Part 2

It was from Branxholm, on the Teviot above Hawick, that another Scott of the name—generation after generation were Walters—rode forth to rescue “Kinmont Willie” from prison in Carlisle. The Minstrel’s tale, in the _Lay_, opens at and returns again and again to Branxholm Ha’; it was at the Tower Inn, at Hawick, where the Duchess Anne of Buccleuch and Monmouth held her receptions, and that the greatest of all the Sir Walters parted from his guests the Wordsworths.

It is a land dedicated to the achievements of Douglases and Scotts, but that resounds also with the deeds of Elliots and Armstrongs, and of minor and broken clans, Turnbulls and Rutherfords, Cranstouns and Olivers. It has its rich endowment of beauty as well as of history. Around the keep of Branxholm, which from the deep bank overhanging the stream has often defied its enemies, have gathered buildings of more recent date and a screen of ancient trees. Below it is the Tower of Goldilands, where a marauding Scott was hanged at his own gate, and here comes in from the left the Borthwick Water. As Leyden has it:

“Where Bortha hoarse, that loads the meads with sand, Rolls her red tide to Teviot’s western strand, Through slaty hills, whose sides are shagged with thorn, And springs in scattered tufts the dark-green corn, Towers wood-girt Harden, far above the vale”—

Harden, the cradle of the branch of the Scotts from which the author of the _Lay_ was descended; the “mountain home”, hidden in its narrow glen, to which the “Flower of Yarrow” was brought by “Auld Wat”—“a wide domain, and rich, had purple heath been grain”.

At the town of Hawick, Teviot meets Slitrig, coming from the wild bounds of Liddisdale. All roads in Teviotdale seem to lead to Hawick, the capital of its trade as well as a centre of its history. Proud as its citizens are of the leading position of the burgh in the tweed and hosiery manufacture of the South of Scotland, and of the undiminished importance of its great lamb and sheep fairs, they are prouder still of the prowess of its sons in the dark days that followed Flodden, and in other scenes of Border strife. Scott was familiar with its story, as with the streets and with the steep hills that surround this stirring little metropolis of industrial and pastoral life; and allusion has already been made to the literary and legendary memories attached to the site of the Tower in which the Douglases of Drumlanrig entertained their guests and protected their rights. From the parish church of St. Mary, since often rebuilt, the heroic Ramsay of Dalhousie was carried away by the Knight of Liddisdale, to be immured and to suffer a lingering death in the Douglas hold of Hermitage—

“Did ever knight so foul a deed?”

An older memorial of the past of Hawick is the Motehill, on which justice was dispensed, and an outlook kept for enemies, in times beyond the range even of tradition. The great “Hawick Tradition” of the capture of the standard of the English marauders at Hornshole is kept green by the annual ceremony of the “Common Riding”, when Hawick is to be seen in its gayest and most jubilant mood. The words and tune of its slogan of “Teribus ye Teriodin” are supposed to have descended to it from heathen times, and to have originally been an invocation to the gods of the early Saxons and Norsemen—Thor and Odin. The defiant spirit of these warriors of old seems still to ring in the chaunt sung by the Cornet and his men as they ride round the marches in the beginning of June:

“Teribus ye Teriodin, Sons of heroes slain at Flodden, Imitating Border Bowmen, Aye defend your rights and Common.”

A few miles up the Slitrig is Stobs Castle, an ancient seat of the Elliots, which became a military centre during the Great European War; and there are many other places of note and fame on the once hazardous way, now followed by the railway, that leads across the hills to the head-streams of the Liddel and thence to those of the North Tyne, or to the “Debatable Land”, the Solway, and Carlisle. Another crowd of warlike memories and of pastoral and woodland charms awaits those who, from Hawick, or from the old Douglas seat of Cavers, lower down Teviotdale, explore the Hobkirk valley, or pass over the skirts of Ruberslaw into Rule Water—to Bonchester and to Hobkirk, where Thomson planned his _Seasons_, and to Southdean, where the poet spent his early years, and to the Carter Bar and the Border.

