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It was this Archibald Park who was riding one day with Sir Walter Scott—"the Shirra"—. when, in a desolate part of the country, they came unexpectedly on a desperate gang of gipsies, one of whom was "wanted" for murder. Park did not hesitate an instant, but seized the man and dragged him away from under the very noses of his lawless, threatening comrades.
Opposite to Foulshiels, on the farther bank of Yarrow, stands "Newark's stately tower," the most famous, and I think, from its situation, the most beautiful of all the Border strongholds. Situation and surroundings are perfect; I know of no scene more captivating, whether you view it from Foulshiels, or stand by the castle itself, or, climbing high up on its ramparts, gaze around where wood and hill and stream blend in a beauty that is matchless. And from far below comes the voice of Yarrow, chafing among its rocks and boulders, moaning perhaps as it moaned that cruel day after the battle of Philiphaugh, when, on Slain Man's Lea, hard by the castle, Lesly's prisoners were butchered in cold blood.
Newark is the best preserved of all the famous Border towers. And this we owe to the House of Buccleuch. Writing of the ancient towers of Ettrick and Yarrow, the Reverend Dr. James Russell says: "Some of them were burned down when clans were in conflict with each other; but what was allowable in the period of Border warfare was without excuse in our times of peace. Even the grim grey ruins were interesting features of the landscape, and worthy of being spared. But, worse than 'time's destroying sway,' the ruthless hand of vandalism has swept the greater part of them away, as standing in the way of some fancied improvement, or to employ the material for building some modern dyke or dwelling. Even Newark Castle, the stateliest of them all, was thus desecrated through the bad taste of the factor of the day, so recently as the beginning of this [the nineteenth] century, and the best of the stones from the walls and enclosing fence pulled down for the building of a farmhouse immediately in front on the Slain Man's Lea. The present noble proprietor [the fifth Duke of Buccleuch, who died in 1884], was so displeased and disgusted with the proceedings, that when he came into power he swept the modern houses away, and restored stones that in an evil hour had been abstracted, and put the ancient pile into a state of perfect preservation."
Built sometime before 1423—it is referred to as the "new werke" in a charter of that date to Archibald, Earl of Douglas,—Newark Castle was a royal hunting seat; the royal arms are carved on a stone high up on its western wall. But in its time it has seen war as well as sport; in 1548 Lord Grey captured it for Edward VI, and in 1650 it was garrisoned for a while by Cromwell's men after Dunbar. It is of peace, however, rather than of war that one thinks when wandering here; and one recalls how Anne, Duchess of Monmouth and Buccleuch, quilting the throng of men and the hideous later turmoil of her life, retired here with her children after the execution of her unhappy husband in 1685. To what more beautiful and restful scene could she have carried the burden of her sorrows? It is she to whom, in Newark, the "Last Minstrel" recites his Lay.
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"The Duchess mark'd his weary pace,
His timid mien, and reverend face,
And bade her page the menials tell,
That they should tend the old man well:
For she had known adversity,
Though born in such a high degree;
In pride of power, in beauty's bloom,
Had wept o'er Monmouth's bloody tomb!"
Turning away now from sight of Newark, and from Foulshiels, the road sweeps winding down the Yarrow, high over wooded banks, and
"... sweet in Harewood sing the birds,
The sound of summer in their chords;"
past Harewood, its braes shimmering in the summer sun, Yarrow far below, plunging through deep black pools that seem fathomless, and boiling angrily where hindering rocks essay to check its course. This, I think, is the most beautiful part of all Yarrow, as beautiful as the stream's higher reaches, but wilder, with higher,—almost precipitous—banks, rich draped in woods. Away far over to the right across the river, among the trees lies Bowhill; and down past the "General's Brig" we leave Philiphaugh House on the left, and the cairn that commemorates the battle, pass near the junction pool of Yarrow and Ettrick; then quitting Yarrow, we rejoin the 'Tweed road opposite Selkirk, and once more come to Yair Bridge.
