Part 13

Here we crossed to the northern side of the river to reach the most stupendous relic of the Roman occupation of Britain--the wall which Hadrian built as a protection against the incursions of the wild northern tribes. This wall was seventy miles in length--from Tynemouth to the Solway--of an average thickness of eight feet and probably not less than eighteen feet in height. It surmounted the chain of hills overlooking the valley between Newcastle and Carlisle and was well supplied with military defenses in the shape of forts and battlemented towers. We closely followed the line of the wall from Chollerford to Greenhead, a distance of about fifteen miles. In places it is still wonderfully perfect, being built of hewn stone, well fitted and carefully laid, as it must have been to stand the storms of eighteen hundred years; but most of the distance the course of the wall is now marked only by an earthen ridge.

We had seen many relics of the Roman rule in England at Bath, at York, and also the remarkable remains of Uriconium near Shrewsbury, but nothing so impressed us with the completeness of the Roman occupation as this great wall of Hadrian. And it also testifies mutely to the great difficulty the Roman legions must have experienced in controlling the light-armed bandits from across the border, in a day when the means of communication were so few and so slow. This situation continued until several hundred years later, the country along the Tyne, the narrow neck of land connecting England and Scotland, being the scene of constant turmoil and bloody strife. The wild tribes of the northern hills would sweep down into the valley, leaving a strip of burned and plundered country, and before soldiers could be gotten into the field the marauders would retreat to their native fastnesses. One might not telephone to Carlisle that the Campbells or McGregors were raiding the country, and troops could not be hurried by railroad to the scene of trouble. Before the horseback messenger could reach the authorities, the marauders would have disappeared. This condition of things the Romans sought to overcome by building the great wall and one can hardly doubt that they chose the best means at their command; but the history of those times is hazy at best and we can learn little of what was really accomplished by this stupendous undertaking.

The road through the rough Northumbrian hills is as lonely and desolate as any one will find in England. So much has it fallen into disuse that the grass and heather have almost obliterated it in places, and it appeared that little had been done to maintain it for years. The cheerless day accentuated the dreariness of the rough countryside; the rain had increased to a downpour and had blown in upon us in spite of our coverings. The road was clear, fairly level and straight away; despite its rough surface we splashed onward at a swift pace through the pools and rivulets that submerged it in places.

Naworth Castle, also an estate of the Earl of Carlisle, the owner of Castle Howard, is just off the road before entering Brampton, eight or nine miles out of Carlisle. It is thrown open with the same freedom that prevails at the great Yorkshire house, but though the greater part of Naworth is far older, it has less to interest the casual visitor. Situated as it is in the very center of the scenes of border turmoil, it has a stirring history dating back to 1300, when it was built by Lord Dacre, ancestor of the Howards. The story of his elopement with the heiress who owned the estate and who was betrothed to a boy of seven, and of the subsequent pardon of the lovers by the King Edward, forms a romantic background for the stern-looking old place; but we will not recount the many legends that gathered about the castle during the long period of border warfare. Escaping almost unscathed during the castle-smashing time of Cromwell, Naworth suffered severely from fire in 1844, but the interior has since been remodeled into a fairly comfortable modern dwelling. Here again the artistic and literary tastes of the owner are evident in the valuable library and the fine gallery of paintings.

Continuing our way through Naworth Park, we drop down the narrow and fearfully steep lane to the vale of the Irthing and cross over the old high-arched bridge to Lanercost Priory. The rain is still falling and no doubt the custodian has given up hope of visitors on such a day, for he cannot be found; but we discover the gardener, who secures the keys from the neighboring rectory and proves himself a capable guide. The abbey church has been restored by the Carlisles and is used by the parish as a place of worship. All about are the red sandstone ruins of a once great monastery. We wander among the mossy grave-stones and crumbling tombs,

"The 'Miserere' in the moss, The 'Mercy Jesu' in the rain,"

calling up thoughts of a forgotten order of things. In the roofless chapel we pause before an altar-tomb, its sandstone bosses water-soaked and crumbling in the rain--it is the oldest in the abbey and covers the grave of Lord Roland de Vaux of Triermaine, an ancestor of the Dacres. The name seems familiar and the lines,

"Murmuring over the name again, Lord Roland de Vaux of Triermaine,"

come unbidden to my mind. Ah, yes! it is in the weird music of "Christabel" that the name of the long-dead baron is interwoven, and perhaps his "castle good" was the predecessor of Naworth. There are other elaborate tombs of the Dacres and Howards, and there is a world of pathos in Sir Edward Boehm's terra cotta effigy of little Elizabeth, daughter of the present earl, who died in 1883. It is the figure of an infant child asleep, with one little rounded arm thrown above the head and the other folded gracefully on the breast, while a quiet smile plays over the dimpled face--

But come--it is late, and Lanercost Priory would be gloomy enough on such a day without the infant figure. We retrace our way through the ivy-mantled portal and hasten through the park to the Carlisle road, which shortly brings us to the border city, and grateful indeed is the old-fashioned hospitality of the County Hotel, one of the most pleasant among the famous inns of the North Country.