A few miles below Hawick, past Hornshole and past Denholm, the birthplace of John Leyden—the poet, the Oriental scholar, the friend of Scott, whose “brief and bright career” closed too soon in the Malay East—below “dark Ruberslaw” and the Dunion, which interposes its round-backed form between the “mining Rule” and the “crystal Jed”, and more directly under the Minto Crags and the Chesters moors, lies one of the loveliest bits on Teviot. Haughs and dells, green hills and wide sweeps of river spread around the fragments of Fatlips Castle, whose owner, a Turnbull, dwelt

“Mid cliffs from whence his eagle eye Full many a league his prey could spy”;

and around Minto House, the home, since the Union, of the Elliots, a race great in law and in war, in song and in statecraft, with whom, through their descent from “Gibbie with the Gowden Garters”, a daughter of Harden, Sir Walter could “count kin”. Jed Water and Ale Water come in from south and north, farther down, and here, too, every foot is famous. The “Minstrel” sings of scenes, on the track of William of Deloraine, “good at need”, among them

“Ancient Riddel’s fair domain, Where Aill, from mountains freed, Down from the lakes did raving come; Each wave was crested with tawny foam, Like the mane of a chestnut steed”.

The inflow of this turbulent stream is below the fine old tree-surrounded Ancrum House. It is overshadowed by Penielheugh and by the ridge of Lilliard’s Edge, across which the main road from Carlisle, that has followed the course of the Teviot almost from its source, toils painfully over to the valley of the Tweed. On a day in 1545, Ancrum Moor

“Ran red with English blood, Where the Douglas true and the bold Buccleuch ’Gainst keen Lord Evers stood”—

a victory to which, according to traditions, “fair Maid Lilliard” contributed manfully, until, like a hero of “Chevy Chase”, she “fought upon her stumps”.

Jed Water is still more charged with the history and legends of the past. Much of it, including Jedburgh Abbey, is the patrimony of the branch of the Kerrs represented by the Marquis of Lothian, whose modern seat, Mount Teviot, lies opposite Jedfoot, while the ancient home of the family, Ferniehirst, begins to run to decay. It would take many pages to do justice—even “Jeddart justice”—to Jedburgh, whose townsfolk, armed with their “Jeddart staves” and to their slogan of “Jeddart’s Here!” were in the front of the Border Wars. Its Abbey, founded by David the Saint, who placed here Augustinian canons from Beauvais early in the twelfth century, is still, in spite of having been seven times burned, the stateliest and the best preserved of the mediæval religious houses of the Scott Country. The site of the Royal Castle, where in the “Golden Age” of the Borders Alexander III held court after his second marriage, has disappeared under public buildings; but the house in the Backgate is pointed out where Mary Queen of Scots lay sick to death after her perilous ride to Hermitage, as well as the lodging in the Castlegate occupied by Prince Charlie on his march into England.

His road lay over a shoulder of Carter Fell into Redesdale, where runs what is still the only way across the hills for wheeled traffic in the sixty miles between Wooler, on the Till, and Riccarton, on the Liddel, although the Romans built over the Cheviots paved roads, one of which descended into the head of Kale Water, and, from the site of the old Border Trysts at Pennymuir, ran straight as a ruled line to the camp of Newstead, under Eildon. From end to end these hills are deserted, except by the shepherd and the sportsman. Along the “wild and willowed shore” of Teviot and of Jed, the “glaring balefires blaze no more”. The race of the mosstroopers—of “John o’ the Side” and “Christie’s Will”, the “Laird’s Jock” and “Hobbie Noble”—is long extinct. But there are still to be found fine products of the soil, of the type of the stalwart tenant of Charlieshope. The Border spirit may have run into manufactures, and pastoral and arable farming, and Kirk and State contentions, but anyone who fancies it is dead should attend a “Common Riding”, or an otter or fox-hunt, or a game of curling or of hand- or foot-ball in these parts; or a meeting or parting of Hawick “Teeries” or of “Jedburgh callants”. He will doubt no more.