"Sweet smells the birk, green grows, green grows the grass,
Yellow on Yarrow's braes the gowan,
Fair hangs the apple frae the rock,
Sweet the wave of Yarrow flowan."
"Flows Yarrow sweet? as sweet, as sweet flows Tweed,
As green its grass, its gowan yellow,
As sweet smells on its braes the birk,
The apple frae the rock as mellow."
CHAPTER XIII UPPER TWEED, YAIR, FAIRNILEE, ASHIESTEEL, EUBANK, INNERLEITHEN, TRAQUAIR
Sweet in truth flows Tweed here, as all will own who leisurely wend their way—it is too beautiful to justify hurried progress—under leafy boughs where the sun slants down in fairy pattern on a road divorced by but a narrow edge of greenest grass from the clear, hurrying river. Here, at your very hand, you may see countless I! ripples of the rising trout, that feed beneath the elms of Yair." There over against you on the far bank of Tweed is Yair itself; and on the hither side, nestling above a lofty bank among its grand old trees, the beautiful ruin of Fairnilee, with its hospitable modern mansion hard by. It was in this line old seventeenth-century Scottish mansion that Alison Rutherfurd wrote her exquisite version of the "Flowers of the Forest." In the old ruined house the little room in which she wrote is still intact, and now is carefully preserved from farther possibility of decay. But why, one wonders vainly, why was a place so fair ever abandoned, and allowed so long to crumble away as if it had been a thing accursed?
"Gin ye wad meet wi' me again,
Gang to the bonny banks o' Fairnilee;"
said the Queen of Faery to True Thomas. And were she here now in the Border land, to no more enchanting spot could she tryst in the sunny slope above the river, the giant limbs of mighty trees green with the leafy crown of June, or flushed with the blood red and orange of autumn;
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the ceaseless song of water gushing over the cauld and dashing among the boulders below; the wide expanse that carries the eye through the waving boughs over the gleaming belt of water, and away far up the hill purpling with the bloom of heather,—or late in the season, "grymed" with the new fallen snow,—up and over to the broad summit of the Three Brethren Cairn. In very truth it is itself a fairyland, and, standing here, to the mind comes,
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irresistibly, thought of the hidden Gold of Fairnilee that in boyhood one sought for so diligently.
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Then, higher up the river a mile or thereby, at the foot of Neidpath Hill, the long deep, swift hurrying stream in which, when autumn floods have done their work, there is not a yard where a lordly salmon may not be hooked. And higher still, there is Caddonfoot, and Clovenfords, in whose little inn Sir Walter used to stay before he lived at Ashiesteel; and the Nest, snug quarters of a famous Edinburgh Fishing Club, among whose members in old days was included the name of many an eminent Scot. Then opposite the Nest, across the river, Ashiesteel, which, almost more eloquently than even Abbotsford itself, speaks of Sir Walter. Here were spent the seven happiest years of his life; here he wrote the "Lay of the Last Minstrel," "Marnuon," and "The Lady of the Lake"; here came into his service those most faithful of followers, Mathieson (his coachman) and Tom Purdie, the latter, before the good fortune that brought him to the notice of "the Shirra," a most accomplished poacher of salmon. Who has not read, and smiled over, the tales that Scrope tells of him in his "Days and Nights of Salmon Fishing in Tweed?"
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Purdie's eccentricities were many, his tongue free and outspoken to an extent that one would suppose might at times have ruffled the temper even of a man so tolerant and sweet-tempered as Scott. Yet the attachment that sprang up between the three, Sir Walter, Mathieson, and Purdie, was of the deepest and most abiding, ending only with their lives. All men—all living things, one might say—loved Scott; these two adored him, and their master's affection for them, and his trust in them, were profound. Mathieson outlived the others; Purdie was the first to go. The end was very sudden, and the blow affected Sir Walter as if the death had been that of a near and dear relative. A niece of Mungo Park used to tell afterwards of Sir Walter's visit to the widow, as related by Mrs. Purdie herself. There came a tap at the door, she said, and he came silently in, sitting down without a word in the chair that Mrs. Purdie handed to him. And, "he juist grat, an' better grat, the tears rinnin' doon his cheeks." At last the poor woman said brokenly; "Ye mauna tak' on that way, Sir Walter. Ye mauna tak' on. Ye'll maybes get some other body juist as guid as Tam."
