Chapter 3
"The rayons of the sunne we see Diminish in their strength; The shade of everie tower and tree, Extended is in length. Great is the calm for everie quhair The wind is settlin' downe; The reik thrawes right up in the air, From everie tower and towne."
Generally these towers were planted on heights overlooking the river-valleys, and, as a rule, within sight of one another, in order that the signals of invasion or alarm--flashed by means of the bale fire--might be the more rapidly spread from point to point. Very few of them are now entire--the best-preserved on the Scottish side being, perhaps, Barns, at the entrance to the Manor valley; Bemersyde, still inhabited; and Oakwood on the Ettrick, incorporated in the present farm buildings; and on the English side, Corbridge and Doddington and Whittingham. From a return made in 1460 we find that Northumberland alone possessed 37 castles and 78 towers, and the Scottish side was equally well strengthened and defended. Amongst the larger and more important fortresses on the English side were the Castles of Alnwick, Bothal, Carlisle, Cockermouth, Coupland, Dilston, Elsdon, Etal, Ford, Naworth, Norham, Prudhoe, Wark, Warkworth; and on the Scottish side, Berwick, Branxholme, Caerlaverock (the true Ellangowan of "Guy Mannering"), Cessford, Ferniherst, Hermitage, Hume, Jedburgh, Neidpath, Peebles, Roxburgh, Threave, Traquair, besides, as has been said, hundreds of peel and bastle-houses scattered all over the country.
It would be a quite impossible task to chronicle the incessant clan-raids of the Border, and to narrate all the invasions that took place on either side would be to repeat in great measure the general history of England and Scotland. But at least two authentic reports, covering little more than a year, may be quoted as showing the extraordinary havoc and destruction caused by the latter. "In 1544 Sir Ralph Evers and Sir Brian Latoun, with an English army, invaded the Scottish Border, and between July and November they destroyed 192 towns, towers, barmkyns, parish churches, etc.; slew 403 Scots and took 816 prisoners; carried off 10,386 head of cattle, 12,492 sheep, 1296 horses, 200 goats, and 850 bolls of corn, besides an untold quantity of inside gear and plenishing. In one village alone--that of Lessudden (now St. Boswells)--Sir Ralph Evers writes that he burned 16 strong bastle-houses. Again in September of the following year, the Earl of Hertford a second time invaded the country, and between the 8th and the 23rd of that month, he razed and cast down the abbeys of Jedburgh, Kelso, Dryburgh, and Melrose, and burned the town of Kelso. At the same time he destroyed about 30 towns, towers and villages on the Tweed, 36 on the Teviot, 12 on Rulewater, 13 on the Jed, 45 on the Kale, 19 on the Bowmont, 109 in the parishes of Eccles and Duns in Berwickshire, with 20 other towns and villages in the same county. The places destroyed are all named in the report to the English king, along with a classified list of that terrible sixteen days' destruction, embracing 7 monasteries and friars' houses, 16 castles, towers and peels, 5 market-towns, the immense number of 243 villages, with 13 mills, and 3 hospitals."
It cannot be forgotten that upon Border soil were fought at least six of the great historical battles of the nation, _viz._, Halidon Hill (1333); Otterburn (1388); Homildon Hill (1402); Flodden (1513); Solway Moss (1542); and Ancrum Moor (1544). Of mere internal contests there are the fight at Arkinholm (Langholm, 1455), between Scotsmen, where James II. broke the power of the Douglases; the battle of Hedgeley Moor (1464), and of Hexham (1464) between the English adherents of Lancaster and York, when the Lancastrians were defeated; the affair of Melrose (Skirmish Hill, 1526) between Borderers under the Earl of Angus and Buccleuch; and Philiphaugh (1645) when Leslie drove Montrose from the field. Of what were purely faction fights and deeds of daring such as the Raid of the Reidswire (1575), and the rescue of Kinmont Willie (1596), the ancient ballads will keep their memory green for many a year to come.
PLATE 5
VIEW OF NORHAM
CASTLE
FROM A WATER-COLOUR SKETCH
PAINTED BY
JAMES ORROCK, R.I.