XIII

ACROSS THE TWEED

Gretna Green is a disappointingly modern-looking hamlet, and has little to accord with the romantic associations that its name always brings up. In olden days it gained fame as a place where marriages were accomplished with an ease and celerity that is rivalled in our time only by the dissolution of the tie in some of our own courts. Hither the eloping couples hastened from England, to be united with scarcely other ceremony than mutual promises--witnesses were not required--and a worthy blacksmith did a thriving business merely by acting as clerk to record the marriages. The ceremony was legally valid in Scotland and therefore had to be recognized in England, according to mutual agreement of the nations to recognize each other's institutions. But today Gretna Green's ancient source of fame and revenue has vanished; no Young Lochinvars flee wildly across the Solway to its refuge; it is just a prosaic Scotch village, whose greatest excitement is occasioned by the motor cars that sweep through on the fine Edinburgh road.

Quite different is the fame of Ecclefechan, a few miles farther--a mean-looking village closely skirting the road for a half-mile. Typically Scotch in its bleakness and angularity, it seems fittingly indeed the birthplace of the strange genius who was, in some respects, the most remarkable man of letters of the last century. Thomas Carlyle was born here in 1795 and sleeps his last sleep, alone, in the village kirkyard, for Jane Welsh is not buried by his side. As we came into the town, we paused directly opposite the whitewashed cottage where the sage was born and which is still kept sacred to his memory. The old woman caretaker welcomed us in broadest Scotch and showed us about with unalloyed pride and satisfaction. Here are gathered mementoes and relics of Carlyle--books, manuscripts and pictures; the memorial presented him in 1875, bearing the signature of almost every noted literary contemporary; the wreath sent by Emperor William in 1895 to be laid on the grave; and other things of more or less curious significance. The cottage itself is a typical home of the Scotch villager, the tiny rooms supplied with huge fireplaces and the quaint old-time kitchen still in daily use by the caretaker. The house was built by Carlyle's father, a stonemason by trade, to whose "solid honest work" the distinguished son was wont proudly to refer on divers occasions. The motor car is awakening Ecclefechan to the fact that it is the birthplace of a man famous the world over, for they told us that many visitors now came like ourselves.

There are no finer stretches of road in Scotland than the broad, beautifully engineered highway from Carlisle to Lanark, winding among the hills with grades so gentle as to be almost imperceptible. The rain, which followed us since we left Carlisle, has ceased and many panoramas of hill and valley lie before us. Oftentimes the low-hung clouds partially obscure the view, but aside from this the scene stretches away clear and sharp to the gray belt of the horizon. We are passing through the hills of Tintock Moor, which Burns has sung as

"Yon wild mossy mountains so lofty and wide That nurse in their bosom the youth of the Clyde."

They may have seemed "lofty and wide" to the poet who never left his native soil, but they are only low green hills. The river here is little more than a brawling brook, leaping through the stony vale.

Before we came into Edinburgh we paused at Rosslyn Chapel, perhaps, after Melrose, Abottsford and Ayr, the most frequented shrine in all Scotland. Conveyances of all kinds ply continuously from Edinburgh during the season, and though the day was not especially favorable, we found a throng at the chapel. The chapel is admittedly the most elaborate Gothic building in Britain. The intricacy and minuteness of detail are simply marvelous and compel the admiration of even those who condemn the ornamentation as overdone and wearisome when studied closely; still, Sir Gilbert Scott designated Rosslyn as "a poem in stone," and Wordsworth was so impressed that he wrote one of his finest sonnets in praise of it.

One must of course hear the oft-told story of the master workman who, puzzled over the intricate drawings of one of the carved pillars, went to Rome to consult the architect of the Vatican; but while he was away his apprentice solved the problem and when the builder returned the finished column greeted his eyes. He was so enraged at the success of the apprentice in overcoming the difficulty that he struck the poor youth dead at the foot of the pillar and was hanged for the crime. Anyway, the pillar is there and it is not at all unlikely that the master workman was hanged--a very common incident in those days.

Nor will the guide forget to remind you that in the vault beneath your feet the barons of Rosslyn for the past six hundred years have been buried, each one sheathed in full armor. And there is a tradition that on the night before the death of a lord of Rosslyn the chapel seems to be enveloped in flames, a superstition upon which Scott founded his ballad of "Rosabelle."

"Seemed all on fire that chapel proud Where Rosslyn's chiefs uncoffined lie, Each baron for a sable shroud Sheathed in his iron panoply."