"No, my dear old friend," he said, at length mastering his emotion. "No. There can never be but one Tom Purdie."
In truth no one could, and no one ever did, replace him. A very few years, and Mathieson drove his master for the last time, that memorable drive in September, 1832, when the horses of their own accord stopped at his favourite view above Bemersyde; that September when the whole world mourned for him who was gone, who yet lives for ever, not alone in Border hearts, but in the affection of all humanity.
In Sir Walter's day, no bridge spanned the river at Ashiesteel, and the ford was not always a safe one; Sir Walter and his horse on at least one occasion, when the water was heavy, had to swim when crossing. But "the Shirra" was always the most reckless of riders, and would plunge in where none dared follow. "The deil's in ye, Shirra," said Mungo Park's brother to him—not on one occasion only—"the deil's in ye. Ye'll never halt till they bring ye hame with your feet foremost." It was at this Ashiesteel ford that Leyden, when Sir Walter's guest, came to grief. He and "the Shirra," and Mr. Laidlaw of Peel were riding one day. Leyden was talking, as one having authority, of the paces and good manners of Arab horses, and telling tales of the marvellous skill with which their owners managed them. "Here," said he, gathering up his reins, "is one of their feats"——; but just at that moment the pony on which he rode (not a docile Arab steed) took it into its head to bolt down the steep bank into Tweed, and Leyden disappeared over its head into the stream. "Ay, ay, Dr. Leyden, is that the way the Arabs ride?" said Laidlaw gravely, when the rider reappeared, dripping like a river-god.
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Up the Glenkinnon Burn from Ashiesteel, at Williamhope Ridge, is the spot where Scott said his last farewell to Mungo Park. At the open drain which then separated moor from road, Park's horse stumbled badly. "A bad omen, Mungo, I'm afraid," said Sir Walter. "Freits (omens) follow them that fear them," cried Park, gaily, setting off at a brisk canter.
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"I stood and looked after him; but he never looked back," Scott used to tell, afterwards. And they met no more. Ere very many months had passed, Park lay dead, somewhere by that great African river with whose name his own will be for ever linked. But Williamhope has older memories than this; "William's Cross" was the name given to a great stone on the hill here, which marked the spot where the Knight of Liddes-dale fell, slain by his kinsman's sword one August day in 1353. Quilting the neighbourhood of Ashiesteel, the road, in close company now with the railway from Galashiels to Peebles, still winds up the beautiful banks of Tweed, past Thornilee and Holylee, past boulder-strewn reaches and pleasant streams where big trout lie,—"a chancier bit ye canna hae," I think Stoddart says,—on past where, high on the farther side, overhanging the river, stand the crumbling ruins of Elibank Castle. This was a stronghold built—or possibly only enlarged—in 1595 by Sir Gideon Murray, father of Muckle Mouthed Meg, heroine of the story which tells how young Scott of Harden, caught reiving the Murrays' cattle, was given his choice between matrimony and the rope and "dule-tree." Harden, it is said, at first chose the latter, but at the last moment, as a mate scarcely to be preferred to death, took the lady. There was probably a good deal of bravado and "bluff" about Harden's wavering—if indeed the story is a true one. But in any case it was a wedding in which the proverb: "Happy the Wooing that's not long adoing," was well exemplified. All went well with bride and with reluctant bridegroom; they "lived happy ever after," as in the most orthodox fairy tale. And of their descendants, one was our own Sir Walter.
