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Highways and Byways in the Border
One very odd relic hard by Hawick is a mote, or huge tumulus, of the kind so common in Galloway. Probably above it was erected a palisaded wooden fortress, perhaps of the twelfth century. The area, as far as an amateur measurement can determine, is not less than that of the tower of Goldielands, an old keep of the Scotts, some two miles further up the water, almost opposite to the point where Borthwick Water flows into Teviot on the left.
If we cross the bridge here and follow the pretty wandering water through a level haugh, and then turn off to the right, we arrive at a deep thickly wooded dene, and from the crest above this excellent hiding place of raided cattle looks down the old low house of Harden, (the Stammschloss of Sir Walter Scott,) now the property of Lord Polwarth, the head of this branch of the Scotts of Buccleuch. The house is more modern than the many square keeps erected in the old days of English invasions and family feuds. The Borthwick Water turns to the left, and descends from the heights of Howpasley, whence the English raiders rode down, "laigh down in Borthwick Water," in the ballad of Jamie Telfer. A mile or a little more above Goldielands Tower, on the left side of Teviot is Branksome Tower, the residence of the Lady of Branksome in The Lay of the Last Minstrel. At Branksome Tower we are in the precise centre of the Scottish Border of history and romance, the centre of Scott's country.
Yet, looking at Mr. Thompson's excellent sketch, you would scarce guess it. The house stands very near the Teviot, but still nearer the public road. Thanks to the attentions of the English at various periods, especially when the bold Buccleuch stood for the fairest of ladies, Mary Queen of Scots, against preachers, presbyters, puritans, and their southern allies, perhaps no visible part of the echlice older than 1570 remains except the tower.
The Lady of Branksome who finished the actual house after the old stronghold had been burned, appears to have thought that square keeps and barmkyns were obsolete in war, owing to the increasing merits of artillery; and she did not build a house of defence. Manifestly "nine and twenty Knights of fame" never "hung their shields in" this "Branksome Hall," and never were here attended by "nine and twenty Squires of name," and "nine and twenty yeomen tall." There is no room for them, and at Branlcsome, probably, there never was. It is not to be credited that, at any period, ten of the knights went to bed "sheathed in steel," to be ready for the English, or
"Carved at the meal, with gloves of steel,And drank the red wine through the helmet barred." 4The minstrel gave free play to his fancy. The Laird of Branksome, though Warden of the Marches, never had, never needed, so vast a retinue, and was so far from "Warkworth or Naworth, or merry Carlisle" that no Scrope, or Howard, or Percy, could fall on him at unawares.
The Scotts, in the reign of James I, already owned the wild upland pastoral region of Buccleuch between Teviot and Ettrick, and Eckford in Teviotdale; also Murdiestone on the lower Clyde, a place now too near the hideous industrial towns and villages near Glasgow. Meanwhile a pacific gentleman named Inglis was laird of Branksome. He grumbled, it is said, to Sir Walter Scott of Murdiestone about the inconveniences caused by English raiders; though, as they had a long way to ride, Inglis probably suffered more at Branksome from the Kers, Douglases, and ferocious Turnbulls. Scott was not a nervous man, and he offered to barter Murdiestone for half of Branksome, which came into his pastoral holdings at Buccleuch. Inglis gladly made the exchange, and Scott's son obtained the remaining half of the barony of Branksome, in reward of his loyalty to James II, during his struggle with the Black Douglases, (during which he dirked his guest, the Earl, at the hospitable table.) The Scott lands, carved out of those of the fallen Douglases, extended from Lanarkshire to Langholm; and as they were loyal to their country, (at least till the reign of Charles I,) and withal were fighting men of the best, they throve to Earl's estate, the dukedom coming in with the ill fated marriage of the heiress to James, son of Charles II, Duke of Monmouth. Of course if Charles II really married Lucy Walters, (as Monmouth's pious Whiggish adherents asserted,) the Duke of Buccleuch would be our rightful king.
But the good king, Charles II, firmly denied the marriage, fond as he was of his handsome son by Lucy Walters; and the good House of Buccleuch has never believed in the Whig fable of the black box which contained the marriage lines of Lucy Walters and Charles II. The marriage of Monmouth with the heiress of Buccleuch was made in their extreme youth and was unhappy. Monmouth was in love, like Lord Ailesbury, with Lady Henrietta Wentworth, whom he (according to Ailesbury,) spoke of as "his wife in the sight of God," which means that she was not his wife at all.