Dryburgh Abbey is less than ten miles distant from Jedburgh, in a straight line. But there are marked features distinguishing it from its Teviotdale neighbour as well as from the Abbeys standing below and above it on Tweedside—Kelso and Melrose. It was planted in its corner of Berwickshire by baronial and not by kingly beneficence, its founder being the great Hugh de Morville, in David’s time Constable of Scotland and Lord of Lauderdale, whose tomb is near the site of the high altar. It was smaller in size and less richly endowed than the other three, but is not less generously invested with historic and legendary interest. Its fate and condition are not dissimilar, for like the others it was many times burned and ravaged in the Border wars, and was afterwards abandoned for centuries to neglect and decay. These Tweedside monastic houses have now fallen upon happier times; for, apart from the reverence they have gathered from the past, and not least from their association with Sir Walter Scott, they have lately become national possessions, through the generosity of the Duke of Roxburghe at Kelso, of the Duke of Buccleuch at Melrose, and of Lord Glenconner at Dryburgh. The Præmonstratensian Abbey on the bend of the Tweed under Bemerside Hill differs from its rivals in respect that it has preserved more of the monastic buildings and less of the church. Of Dryburgh Abbey Church—apart from the north transept, of which more has to be said—little is left beyond the gables of the south transept and of the west front, the latter pierced by a five-light window, surmounting some ruined walls, and the foundations of piers. But the chapter house—St. Modan’s chapel—is extant, and its vaulted roof covers interesting architectural and archæological details, while of the cloisters, sacristy, fratery, and other domestic buildings of the “White Friars” of Dryburgh there are considerable remains, clad in ivy and overhung by immemorial yews and other trees. Enough survives to indicate a structure of much grace and beauty, showing a great range of styles from Romanesque to Later Pointed, and built of a local reddish sandstone which, as at Melrose, has weathered into a rich and harmonious variety of colour.

It is, however, in its situation and in its happy blending with its immediate surroundings that Dryburgh is chiefly distinguished from its compeers. It is secluded from the world, on the margin of the wide stream; hidden among woods and overlooked by hills. To reach it you have to circumvent rivers and climb up and down steep braes. The easiest way of approach is by crossing Lessudden Bridge, from the south bank of the Tweed above the tower of Littledean. This was the road followed by the “bold Baron” of Smailholm, whose tower and Beacon Hill, and the standing stones on the moor of Brotherstone, look down from the eastern and northern skyline on the scene

“Over Tweed’s fair flood, and Mertoun’s wood, And all down Teviotdale”.

By Mertoun’s wood, the screen of Dryburgh from gales blowing from the sea, and now the property of Lord Polwarth, a Scott of the Harden blood, the way winds to the Abbey precincts, overshadowed by the great trees that surround Dryburgh House. Naturally the feet first seek the tomb of Sir Walter in St. Mary’s Aisle. The story of how the best beloved of the sons of the Border came to be laid under this fragment of the north transept and choir—a well-preserved piece of elegant First Pointed work—is itself a romance. His grandmother on the father’s side, Barbara Haliburton, was the daughter of a Merse laird, who was owner of part of the lands of Dryburgh, including the Abbey ruins. She became his inheritor; but before then Robert Haliburton had lost his lands through unwise speculation. David Erskine, eleventh Earl of Buchan—brother of Lord Chancellor Erskine and of Harry Erskine, the brilliant wit and pleader—who has left the impress of his eccentric mind on the colossal statue of Wallace which stands, “frowning towards England”, above his suspension bridge for foot passengers crossing the Tweed from St. Boswells, became possessor of the ground; and, through Lady Scott, obtained a promise from the author of _Waverley_ that he should be buried in this kindred earth. Lady Scott died in 1826, and Buchan in 1829, while Sir Walter himself was not laid here until 26th September, 1832. In his fragment of “Autobiography”, Scott records how he had come to his own again in this twice-hallowed spot; and, with a touch of prophecy as well as pathos, he wrote: “And thus we have nothing left of Dryburgh, although my father’s maternal inheritance, but the right of stretching our bones where mine may perhaps be laid ere any eye but my own glances over these pages.” Nowhere—not even in Melrose—could the Wizard rest more tranquilly than in this scene where nature and art, the present and the past, and life and death seem to be brought into perfect accord.