And now we come to Walkerbum and Innerleithen, manufacturing townships. The latter, with its famed medicinal well, has been identified, or identifies itself, with St. Ronan's of the Waverley Novels. It is prettily situated on the Leithen, by wide spreading haughs, and the surroundings, like all in Tweedale, cannot fail to attract. But what may be said of Innerleithen, on top of that terrible Report issued in 1906 by H. M. Stationery Office? It will take some living down, if all that was then said by the Tweed Pollution Commission is without exaggeration, and if—as one is informed—nothing has yet been done to sweep away, or at least greatly to improve, the conditions revealed. Here is what the Report says of the river Leithen, a stream in former days called by Sir Thomas Dick Lauder "a fine trouting river."
"Occasionally, in time of
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heavy rainfall, severe floods occur on the Leithen; when these occur, a large amount of water flows down the bed of the stream, which is usually dry, carrying with it all the rubbish and filth to the Tweed.
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The mills are supplied with water from the mill-lade, and one of them obtains water from the Tweed when necessary. The people of the town are entirely engaged in the woollen industry; wool scouring, weaving, and dyeing are all carried on here. The town is sewered. All the sewage is collected in an outfall sewer, which discharges into the mill-lade below the lowermost mill, and about three hundred yards from the Tweed; there is no attempt at purification of the sewage. The liquid refuse from the mills is discharged into the lade. The water of the lade where it discharges to the Tweed is very foul with sewage and dye water... Below the point at which the lade discharges to the Tweed the water of this river is greatly fouled, the bottom of the river is covered with sewage deposit and the stones coated with sewage fungus. The river here contains also a large amount of refuse of all kinds, such as pots and pans, old linoleum, old iron-work, and such like. Although there is a daily collection of rubbish in the town, a great deal of large sized rubbish is thrown into the bed of the Lei then, and the tip to which all refuse is taken, together with offal from the slaughter houses, is situate just where the Lei then falls into the Tweed. In times of flood the water of the Leithen excavates this refuse tip, and carries the refuse into the Tweed. Some of the mill-owners here have tanks for settling the spent liquids after dyeing, and in this way some of the solid refuse is retained, but the coloured liquid is allowed to enter the river. One is thankful for small mercies; "some of the solid refuse is retained." But the "offal from the slaughter houses," and the "tip" to which all refuse is taken! And the sewage which there is "no attempt to purify"! What grizzly nightmare could be more grizzly than this?
However, we get soon now above the range of pollution by mill or town. Peebles only remains; thereafter we have really a river as it used in its entirety to be, and, above Peebles, as it may still be called, "the silver Tweed." Before reaching Peebles, however, there is, over against Innerleithen, on the angle between Quair Burn and Tweed, Traquair House to notice; and, nearer to Peebles, on its green knoll the old riven tower of Horsburgh, ancient seat of an ancient family.
Of old, Traquair was a royal residence. In the twelfth century. William the Lion hunted from its tower; and other of the Scottish monarchs visited it in later days, the last, I suppose, being Mary and Darnley in August, 1566. The original tower, or some part of it, I believe stands now in the north-east corner of the building, but the house has, of course, been greatly added to at different periods, mostly, however, during the reign of Charles I.
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It is a very fine specimen of the old Scottish château, with walls of immense thickness. Probably it is the oldest inhabited mansion house in Scotland; a place full of interest. And not least interesting, the picturesque old gates at the end of the avenue, that have remained so long unopened. The tale used to run that they had been closed after the '45, by an Earl loyal to the Stuart cause, who swore that they should never be opened till the rightful king came back to his own again. As a matter of fact, however, the misfortunes of Prince Charlie and his family had nothing to do with it. The gates were not closed till 1796, when the seventh Earl of Traquair, after the death of his countess, declared that they should remain shut till they opened to admit one worthy to take the dead lady's place. That, at least, is the story.
The Earl who lived in the latter part of the seventeenth century belonged to the Church of Rome. "A quiet, inoffensive man," he is said to have been.
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But that in no way protected him from the unwelcome attentions of those zealous Presbyterians who at that time "thought it someway belonged to us' to go to all the popish houses and destroy their monuments of idolatry, with their priests' robes, and put in prison the priests themselves."