The house of Branksome makes a picturesque object in the middle distance of the landscape; but is not otherwise interesting. In front of the door lies, or used to lie, a rusty iron breach-loading culverin of the fourteenth century; of old, no doubt, part of the artillery of the castle, when it was a castle.
Returning from Branksome Tower to the right bank of Teviot, now a clear and musical stream, we cross one of the many Allan Waters so common in Scotland, and arrive at Caerlanrig, where there is a tablet with an inscription bitterly blaming James V, for his treachery to Johnny Armstrong of Gilnockie in Eskdale, hanged in 1530. The Armstrongs, being next neighbours of England on the Border, were a clan of doubtful allegiance, given to intermarrying with the English, and sometimes wearing the cross of St. George as "assured Scots." They were the greatest of reivers on both sides of the Border. In 1530, James V, who had escaped from the Douglases, and driven Angus, their chief, into the service of Henry VIII, tried to bring the country into order. He first arrested the chief men – Bothwell (Hepburn), Ferniehirst (Ker), Maxwell, Home, Buccleuch (his old ally), Polwarth, and Johnston; and, having kept them out of mischief, led a large force into their region. He caught Scott of Tushielaw in Ettrick, and Cockburn of Henderland on Meggat Water. Cockburn was tried in Edinburgh for theft and treason, and beheaded; not hanged at his own door as legend fables. He was in the conspiracy of Henry VIII and Angus, and had sided with invaders. Tushielaw suffered for oppression of his tenants. Numbers of lairds, Kers, Douglases, Rutherfurds, Turnbulls, Swintons, Veitches, put themselves on the King's mercy and gave sureties for quiet behaviour. Gilnockie, according to the ballad, came to the King at Caerlanrig in royal array, with forty retainers. I find no contemporary account of the circumstances, for Lindsay of Pitscottie gives but late gossip, as he always does. Calderwood, still later, says that Johnie "was enticed by some courtiers." Calderwood adds that one of the sufferers with Johnie had burned a woman and her children in her house. The evidence for Royal treachery is that of the ballad of Johnie Armstrong, which may have been the source and authority of ritscottie. We may quote it. It was a favourite of Sir Walter Scott.
JOHNIE ARMSTRANG
Sum speikis of lords, sum speikis of lairds,And sik like men of hie degrie;Of a gentleman I sing a sang,Sum tyme called Laird of Gilnockie.The King he wrytes a luving letter,With his ain hand sae tenderly,And he hath sent it to Johnie ArmstrangTo cum and speik with him speedilyThe Eliots and Armstrangs did convene;They were a gallant cumpanie —"We'll ride and meit our lawful King,And bring him safe to Gilnockie.="Make kinnen 5 and capon ready, then,And venison in great plentie;We'll wellcum here our royal King;I hope he'll dine at Gilnockie!"They ran their horse on the langholme howm,And brak their spears wi' mickle main;The ladies lukit frae their loft windows —"God bring our men weel hume again!"When Johnic cam before the King,Wi' a' his men sae brave to see,The King he movit his bonnet to him;He ween'd he was a King as weel as he."May I rind grace, my sovereign liege,Grace for my loyal men and me?For my name it is Johr.ie Armstrong,And a subject of yours, my liege," said he."Away, away, thou traitor Strang!Out o' my sight soon may'st thou be!I grantit never a traitor's life,And now I'll not begin wi' thee.""Grant me my life, my liege, my King!And a bonny gift I'll gie to thee —Full four-and-twenty milk-white steids,Were a' foal'd in ae yeir to me."I'll gie thee a' these milk-white steids,That prance and nicker at a speir;And as mickle gude Inglish gilt,As four o' their braid backs dow bear.""Away, away, thou traitor strang!Out o' my sight soon may'st thou be!I grantit never a traitor's life,And now I'll not begin wi' thee!""Grant me my life, my liege, my King!And a bonny gift I'll gie to thee —Gude four-and-twenty ganging mills,That gang thro' a' the yeir