(_See pp. 39, 60, 93_)
Two great incidents of Border warfare stand out before all others--Otterburn and Flodden. Old Froissart has told the story of Otterburn. The Scottish barons, tired of the fickleness and inactivity of their king, determined to invade England, met at Aberdeen, and arranged the preliminaries for a great gathering at Southdean, beyond Jedburgh. On the day appointed the best blood in Scotland was assembled. "There had not been for sixty years so numerous an assembly--they amounted to twelve hundred spears and forty thousand other men and archers." The Earl of Douglas, the Earl of March and Dunbar, and the Earl of Moray, with three hundred picked lancers and two thousand infantry, burst into Northumberland, rode south as far as Durham, and laid waste the country. In one of their encounters before Newcastle-on-Tyne the Earl of Douglas had a hand-to-hand combat with Sir Henry Percy--- Hotspur,--who was overthrown, Douglas seizing his pennon--the silken streamer bearing his insignia, which was fastened near the head of his lance. In triumph he exclaimed: "I will carry this token of your prowess with me into Scotland, and place it on the tower of my castle at Dalkeith, that it may be seen from afar." "By God, Earl of Douglas," replied Hotspur, "you shall not even bear it out of Northumberland; be assured you shall never have this pennon to boast of." "You must come then," answered Douglas, "this night and seek for it. I will fix your pennon before my tent, and shall see if you will venture to take it away." On the following evening the Scottish army "lighted high on Otterburn," in Redesdale, and there Sir Henry and Ralph Percy, with six hundred spears of knights and squires and upwards of eight thousand infantry, fell upon the Scots, who were but three hundred lances, and two thousand others. The fight that followed was one of the most spirited in history, and ended in the death of Douglas, the capture of Hotspur, the serious wounding of his brother, and the killing or capture of one thousand and forty Englishmen on the field, the capture of eight hundred and forty others in the pursuit, and the wounding of a thousand more. The Scots lost only one hundred slain and two hundred captured. "It was," says Froissart, "the hardest and most obstinate battle ever fought." The tragic incidents of this encounter have been kept alive not historically but poetically. It is the immortality of song which preserves the memory of Otterburn. No contest was more emphatically the "ballad-singer's joy." Two ballads, the one Scots, the other English, give their respective versions of the event with those natural discrepancies between the two, which may easily be accounted for on patriotic grounds. That given in Scott's "Minstrelsy" is unquestionably the finer, and contains the lines so often quoted by Scott himself, and at no occasion more pathetically than during his visit--pretty near the end--to the old Douglas shrines in Lanarkshire, the locality of "Castle Dangerous":
"My wound is deep. I fain would sleep; Take thou the vanguard of the three, And hide me by the braken bush That grows on yonder lilye lea.
"O bury me by the braken bush, Beneath the blooming brier; Let never living mortal ken That ere a kindly Scot lies here."
The story of Flodden is the darkest, perhaps, on the page of Scottish history, and like Otterburn, has been written in strains grand and majestic, and certainly the most heart-moving in the whole realm of northern minstrelsy. There Scotland lost her King, the Archbishop of St. Andrew's, James's natural son, two abbots, twelve earls, seventeen lords, four hundred knights, and fifteen thousand others, all sacrificed to the fighting pride of James IV. of Scotland. Pierced by several strong arrows, the left hand hacked clean from the arm, the neck laid open in the middle, James's body was carried mournfully to Berwick. He had died a hero's death, albeit a foolish one. His last words have lived in the lines of the rhymer:
"Fight on, my men, Yet Fortune she may turn the scale; And for my wounds be not dismayed, Nor ever let your courage fail.
Thus dying did he brave appear Till shades of death did close his eyes; Till then he did his soldiers cheer, And raise their courage to the skies."
The era of Blood and Iron on the Borders has passed long since. Peace and prosperity prevail on both sides of the Tweed. Old animosities are seldom spoken of, and hardly ever remembered. A cordial amity and good-will and co-operation evidence the strength of the cementing element which no loyal heart, either north or south, can ever desire to see broken.
PLATE 6
TWIZEL BRIDGE OF THE
XIV. CENTURY
FROM A WATER-COLOUR SKETCH
PAINTED BY
JAMES ORROCK, R.I.