The castle near at hand is as severely plain and rude as the chapel is ornate--a bare, gloomy place that tells in itself volumes of the hard, comfortless life of the "good old days." The apartments of the lord of the castle would be counted a sorry prison-house now--one that would bring forth a protest from the Howard Society--and what shall one say of the quarters for the serving-men and soldiers, or of the dungeon itself, where the unfortunate captives were confined? Nothing, for our powers of expression are inadequate; language itself is inadequate. Thank God, the order of things is changed!

Edinburgh, with its wealth of historic and literary associations, its famous castle and storied palaces, its classic architecture and its fine shops, will always appeal to the wayfarer, I care not how often he may come; but it is too widely known to engage this chronicle of more unfamiliar Britain.

The excellent North British Hotel, where, wonder of wonders in Britain, you may, if fortunate enough, secure a heated bathroom en suite, might well tempt us to a longer stay; but we must be on, and the next afternoon finds us on the road to Queensferry. Here our motor, with two or three others, is loaded on a ferryboat which carries us across the Firth of Forth. We pass directly under the bridge, and in no other way can one get a really adequate idea of this marvelous structure, which, despite all the recent achievements of bridge-building, still holds its place as the most remarkable feat of engineering in its class.

About Loch Leven and the ruin that rears its low, square tower from the clustered foliage of its tiny islet, there will always hover an atmosphere of romance. And why should it not be thus, since the authentic feats that history records have in them more of romance than many of the wild tales of the imagination? But more than this: the halo which the genius of Scott has thrown over the spot and the song and story that have been builded on the captivity and escape of the fair prisoner of Loch Leven, continue to make the placid lake a shrine for many pilgrims.

We entered Kinross, the quiet village on the western shore of the lake, and followed the road to the boathouse, where an English motor party had just paused. Word had to be sent to the village for boatmen and I fell into conversation with the Englishman who was waiting like ourselves. He had come to Loch Leven on quite a different mission from ours--old castles and legends were so commonplace to him that he hardly seemed to understand why anyone should trouble himself about them. He had come to fish and assured us that Loch Leven trout were surpassed in excellence only by those in an Irish lake where he had fished the week before. He was sending his car away and expected to pass the night in pursuing the gentle art of Ike Walton. We were told that more people came to the lake to fish than to visit the castle. The fishing rights are owned by a local club and are jealously guarded. The minimum license fee for trout, of seven shillings sixpence, with an additional charge per hour, makes the sport a somewhat expensive luxury.

But our boatmen had come and we put off for the castle. The lake averages very shallow, and it was necessary to go considerably out of the direct route, even in the light row-boat, to avoid the shoals. The bottom in many places was covered with a rank sedge, which our boatman declared fatal to fishing. It had gotten in the lake a few years ago--had come from America in some mysterious manner--and nothing could be done to check its rapid spread. While he bewailed the ravages of this interloper--from the land of the interlopers--our boat grated on the pebbly shore of the island. The castle, rude and ruinous indeed, is quite small and the only part intact is the low, square tower of the keep. In this is Queen Mary's chamber, and one may look down from the window from which she made her escape; the water then came up to the wall, though it is now several yards away. One need not rehearse the story of the queen's imprisonment at Loch Leven by the ambitious Douglas and her romantic escape through connivance with her captor's son, George Douglas, who succumbed to her charms as did nearly every one who came into her company. And who can wonder that the actual presence of the fair queen--whose name still enchants us after three hundred years--should prove so irresistible to those who met her face to face? Is it strange that one whose memory can cast such a glamour over the cheerless old pile that has brought us hither, should have so strongly influenced her associates?

But after all, the view from the castle tower would be worth the journey thither. All about the placid water lies gleaming like a mirror beneath the threatening sky; here we see a flock of water-fowl, so tame that they scarcely heed the fishing-boats; there a pair of stately swans, many of which are on the lake; off yonder is the old town with its spire sharp against the horizon; and near at hand, the encircling hills and the low green meadows, a delightful setting for the flashing gem of the lake--all combine to make a scene that would be inspiring even if the name of Mary Stuart had never been associated with Loch Leven. As we drift away from the island, the words of a minor poet come to us, strangely sweet and appropriate:

"No warden's fire shall e'er again Illume Loch Leven's bosom fair; No clarion shrill of armed men The breeze across the lake shall bear;

But while remains a stone of thine It shall be linked to royal fame-- For here the Rose of Stuart's line Hath left the fragrance of her name!"

The Loch Leven anglers have made two or three well-appointed hotels possible in Kinross, and Green's, where we stopped for tea, seemed ideal for its quiet retirement and old-fashioned comfort.