to me."These four-and-twenty mills completeSail gang for thee thro' a' the yeir;And as mickle of gude reid wheit,As a' their happers dow to bear.""Away, away, thou traitor strang!Out o' my sight soon may'st thou be!I grautit never a traitor's life,And now I'll not begin wi' thee!""Grant me my life, my liege, my King!And a great great gift I'll gie to thee —Bauld four-and-twenty sisters' sons,Sail for thee fecht, tho' a' should flee!""Away, away, thou traitor strang!Out o' my sight soon may'st thou be!I grantit never a traitor's life,And now I'll not begin wi' thee!""Grant me my life, my liege, my King!And a brave gift I'll gie to thee —All between heir and Newcastle townSail pay their yeirly rent to thee.""Away, away, thou traitor strang!Out o' my sight soon may'st thou be!I grantit never a traitor's life,And now I'll not begin wi' thee!""Ye lied, ye lied, now King," he says,T Altho' a King and Prince ye be!For I've luved naething in my life,I weel dare say it, but honesty —"Save a fat horse, and a fair woman,Twa bonny dogs to kill a deir;But Ingland suld have found me meal and mault,,Gif I had lived this hundred yeir!"She suld have found me meal and mault,And beef and mutton in a' plentie;But never a Scots wyfe could have said,That e'er I skaithed her a puir flee."To seik het water beneith cauld ice,Surely it is a greit folie —I have asked grace at a graceless face,But there is nane for my men and me! 6"But had I kenn'd ere I cam frae liame,How thou unkind wad'st been to me!1 wad have keepit the Border side,In spite of all thy force and thee."Wist England's King that I was ta'en,O gin a blythe man he wad be!For ance I slew his sister's son,And on his breist bane brak a trie."John wore a girdle about his middle,Imbroidered ower wi' burning gold,Bespangled wi' the same metal,Maist beautiful was to behold.There hang nine targats 7 at Johnie's hat,And ilk ane worth three hundred pound —"What wants that knave that a King suld haveBut the sword of honour and the crown?"O where gat thou these targats, Johnie,That blink sae brawly abune thy brie?""I gat them in the field fechting,Where, cruel King, thou durst not be."Had I my horse, and harness gude,And riding as I w ont to be,It suld hae been tauld this hundred yeir,The meeting of my King and me!"God be with thee, Kirsty, my brother,Lang live thou Laird of Mangertoun!Lang may'st thou live on the Border sydeEre thou see thy brother ride up and down!"And God be with thee, Kirsty, my son,Where thou sits on thy nurse's knee!But an' thou live this hundred yeir,Thy father's better thou'lt never be."Farewell! my bonny Gilnoek hall,Where on Esk side thou standest stout!Gif I had lived hut seven yeirs mair,I wad hae gilt thee round about."
It will be observed that Gilnockie puts forward as his claim to respect the very robberies in England for which, says the poet, he was hanged. The only sign of treachery is that Johnnie did come to Caerlanrig, probably in hope of making his peace like many other lairds. Whether he were "enticed by some courtiers," or whether he risked the adventure is not manifest. According to Pitscottie he had held England as far as Newcastle under blackmail.
Above Caerlanrig, Teviot winds through the haughs and moors and under the alders to its source at Teviot-stone.
CHAPTER VII TWEED, ST. BOSWELLS, DRYBURGH, NEWSTEAD, AND THE LEADER
We now return from Teviotdale to Tweed, which we left at Kelso. The river passes through one of its rock-fenced and narrow defiles at the Trows of Makerstoun, (accent the penultimate,) itself the home from ancient days of a branch of the once great Argyll clan – and generally western clan – of Mac-dougal. How they came so far from their Celtic kindred, potent in Dalriadic Scotland before the Campbells came to the front as allies of Robert Bruce, is not known to me. As foes of Bruce, the Macdougals of Lome suffered much loss of lands after the king's triumph. At the Trows the river splits into very deep and narrow channels, and to shoot one of them in a canoe needs a daring and a fortunate paddler.
