which the rising tide would sweep them inevitably to death. With superb heroism Grace and her father pushed their small boat into the furious waters, and after strenuous and dauntless efforts, always at the peril of their own lives, they saved the whole ship's company, nine souls in all. So fierce was the storm that it was three days before a boat dared take them from the Langstone to the mainland. The roar of approbation which greeted her from the whole country found her as modest as she was brave. But for all her courage, this noble girl was not strong. She died four years later, and lies buried at Bamburgh, within sound of the sea. And the Langstone is known to-day as "Grace Darling's Island," and the tomb of the brave girl rouses sweeter memories than the frowning fortress of Bamburgh. |
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