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So a pious mob set out from Edinburgh one grim December day in 1688, and trudged through the snow to Traquair House. Earl and priest, having got word of their coming, had fled before the arrival of this gentle band of Reformers, and though they ransacked all Traquair for "Romish wares," they did not find all they expected. Much had been hidden away. The vestments of the priest this, that, and the other popish emblem could not be found. However, they did get a good deal—an altar, a large brazen crucifix, and several small crucifixes, "a large brodd opening with two leaves, covered within with cloth ot gold of Arras work, having a veil covering the middle part, wherin were sewed several superstitious pictures," a eucharist cup of silver, boxes of relics, "wherin were lying, amongst silk-cotton, several pieces of bone, tied with a red thread, Having written on them the Saint they belonged to," "a harden bag, near full of beads," "Mary and the Babe in a case most curiously wrought in a kind of pearl," a hundred and thirty books—silver-clasped many of them. No doubt the books, Popish or otherwise, excited to frenzy those pious but illiterate persons, almost as effectually as "the pot of holy oil," and the "twelve dozen of wax candles" that they seized.
Not content with all this, however, a detachment of the mob invaded the house of a neighbouring clergyman "who had the name of a Presbyterian minister." The orders given by their ringleaders were that this house should be narrowly searched, but that they themselves were to "behave discreetly," advice the latter part of which one might give with equal propriety and effect to the proverbial bull in a china shop. The Reverend Thomas Louis and his wife apparently did not treat the inquisitors with the kindness and consideration to which they thought themselves entitled; they "mocked them," it is complained; and indeed the minister and his wife carried their resentment so far as to offer them "neither food nor drink, though"—it is naively added—"they had much need of it." Undaunted, however, by this shabby conduct on the part of the reverend gentleman, the mob hunted about till they came on two locked trunks, which they demanded should at once be opened. This modest request not being complied with, they "broke up" the trunks—to "behave discreetly," is no doubt when desired, capable of liberal interpretation—and therein "they found a golden cradle, with Mary and the Babe in her bosom; in the other trunk, the priest's robes." So they made a pile of the articles found here and in Traquair House, carried them a distance of seven miles to Peebles, and had them "all solemnly burned at the cross." Such were the enlightened methods of our seventeenth century progenitors. But, one sometimes wonders, is the toleration of the mob now-a-days greatly in advance of what was in 1688? However, they did not also "solemnly burn" Traquair House, though it was a "nest o'paipery."
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But the last Countess of Traquair has gone through the old gates; and her son, the eighth Earl, was the last of his line. He died, unmarried, in 1861; and the last of her race, the venerable Lady Louisa Stuart, died in 1875, in her hundredth year. Yet still, a pathetic link with days long dead, the old house stands brooding over the past; and still there sounds the music of the waters, and the sough of the wind in the trees of "the bush aboon Traquair." And perhaps he who has
"... heard the cushies croon
Thro' the gowden afternoon,
And the Quair burn singing down to the vale o' Tweed,"
may come away steeped in sadness, yet it is a sadness without sting, not wholly unpleasing.
CHAPTER XIV PEEBLES, NEIDPATH, MANOR, LYNE, DRUMMELZIER, DAWYCK
Writing of Peebles in the year 1847 or 1848, Sir Thomas Dick Lauder speaks of "the singular air of decayed royalty that hangs over it, and which so strangely blends with its perfect simplicity and rurality."
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More than any other of the Scottish border towns, Peebles has a right to talk of "royalty." A royal poet has sung of her Beltane Feast the evidence is at least as much for, as against, acceptance of the time-honoured belief that King James I was author of "Peblis to the Play." Professor Veitch strongly favours that conclusion. And unbroken tradition points to the King as the author.