(_Famous in connection with Flodden Field_)
II. THE ENGLISH BORDER
NORTHUMBERLAND
A line drawn from Berwick to Carlisle, and across England to the Coquet, thence north again, coast-wise, to the old Tweedside borough will give us, for all practical purposes, the English Border Country. Only a part of the Roman Wall, as far as Crag Loch and Borcovicus (Housesteads), will come within the present purview, which excludes Newcastle itself and the "coaly Tyne." We are to deal with rural Northumberland rather, and with a little corner of Cumberland, the immediate and true Border. Even at this time of day much of the English Border is still a kind of _terra incognita_ to the tourist and holiday-maker. For travelling facilities have not been of the best hitherto. But it is a new order of things now, and even the most outlying spots can be reached with a wonderful degree of comfort impossible not so very long ago. Bewcastle, for instance, and the once wild and trackless "Debateable Land" between Canonbie and the Solway, have come within comparatively easy distance of railroad and coaching centres. The crossing of the Solway Moss by the Caledonian Route, and the opening out of the line from Alnwick to Wooler and Cornhill, together with the numerous driving tours that are in daily operation during the summer at least, have become the _open sesame_ to a district practically shut up even less than a half century since. It is now possible to breakfast in Carlisle, or Newcastle, or much further south for that matter (or north), and within an hour or two to be revelling in the most delightful rusticities at the foot of the Cheviots, or in the very heart of them. The remotest localities are rendered accessible even for a single day's outing, and a holiday on the English Border is not likely to be a disappointing one. There is something to suit every taste. If one is archaeologically inclined, for instance, Northumberland has one of the finest collections of military antiquities in the kingdom, from the rude circular camps and entrenchments of the primitive inhabitants to the great castles and peel-towers of mediæval times. The Romans have left a mighty monument of their power--none more significant--in the huge barrier thrown across the lower half of the county, and in the stations and roads connected with it. In some respects the Roman Wall may be accounted Northumberland's principal attraction, and a pilgrimage between Tyne and Solway must always repay itself. If one is artistically inclined, there are beauty-spots for all canvases--as befits the birthplace of such masters as Bewick and Foster. And as an angler's paradise the Cheviot uplands have long been popular. The historical memories of the English Border are outstanding. For centuries this little fringe of country was a continuous warring-ground for the two nations that are now happily one. Upon its soil were fought some of the bloodiest, and it must be added, some of the most fool-hardy and unjustifiable fights on record. In its religious story it has much to boast of. By its missionaries and by its sword it won England from heathendom to the Christian Church. The development of the monastic system in Northumbria did more than anything else to civilise and colonise the entire realm, Scotland included. "Its monasteries," as Green says, "were the seat of whatever intellectual life the country possessed, and above all, it had been the first to gather together into a loose political unity the various tribes of the English people, and by standing at their head for nearly a century to accustom them to a national life out of which England as we have it now was to spring."
The physical conditions, generally speaking, are similar on both sides of the Border. Wide arable expanses, well-wooded and fertile, cover the chief valleys and much of the Northumbrian coast-line. But in the main, the landscape is purely pastoral for miles, showing few signs of human life, and the nearest habitation often at a considerable distance. The Northumbrian uplands are confined chiefly to the Cheviots, the Pyrenees on a small scale; two-thirds of their whole three hundred square miles are in the county, constituting perhaps the loveliest cluster of pastoral hills in the island. Of this group, Cheviot--to be more distinctive, _the_ Cheviot--(2676 feet) sits in the centre almost, dignified and massive, the "recumbent guardian of the great lone moorland." Others, taking them according to height, are Cairn Hill (2545), Hedgehope (2348), Comb Fell (2132), Cushat Law (2020), Bloody Bush Edge (2001), Windy Gyle (1963), Dunmore (1860), Carter Fell (1600), and Yeavering Bell (1182)--a graceful cone overlooking the pretty hamlet of Kirknewton. A climb to the broad back of the Cheviot, or the rounded top of Yeavering, should be made by every tourist who rambles along the Border. Both are reachable from the Scottish and English sides, as by Bowmont and Colledge Waters, or by that loveliest of all the upland dales, Langleeford. Despite the somewhat quagmire character of its flat summit, the view from the Cheviot, as one might expect, is a truly inspiring one, comprising the whole coast-line between Berwick and Tynemouth, and the vast inland expanse from Midlothian to the Solway--the Scottish Border _in toto_. The Cheviots are hills rather than the "mountains blue" of poetic licence. Yet all are imposing to a degree, and exhibit an excellent contour against the sky-line. They have none of the wildness and savagery of the Highland ranges, and even the steepest are grass-grown from skirt to summit, being easy of ascent, and commanding the most varied and brilliant prospects.
Robert Crawford sings of them as "Cheviot braes so soft and gay," and Gilpin likens the hirsels browsing on the most acclivitous to pictures hung on immense green walls. From time immemorial those charming uplands have been grazed by the quiet, hardy, fine-wooled, white-faced breed of sheep which bear their name; and in the days of the raids (for this is the true "raider-land" of history) they were resonant, more than any other part of Scotland, with the clang of freebootery and the yell of strife. Mrs. Sigourney's apostrophe to the present day flocks may be quoted:
Graze on, graze on, there comes no sound Of Border warfare here, No slogan cry of gathering clan, No battle-axe, or spear. No belted knight in armour bright, With glance of kindled ire, Doth change the sports of Chevy-Chase To conflict stern and dire.
Ye wist not that ye press the spot, Where Percy held his way Across the marches, in his pride, The "chiefest harts to slay;" And where the stout Earl Douglas rode Upon his milk-white steed, With "fifteen hundred Scottish spears," To stay the invaders' deed.
Ye wist not, that ye press the spot Where, with his eagle eye, King James, and all his gallant train, To Flodden-Field swept by. The Queen was weeping in her bower, Amid her maids that day, And on her cradled nursling's face Those tears like pearl-drops lay:
Graze on, graze on, there's many a rill Bright sparkling through the glade, Where you may freely slake your thirst, With none to make afraid. There's many a wandering stream that flows From Cheviot's terraced side, Yet not one drop of warrior's gore Distains its crystal tide.
