The Scott Country

“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 eyeFull 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 MelroseAnd Eildon slopes to the plain”.

In drawing near to Melrose, especially if one crosses at Leaderfoot, and approaches by the village of Newstead and over the site of the Roman camp, one feels there is something to be said for Dorothy Wordsworth’s disappointment on coming first into near view of the Abbey. It stands back from the river – perhaps because the river has left it – and apart from the hills. It is in the fields outside of the village, the streets of which come to its gate and stop there; and it is surrounded by walls, which interrupt and deform proportions seriously injured by the loss of its central tower. Melrose – “the light of the land, the abode of saints, the grave of monarchs” – is a glorious fragment, more beautiful, perhaps, in detail than in general effect, in ornament than in design; and memorable even more for its legendary and literary associations than for its actual history. The monastery dates from the same abbey-building reign as its rivals on Tweedside; but architecturally the church belongs to another horizon. Of the original Norman fabric that stood on the site scarcely a trace remains. It was swept away during the descent upon it of Edward II in 1322, and what remained must have perished under the equally destructive assault of Richard II in 1385. Between these two dates, a building arose, represented by the eastern end of the nave with its flying buttresses and by adjoining parts of the choir and transepts, that may be regarded as a monument of the piety and the gratitude of Robert the Bruce, whose heart, brought back from the Paynim lands to which the “good Sir James” of Douglas had carried it, is buried in the Abbey. The work of rebuilding was continued for nearly a couple of centuries longer; and it is evident that the highest art and craftsmanship the age could produce were employed in construction and in ornament, which, owing to the fineness of grain of the red sandstone employed, remains in wonderful preservation. It is doubtful whether it was completed before the tempests of the Tudor invasions and of the Reformation fell upon it, and the monks were put to flight. It has not been definitely ascertained how far the long nave extended to the westward, or what was the plan of the monastic buildings, of which and of the cloister only a few fragments are left on the northern side of the church. The presbytery, with its much extolled “east oriel” window, was probably among the later additions, and is one of the finest examples of Perpendicular Gothic extant. Scott would have us view it when the moon is shining “through slender shafts of shapely stone, by foliaged tracery combined”, and to imagine that

“Some fairy’s hand’Twixt poplars straight the ozier wand,In many a freakish knot, had twined”.

But even more wonderful and beautiful to many eyes is the great Decorated window of the south transept that lightens the aisle in which, as is fabled, the Wizard Michael sleeps with his magic books beside him. Familiar are the lines in which Sir Walter, a constant pilgrim to this shrine, chants its praises – of its cloister garth:

“Nor herb, nor floweret, glistened there,But was carved in the cloister-arches fair”;

of the vaulted roof, where

“The key-stone that locked each ribbéd aisleWas a fleur-de-lys or a quatrefeuille”;

and of the pillars, with their clustered shafts, that

“With base and with capital flourished aroundSeem’d bundles of lances which garlands had bound”.

It must have been a labour of love to frame this marvellously carved casket, in which are laid the ashes of kings and prelates. Here rest the chiefs of the once mighty House of Douglas, and, not far away, of the English Warden who desecrated their tombs and was overtaken and slain at Ancrum Moor; among minor clans “Ye race of ye House of Zair” – Kerrs and Pringles; and, later in date but of the same stubborn and trusty Border stuff, Tom Purdie, the reclaimed poacher and faithful watchdog and factotum of the Laird of Abbotsford. The prayer of John Morvo, inscribed on the wall of the south transept,

“I pray to God and Marie baithAnd sweet St. John keep this haly Kirk frae skaith”,

has not been fulfilled. To other bludgeonings of fate was added its conversion into the parish church in the seventeenth century. Walter Scott helped to rescue it from vandalism and neglect; and he continues to be the guardian spirit of the “dark Abbaye”.

Not less than in the days of the monks is the adjacent town of Melrose – “Kennaquair” the residence of the antiquarian Captain Cuthbert Clutterbuck – an appanage of the Abbey, out of which indeed it has partly been built. One looks in vain for the “Druid Oak”, which existed only in Scott’s fancy. But Melrose has its market cross and market place, and does a modest business with the country round. Its chief source of prosperity, however, is in its situation and its associations; it may be called the capital of the “Scott Country”. Abbotsford is little more than a couple of miles away. The road to it passes Darnick Tower, a red keep festooned with greenery, the stronghold of one of the lay vassals of the Abbey; and skirts, in the grounds of the Hydropathic Establishment, the “skirmish field” on which was fought in 1526 the fray between the Scotts and the Kerrs of the Douglas faction that gave rise to a long feud between the clans. Scott, it may be noted, speaks of the scene, when

“Cessford’s heart-blood dearReeked on dark Elliot’s Border spear”,

as if it had taken place beside the ruined Kerr stronghold of Holydean, on the southern side of the hills beyond Huntly-burn and the “Rhymer’s Glen”, and thus near to the pretty village of Bowden, which sits under the lowest of the three Eildons, and looks down into the valley of the Ale and towards Cavers Carre and Lilliesleaf.

The fields and woods sloping down from Bowden Moor and Cauldshields Loch, on the left of the way from Melrose to Abbotsford, are part of the possessions which Sir Walter gathered together between 1811, when he had to give up Ashestiel, and 1824; and they still belong to his descendants. The nucleus of the property was the little farm of Cartley, or Clarty, Hole, on the Tweed a little above the inflow of the Gala. It lay almost opposite to the site of the plum trees that, according to a story of Border foray much cherished in Galashiels, gave to that town the burghal arms and the slogan tune of “Soor Plooms”, the favourite bagpipe air of Scott’s Kelso uncle. On the strength of a tradition that there was here a crossing-place of the monks, Abbotsford got its new and ever memorable name. A modest cottage, which forms part of the west wing, gradually grew with the growth of the owner’s fame and fortunes, until, at the end of fourteen years, by addition and reconstruction, mainly all of Sir Walter’s own devising, it had become the stately baronial mansion, adorned with turrets, corbels, and crowsteps, that challenges the eye by its form and size as well as by its history. Into it the author of the Waverley Novels may be said to have built his fancies, his aspirations, and his ambitions; and here he counted on spending the evening of his days in well-earned rest, surrounded by his children and his friends, and by the love and admiration of his fellow countrymen. Hardly had this “poem in stone and lime” been brought to completion when an untimely frost blasted his hopes, and with unimpaired courage, but with gradually failing strength, he turned to a task, greater than any that ever fell to his namesake the “michty Michael”, and worked unremittingly, with hand and brain, for another seven years’ term until he came back for the last time to Abbotsford, a spent and broken man, to die. Sadder far his return than his departure a year before in quest of health, when