From earliest times the town was a favourite residence of the Scottish monarchs, and to this day its place-names, such as King's Meadows, King's House, King's Orchards, for example, suggest royal traditions. The Burgh Records of Peebles, go back very far—to October 1456, in the reign of James II. It is a town of much interest and of much beauty, beautiful especially as regards its situation and surroundings, and there are still in it many remains that speak eloquently of the past. There is the old five-arched stone bridge, dating from about 1467, altered, of course, and widened since that date, but still the same old bridge. Until the erection of the bridge at Berwick early in the seventeenth century, I suppose that this was the only one spinning Tweed in all its course. Then there Is the ancient Cross of Peebles, which, after various vicissitudes and excursions, at length stands once more on the spot where it was originally placed. It is said by the writer of the Statistical Account of the Parish to have been "erected by one of the Frasers of Neidpath Castle, before the time of Robert the Bruce, and bears the arms of the Frasers."
There are still to be seen within the burgh the ruins of the Cross Church, and of the Church of St. Andrew. The former got its name from the fact that in May, 1261, "a magnificent and venerable cross was found at Peblis," which was supposed to have been buried close on a thousand years before that date. Shortly after the unearthing of this cross, there was found near the same spot a stone urn, containing ashes and human bones, and on a stone the words carved: "The place of St. Nicholas the Bishop." On account of the miracles which were reputed to have been wrought where the cross was discovered, Alexander III caused a church to be erected on the spot, "in honour of God, and of the Holy Rood." This Cross Church in some unexplained way escaped practically unscathed during the English invasion of 1548-49, and from 1560 till 1784 it served as the Parish Church—deprived, no doubt, of many an interesting relic of the past. At the last-named date, our zealous forefathers, more majorum, pulled it down—all but a fragment—in order, out of the material so obtained, to build a new Parish Church. (They had in those times a perfect genius for wrecking the beautiful and interesting, and for erecting the ugly and the dull.)
The other old church, that of St. Andrew, was founded about the year 1195. It, however, unlike its neighbour, suffered badly at the hands of the English in 1548, after which it gradually fell into ruin, and met the fate that was wont to wait on most of our venerable Scottish buildings. The tower alone remained, impervious to wind and weather, defiant of man's destroying hand. Thirty years ago, it was restored by the late Dr. William Chambers,—"more honour to him had he been less successful in concealing the old work," says Sir Herbert Maxwell, in his "Story of the Tweed." It was in the Church of St. Andrew, tradition says, that Cromwell's troopers stabled their horses in 1650 when siege was being laid to Neidpath Castle.
Peebles at one time was a walled town, and I believe that some fragments of fortification remain. But the names: "Northgate," "Eastgate," "Portbrae," still recall former days. There was a castle also, a royal residence; but though it yet stood in the end of the seventeenth century, or even a little later, there is now not a vestige of it to be found. Again, no doubt, the ruthless hand of our not very remote ancestors!
An interesting and very ancient custom continues to be observed in the town. Annually, on the second day of May, there is chosen from among the youthful beauties of Peebles one who is styled the "Beltane Queen"; and Beltane Sports and Festivities are held. Chambers says: "The festivities of Beltane originated in the ceremonial observances of the original British people, who lighted fires on the tops of hills and other places in honour of their deity Baal; hence Beltane or Beltien, signifying the fire of Baal. The superstitious usage disappeared... but certain festive customs on the occasion were confirmed and amplified, and the rural sports of Beltane at Peebles, including archery and horse-racing... drew crowds not only from the immediate neighbourhood, but from Edinburgh and other places at a distance."
"Peblis to the Play" is a description of the Festival as it was held in the day of the author; "a picture of rustic life and festivities, of the humorous and grotesque incidents of a mediaeval Feast Day in an old provincial town, the centre of a rural district," says Professor Veitch.
"At Beltane, when ilk bodie bownis 1
To Peblis to the Play,
To heir the singin and the soundis,
The solace, suth to say;
Be firth 2 and forest furth they found, 3
They graythit 4 them full gay;
God wot, that wald they do, that stound,5
For it was their Feist Day,
They said,
Of Peblis to the Play."
Space does not permit me to quote more than the opening verse.