PLATE 7
FLODDEN FIELD AND THE CHEVIOT HILLS
FROM A WATER COLOUR SKETCH
PAINTED BY
JAMES ORROCK, R.I.
(_See pp. 40, 48, 99, 103, 121_)
Of the river valleys running south of the Border line, the chief are the Breamish, or the Till, as it is termed from Bewick Brig--the "sullen Till" of "Marmion"; the Aln, from Alnham Kirk to the sand-banks of Alnmouth, a glen emphatically rich in legendary lore; the Coquet, the most picturesque and most popular trouting-stream in the North of England; and Redesdale, redolent of "Chevy Chase," rising out of Carter Fell, and joining the North Tyne at Redesmouth, a little below the pleasant market-town of Bellingham. The chief towns are Berwick and Alnwick, Hexham being outside our present delimitation. Many of the smaller places, and the villages, are models of their kind. Wooler, at the base of the Cheviots, is a choice mountaineering and angling centre, from which, by way of Langleeford, is the favourite route to Cheviot top. It was at the Whitsun Tryst or Wooler sheep fair, that Scott's grandfather spent his old shepherd's thirty pounds in buying a horse instead of sheep, but with such happy results in the sequel. And hither came Scott himself in August, 1791, to imbue his mind with the legends, the history, and scenery of the neighbourhood. "Behold a letter from the mountains," he writes to his friend William Clerk, "for I am very snugly settled here, in a farmer's house (at Langleeford), about six miles from Wooler, in the very centre of the Cheviot hills, in one of the wildest and most romantic situations, which your imagination, fertile upon the subject of cottages, ever suggested. 'And what the deuce are you about there?' methinks I hear you say. Why, sir, of all things in the world, drinking goat's whey; not that I stand in the least need of it, but my uncle having a slight cold, and being a little tired of home, asked me last Sunday evening if I would like to go with him to Wooler; and I, answering in the affirmative, next morning's sun beheld us on our journey through a pass in the Cheviots, upon the backs of two special nags, and man Thomas behind with a portmanteau, and two fishing-rods fastened across his back, much in the style of St. Andrew's cross. Upon reaching Wooler we found the accommodation so bad that we were forced to use some interest to get lodgings here, where we are most delightfully appointed, indeed. To add to my satisfaction we are amidst places renowned by feats of former days; each hill is crowned with a tower, or camp, or cairn; and in no situation can you be near more fields of battle--Flodden, Otterburn, and Chevy Chase. Ford Castle, Chillingham Castle, Coupland Castle and many another scene of blood are within the compass of a forenoon's ride. Out of the brooks with which the hills are intersected, we pull trouts of half a yard in length, as fast as we did the perches from the pond at Pennicuik, and we are in the very country of muirfowl.... My uncle drinks the whey here, as I do ever since I understood it was brought to his bedside every morning at six, by a very pretty dairymaid. So much for my residence. All the day we shoot, fish, walk, and ride; dine and sup on fish struggling from the stream, and the most delicious heath-fed mutton, barn-door fowls, pies, milk cheese, etc, all in perfection; and so much simplicity resides amongst those hills that a pen, which could write at least, was not to be found about the house, though belonging to a considerable farmer, till I shot the crow with whose quill I write this epistle." (See Lockhart, chapter vi.). In this passage we have an interesting glimpse of what Northumberland was a hundred years ago, and of the great author enjoying a holiday while yet reading for the law, and before fame began to blow her trumpet in his praise.
Sweeter villages than Etal and Ford could scarcely be imagined out of Arcadia. Etal Castle was destroyed by James IV. previous to Flodden, and has never been restored. Ford Castle, built originally in 1287, has been frequently renovated and enlarged, and is now a most excellent example of the military style of architecture plus the modern mansion house. Formerly held by the Herons, its chatelaine figures in "Marmion" as the syren who detained the King when he ought to have been in the field. The frescoes in Ford schoolroom, painted by the late Lady Waterford, are objects not only of good art but of a well-conceived philanthropy. Ancroft and Lowick, Chatton and Chillingham are delightful summer resorts. Chillingham is famous for its Elizabethan Castle, but still more so, perhaps, for its herds of wild cattle, the survivors of the wild ox of Europe, and the supposed progenitors of our domestic cattle. Other summer resorts are Belford and Doddington, but the whole coast-line, indeed, is dotted with the most desirable holiday-nooks in the county.
PLATE 8
VIEW OF WARKWORTH
FROM A WATER-COLOUR SKETCH
PAINTED BY
JAMES ORROCK, R.I.
(_See pp. 39, 51, 52, 56_)