The funeral cortège, coming from Abbotsford, crossed the Tweed and Leader at Leaderfoot, and climbing, past Gladswood, by a road with which Scott was familiar, halted where he had often halted, and where multitudes have halted since, at a bold and sharp elbow of the path, raised three hundred feet above the river, whence an unrivalled view can be had into the heart of the Scott Country. Immediately below, across the stream, on a peninsula of land washed on three sides by the Tweed, is Old Melrose, a spot which had gathered sanctity many centuries before the mediæval abbeys rose in the valley. Here a mission station of the Christian faith was planted from distant Iona; and hence, probably, travelled Aidan to convert heathen Northumbria and to found Lindisfarne and Hexham; here dwelt, as first abbot, his companion Eata, and also Boisel, who gave his name to St. Boswell’s opposite, and to whom came for instruction Cuthbert, a shepherd lad who had been reared at Wrangham, near Brotherstone, and had tended his flock and seen visions in the Lammermoors. From “Mailros”, the bald promontory—its very name attests the tongue in which the Celtic founders spoke—St. Cuthbert’s body in its stone coffin floated downstream on its many wanderings by water and land; and, as related by Bede, the hermit Drithelm was wont in winter to break the ice on the river, and, standing up to the neck in the water, recite his prayers. Although it was abandoned before the “Sair Saint” brought to the neighbourhood and to Scotland the first monks of the Cistercian Order, some of the prestige of Old Melrose must have clung to the name and been transferred to the Religious House on the new site, the ruddy walls of which can be descried, sheltering at the foot of the Eildons, across the fields on which, long before the coming of the Columban missionaries, the Romans planted the expeditionary camp and permanent station of Trimontium, that have only lately yielded their secrets to the spade.

This Bemerside Hill is a “Mount of Vision” from which all the chief shrines and high places of the Scott Country can be surveyed, at least with the mind’s eye. Abbotsford itself, if not in actual view, can be mapped into the scene by direction and position. Out of sight, directly under the brow of the hill, is the ancient square fortalice, with later buildings attached, and grounds stretching down towards the Tweed, where Haigs have been resident for seven centuries. They were benefactors of Melrose when Alexander III was king, and when Thomas the Rhymer was their neighbour and wellwisher, and uttered the prophecy that has so mightily helped its own fulfilment:

“Betyde, betyde, whate’er betyde, Haig shall be Haig of Bemersyde.”

Sir Walter Scott was a later friend of the family, and was often a guest in the beautiful rose-garden below the mansion. A grateful nation bestowed the house and manor on the late Field-Marshal Earl Haig, who now lies at rest close by Sir Walter at Dryburgh. The whole scene and surroundings seem to be touched by the spirit of prophecy and of poetry. On the hills opposite stood the “Eildon Tree” and the “Eildon Stone”; and beyond these, on Abbotsford property, the reputed “Rhymer’s Glen”, where “True Thomas” encountered the Queen of Faëry, although the tryst may well have been at Huntlywood, behind Brotherstone, on the Eden Water, and near Corsbie Tower, the ruined “Castle of Avenel”. As has been said, Drithelm and Cuthbert were visionaries, so were Boisel, the second Abbot of the old, and Waldave, the first Abbot of the new foundation; and centuries before the time of the Seer of Ercildoune they dreamed dreams and saw things not of this world and far into the future. According to popular belief, of like gifts was “Auld Michael”, whose words “cleft Eildon Hills in three”. The last and the greatest of these “Wizard Scotts” is he who sleeps with his fathers in St. Mary’s Aisle.