St. Andrews, by the sea, has a combination of attractions, of which the famous golf links will occur to many people on first thought. There is no town in Scotland more popular as a seaside resort and the numerous hotels are crowded in season. But the real merits of St. Andrews are the ones least known to the world at large--its antiquity, the ruins of its once stately cathedral, its grim though much shattered castle, and its university, the oldest in Scotland--one and all, if better known, would bring many tourists who do not care for golf links and resort hotels.

Hither we came from Kinross by the way of Cupar, of which we know nothing save the old Scotch saw of a headstrong man, "He that will to Cupar maun to Cupar," but why anyone should be so determined to go to Cupar is not clear. It is a mean-looking town with cobblestone pavement so rough that it tried every rivet in our car, and nothing could be drearier than the rows of gray slate-roofed houses standing dejectedly in the rain.

We were early risers, according to their reckoning at the Marine Hotel, and went for a walk over the golf links after breakfast. I was once a devotee of the royal game and was able to appreciate why the links by the sea are counted the finest in the world. Stretching along a sandy beach over which the tide advances and recedes incessantly, the links have unlimited sweep over the lawnlike lowlands, with just enough obstacles, mostly natural, to make a game of highest skill possible. The lowering sky of the preceding day had cleared and the keen wind swept in over the northern sea. We would have been glad to linger, if possible, but there was much to see in the old town which, in the words of Thomas Carlyle, "has the essence of all the antiquity in Scotland in good clean condition."

Directly on the ocean stands the scanty but still imposing ruin of the cathedral, which in its prime was one of the most magnificent churches in the Kingdom. Its burnished roof once shone far out at sea and a wilderness of turrets and pinnacles rose round the central tower, long since vanished. The church was for some centuries the center of ecclesiastical life in Scotland. Its dedication took place in 1318, "as a trophy and memorial of Bannockburn," in the august presence of King Robert the Bruce. And yet it was only two hundred and forty years later that fanaticism sounded the doom of the splendid church; when the Presbyterian Council gave orders that the "monuments of idolatry" be pulled down. John Knox writes in his journal that the work went forward "with expedition," and for many years the marvelous Gothic pile served the people of St. Andrews as a quarry.

The original outlines of the cathedral are clearly indicated on the smoothly mown greensward and give an adequate idea of its vast extent. The square tower of St. Regulus' Chapel is the only portion intact, and this we ascend by the dark, time-worn stairs inside. From the top there is a fine view of the town, a broad sweep of glittering sea and a far-reaching prospect to the landward. The town lies immediately beneath, spread out like a map, and from every direction the white country roads wander in to join the maze of crooked streets. Only a hundred yards away, on the very verge of the sea, is the castle, and we go thither when we descend. And we are rather glad to descend, for the wind blows so strongly that the tower trembles despite all its solidity--and one cannot help thinking of the Campanile at Venice.

It seems rather incongruous that the massive, martial-looking castle should originally have been the palace of the Bishop of St. Andrews, but it was in an age when the church and the military went hand in hand. It was not strange, perhaps, in Scotland, where the greater part of the murderous wars among the people sprang out of religious disputes, that the home of a church dignitary should be a stronghold, and the traditions of St. Andrews Castle tell more of violence and bloodshed than the annals of many a secular fortress.

It is a strange comment on the ferocity of the old-time churchmen that one of the most fiendish relics of "man's inhumanity to man" is to be found in this martial bishop's palace. Like all gruesome things, it is the center of interest, and the rheumatic old custodian had learned the attraction of the horrible for average human nature, for he greeted us with "Ye'll be wantin' to see the bottle dungeon first." He led us into the dark shadows of the "sea tower," as John Knox designated it, and placing a lighted candle on a staff, dropped it into a circular opening four or five feet in diameter. Looking down, we could see a bottle-shaped cavity hewn out of the solid rock, and extending below the level of the sea. Into this the captives were lowered, and with no light and little air were left to a dreadful death, their moans drowned by the thunder of the waves overhead. Or perhaps a more merciful fate might be meted to some of them--even though it were death at the stake--for we know that George Wishart, whom Cardinal Beaton burned before the castle, had first been imprisoned in the dungeon. One almost breathes a sigh of relief to know that shortly afterwards the Presbyterians stormed the fortress and slew the inhuman cardinal, whose body was thrown into the dungeon after having been exposed from the castle walls. John Knox was one of the party that slew Beaton, and he wrote a gloating account of the incident.

But enough of these horrors, which the old custodian drones over in broad Scotch dialect. Let us go out upon the pleasant greensward of the courtyard, where there is little to remind us of the terrible deeds that have transpired within the gloomy walls. The seaward walls have nearly disappeared, for the stone was used in work on the harbor by a generation that little dreamed of the value posterity would set on such historic monuments.