In former years there were four of these channels, two of very great depth – thirty feet and more, it is said – but so narrow that, with the river at summer level, it was possible for an active man to jump from stone rib to stone rib, across the swift rushing stream. The feat was attempted once too often, however, with fatal result, and since then the middle rib has been blasted out, so that it is no longer possible for any one to tempt fate in this manner. Even an expert and powerful swimmer, filling in there, would have but a slender chance of coming out alive, for if he were not sucked under by the eddies of that boiling current and jammed beneath some sunken ledge, the odds would be very great on his brains being knocked out amongst the rocks that thrust their ugly fangs here and there above the surface of the stream. Both below and above the Trows, the trout fishing – for those who may fish – is extremely good, but the wading is licklish; pot-holes, ledges, and large boulders are apt to trap the unwary to their undoing. There are, too, some excellent salmon casts in the Makerstoun Water, and it was in one of them that the famous Rob o' the Trows – Rob Kerss, a great character in Sir Walter's day, – nigh on a hundred years ago landed a fish so huge, that even a master of the art so skilled as Rob, – Stoddart says he had few equals as a fisher – was utterly spent when at length his silvery prize lay gasping on the bank. Before taking the fly from its mouth, Rob turned half aside to pick up a stone which might conveniently be used as a "priest"; but even as he turned, out of the tail of his eye he saw the monster give a wallop. Rob leapt for the fish. Alas! as he jumped, his foot caught the line and snapped it, and walloping fish and struggling man plunged together off a shelf into the icy water, – from which Rob emerged alone. The rod with which Kerss killed so many hundreds of fish is still in the possession of one of his descendants, near Beattock. Compared with present-day masterpieces of greenheart or split cane, it is a quaint and clumsy weapon, of extraordinary thickness in the butt, and of crushing weight. The writer has handled it, and he is convinced that one hour's use could not fail to choke off for the rest of the day even the most enthusiastic of modern salmon fishers.
It is not often that ancient weapons are found in Tweed, but some years ago, when the river was unusually low, a moss-trooper's spear was recovered at a spot a little above Makerstoun. It was lying at the bottom, below what used to be a ford of sorts across the river. Curiously enough, shaft and head were both intact, and in fair preservation after their long immersion. If the spear was not used by some trooper in days when fighting was the Borderer's chief delight and occupation, it is difficult to imagine to what use it could have been put. Salmon cannot be successfully speared with a single-pointed unbarbed weapon; so that it is certain this was no poacher's implement.
Above Makerstoun is Rutherford, once the home of the Rutherfurds of that Ilk, but now it knows them no more. A like doom, as I write, hangs over Mertoun, long the beautiful home of the Scotts of Harden, Lord Polwarth's family.
"And Minstrel Burne cannot assuageHis grief, while life endureth,To see the changes of this age,That fleeting Time procureth;For mony a place stands in hard case,Where blythe folk ken'd nae sorrow,Wi' Homes that dwelt on Leader-side,And Scotts that dwelt in Yarrow!"Mertoun is a modern house; hard by it, across the river, the strong ruins of Littledean tower (once the Kers') speak of old Border wars.
Following the curves of Tweed we reach St. Boswells, named after an Anglo-Saxon saint to whom St. Cuthbert came, laying down his spear, and entering religion. At St. Boswells are sheep fairs; Hogg preferred to attend one of these festivals rather than go to London and see the Coronation of George IV. My sympathies are with the shepherd! The paths near Lessudden, hard by, are haunted by a quiet phantasm in costume a minister of the Kirk of the eighteenth century. I know some of the percipients who have seen him individually and collectively. There is no tradition about the origin of this harmless appearance, a vision of a dream of the dead; walking "in that sleep of death."
Above Lessudden the Tweed winds round and at the foot of the beautiful ruins of Dryburgh Abbey, softly mourning for him who lies within that sound "the dearest of all to his ear," Sir Walter Scott. The great Magician lies, with Lockhart at his feet, within the ruined walls, in the place which, as he wrote to his bride that was to be, he had already chosen for his rest. The lady replied with spirit that she would not endure any such sepulchral reflections.
This is one of the most sacred places, and most beautiful places in broad Scotland.
Approaching Dryburgh, not from the riverside but from the road, we come by such a path through a beautiful wood as that in which proud Maisie was "walking so early," when "bold Robin on the bush singing so rarely," spaed her fortune. The path leads to a place of such unexpected beauty as the ruinous palace where the Sleeping Beauty slumbered through the ages. The beauty is that of Dryburgh itself, delicately fair in her secular decay; fallen from glory, indeed, but still the last home of that peace which dwelt in this much harried Borderland in the days of the first White Friars, and of good St. David the king. They were Englishmen out of Northumberland, teachers of good farming and of other good works. What remains of their dwellings is of the age when the round Norman arch blended with the pointed Gothic, as in the eastern end of the Cathedral of St. Andrews. Thrice the English harmed it, in the days of Bruce (1322) during a malicious and futile attack by Edward II; again, under Robert II, when Richard II played the Vandal; and, lastly, during the wasting of the Border in 1544, which was the eighth Henry's rough wooing for his son, of the babe Mary Stuart. The grounds, the property of a member of the House of Scott's eccentric Earl of Buchan, are kept in charming order. The Earl was the only begetter of a huge statue of Sir William Wallace, who used Ettrick Forest now and again in his guerilla warfare, and from the Forest drew his archers, tall men whom n death the English of Edward I admired on the lost field of Falkirk.