When descent is made into the valley of the Leader, one is still in the land of enchantment. The ivy-covered “Rhymer’s Tower” is a few miles up the glen, and on the way, under the Black Hill of Earlston, are Drygrange and the “Broom o’ the Cowdenknowes”. Near by, at Mellerstain, lived and sang Grizel Baillie, who was Grizel Hume; and in the Kirk of Legerwood is the monument of that other Grizel, who, in the dress of a highwayman, saved her father’s life by holding up the King’s officer carrying the writ for his execution. Higher up Leader are Carolside, and, in a side glen, Auld Thirlstane, the seat of “Auld Maitland”, and Spottiswoode, the home of Alicia Spottiswoode—Lady John Scott—writer and composer of “Bonnie Annie Laurie” and other thrilling Scots lyrics. The new Thirlstane—it is hundreds of years old—is in the centre of Lauderdale, beside the venerable Royal Burgh of Lauder, the last of the municipalities in the land to retain its old burghal rights and customs. Many are the hill-forts and camps that look down on the now peaceful scenes through which the road—a favourite tourist coach route—passes on its way from the crossing of the Lammermoors to the Tweed; and among them are Channelkirk where Cuthbert heard the summons of the Heavenly Host, and Edgarshope, by which the message of fire that told of the crossing of the border by the English bands, was wont to be passed on to Soutra Edge, near by the Hospice of the Red Friars, to which, and not to Faeryland, Thomas retired from the world, when he followed the mysterious Hart and Hind up Leaderside.

Not less richly furnished with the relics of eld and with the charms of modern cultivation is the parallel vale of the Gala, the nursery of the “Braw Lads”. The “Shirra” often traversed it on his way by Midleton Moor to his home and sphere of jurisdiction on Ettrick and Tweed, upon which the stream, road, and railway debouch a little below the mill lades and chimney stalks of the town of Galashiels, and almost opposite to Abbotsford. On the links and bends of the Gala, and its side glens of the Heriot, the Armit, and the Luggate, are many places of historic note—Crookston, of the Borthwicks, for example; Stow—the “Stowe of Wedale”, of Arthurian and mediæval fame; Bowland, like Eildon Hall, on the farther side of the Eildons, a possession of the House of Buccleuch; the ruined “broch” on the Bow Hill, facing, across the valley, a similar structure which, with the termination of that ancient and mysterious line of earthworks, the “Catrail”, occupies the crown of Torwoodlee, of the Pringles; finally, Buckholm Hill and Tower, looking over the roofs of the busy seat of tweed manufactures to Gala Hill and Gala House of the Scotts. “Gala Water, Buckholm, Torwoodlee”, were among the last audible words murmured by the dying “Border Minstrel”.

Between “Leader howms” and Gala Water runs the little stream of the Allan or Alwyne through the “Fairy Dean”. Lovers of Scott will not pass it by, because, apart from the loveliness of its succession of wood-embowered haughs, it leads to a spot where three ruined peel towers—Hillslap, Colmslie, and Langshaw—stand not many bowshots apart, memorials of the time when the smaller lairds had to bind themselves together by a “bond of manrent”, for protection against their more powerful neighbours; and the first of these has been identified, with some sanction from Scott himself, as the “Glendearg” of the Glendinnings in _The Monastery_ and _The Abbot_. Near the bridge which crosses the Tweed at the “Pavilion of Alwyn”, and the “groves of noble Somerville”, was the scene of the misadventure of Philip, the Sacristan, at the hands of the spirits, and of Mysie Happer, the daughter of the miller of the Halidome. The dairy farm of the “monks of St. Mary’s” was on Allan Water; up it led the “girth-gait” which they often followed on the way to Soutra Hospice. True Thomas’s rhymed sayings cling to this countryside like—in Father Philip’s phrase—“burrs to a beggar’s rags”. The region between Leaderfoot and Galashiels was part of the original patrimony of the Cistercian Abbey; all the way, but especially where Gattonside, set on its hillside and surrounded by its famous orchards, “beiks in the sun”, one sees, in glimpses or in full view,

“Where fair Tweed flows round holy Melrose And Eildon slopes to the plain”.