The said Earl of Buchan rather amused than consoled Scott, during a severe illness, by promising to attend to his burial in the place so dear to him, which, till the ruin of his paternal grandmother, had belonged to the Haliburtons, also n old days the lords of Dirleton castle. Readers of Lockhart remember the great Border gathering at the funeral of the latest minstrel, and how his horses, which drew the hearse, paused where they had been wont to rest, at a spot where it had been Sir Walter's habit to stop to admire the landscape. His chief, the young Duke of Buccleuch, was prevented by important business from being an attendant. You would never guess what the business was! No man knows but I only; and if Scott could have known, I doubt whether he would have drawn his shaggy brows into a frown, or laughed; for the business was – but I must not reveal so ancient a secret!
Moving up the river on the left bank, we reach that ancient House concerning which Thomas of Ercildoune's prophecy is still unbroken.
"Betide, Betide, whate'er betide,There shall aye be a Haig in Bemersyde."The family were at home in Bemersyde in the days of Malcolm the Maiden. One of them was condemned to pay a dozen salmon yearly to the monastery of Melrose, for some scathe done to the brethren. It must have been an ill year for the angler when Haig expressed a desire to commute the charge for an equivalent in money as he could not get the fish. There was scarce a Border battle in which the Haigs did not leave a representative on the field of honour. Here, too, befell "the Affliction of Bemersyde," when the laird, after a long fight with a monstrous salmon, lost him in the moment of victory. The head of the fish would not go into the landing net, his last wallop freed him; he was picked up dead, by prowlers, – and he weighed seventy pounds. Probably no salmon so great was ever landed by the rod from Tweed. Only the Keep of the mansion is of great antiquity.
It may be worth while to leave the river and climb to Smail-holme 'I'cwer, where Scott's infancy was passed. The tower, standing tall and gaunt above a tarn, is well known from Turner's drawing, and is the scene of Scott's early ballad, The Eve of St. John. Perhaps the verses which have lingered longest in my memory are those which tell how
"The Baron of Smailholme rose with day,And spurred his charger on,Without stop or stay down the rocky wayThat leads to Brotherton."
He did not go, as we remember, to Ancrum fight, but he returned with armour sorely dinted, having slain in private quarrel a knight whose cognisance was
"A hound in a silver leash boundAnd his crest was a branch of the yew."And that same eve the dead man was seen with the lady of Smailholme. The story is a version of that ancient tale, the Beresford ghost story, which can be traced from the chronicle of William of Malmesbury to its Irish avatar in the eighteenth century – and later. Do ghosts repeat themselves? It looks like it, for the Irish tale is very well authenticated.
It was not actually in the tower, but in the adjacent farmhouse of Sandyknowe, his grandfather's, that Scott, at first a puny child, passed his earliest years, absorbing every ballad and legend that the country people knew, and the story of every battle fought on the wide landscape, from Turn Again to Ancrum Moor.
We have reached the most beautiful part ol Tweed, dominated by the triple crest of the pyramidal Eildons, where the river lovingly embraces the woods of Gladswood and Ravens-wood, and the site of Old Melrose, a Celtic foundation of Aidan, while as yet the faith was preached by the Irish mission aries of St. Columba. This is the very garden of Tweed, a vast champaign, from which rise the Eildons, and far away above Rule Water "the stormy skirts of Ruberslaw," with the Lammermuir and Cheviot hills blue and faint on the northern and southern horizons.
On the ground of Drygrange, above Bemersyde, but on the right bank of Tweed at Newstead, the greatest stationary camp in Scotland of Agricola's time has been excavated by Mr. Curie, who also describes it in a magnificent and learned volume. Here were found beautiful tilting helmets, in the shape of heads of pretty Greek girls, and here were the enamelled brooches of the native women who dwelt with Roman lovers. But these must be sought, with coins, gems, pottery, weapons and implements of that forgotten day, in the National Museum in Edinburgh.