2 Enclosed wood, or place.
3 Issue, or go forth.
4 Dressed.
5 Time: German stunde.
Before moving on up the valley, one may recall the fact that at the Old Cross Keys Inn at Peebles Sir Walter found, in its then landlady, the original of his "Meg Dods" of "St. Ronan's Well." Guests arriving now-a-days at this Inn—which is as often called "the Cleikum" as the Cross Keys—still drive into the yard under the "old-fashioned archway" of the novel; still there is shown "Sir Walter's room," overlooking the yard; and still, it may perhaps be noted, there is to be found at the head of affairs one who, while leaving out Meg's "detestable bad humour" and asperity of tongue, in all essentials is worthy to rank as her successor. "Her kitchen was her pride and glory; she looked to the dressing of every dish herself, and there were some with which she suffered no one to interfere.... Meg's table-linen, bed-linen, and so forth, were always home-made, of the best quality, and in the best order; and a weary day was that to the chambermaid in which her lynx eye discovered any neglect of the strict cleanliness which she constantly enforced." The most fervent patriotism cannot, I fear, blind one to the sad fact that a majority of Scottish country inns do not strive very successfully to vie with Meg in those qualities which made her so shining an ornament of her sex. Too often one is left to the greasy attentions of a waiter of foreign tongue, whose mercies it might be desired were more tender than the scrag-end of the cold beef to which, in a parlour of the lethal-chamber variety, he somewhat tardily introduces tired wayfarers. And the beef itself might in many cases taste none the less of beef, if it were served on table-linen not quite so elaborately decorated with outlines of mustard pots and Worcester Sauce bottles, left by the day-beforeyesterday's commercial traveller.
This Cleikum, or Cross Keys Inn, is a building of more than respectable age; it dates from the year 1653, when it was the town house of the Williamsons of Cardrona, a tower a few miles down Tweed, nearly opposite to Horsburgh. Probably both the Cross Keys and its neighbour the Tontine Hotel—. Meg's "Tomteen," the "hottle" of which she spoke so wrathfully—were in Sir Walter's mind when he wrote the novel.
And now we may set out once again up Tweed—not forgetting, however, that Peebles with its mills also contributes no small share to the pollution of that much-injured river. A mile or so out of the town, there is the old castle of Neidpath, in very remote days a stronghold of the Frasers of Fruid and Oliver Castle, in Tweedsmuir. A Hay of Yester, ancestor of Lord Tweeddale, succeeded the Frasers in 1312, by marriage with the daughter of Sir Simon Fraser;
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and after the Hays, by purchase came the Queensberry family, of whom, the fourth Duke, "Old Q.," Wordsworth's "Degenerate Douglas," "unworthy lord," did his best to wreck the estate in 1795. What he could spoil and disfigure, he did spoil and disfigure. And here at Neidpath he swept off the face of nature every stick of timber, old and young, that could be felled or destroyed, leaving, as far as lay in his power, the landscape bare almost as it was when primeval chaos ended. Replanting could not be set about as long as "Old Q." lived, and a hundred years scarce repaired the damage he did. It is curious to note how one who in all respects during his life was so very far removed from grace, at the end wished to lie (where I believe his body does lie), under the Communion Table of St. James's Church, Piccadilly—in his estimation perhaps a sort of side-gate or private entrance to Heaven. The path is steep and the way thorny to most of us. And how fares "Old Q."? I hardly think that the inhabitants of Peebles, had they been Roman Catholics at the time of his death, would have paid for Masses for the soul of the dead "Old Q.," as they did lang syne for the soul of the dead King James the First.
Neidpath Castle is said by old Dr. Pennecuick to have been in reality the stronghold which was anciently called the Castle of Peebles. But there are allusions to the "Castel of Peebles" in the Earl of Tweeddale's Rental book for 1685, and Neidpath was Neidpath centuries before that date. On this subject, Professor Veitch, writing about 1877, says: "The Castle of Peebles was standing and inhabited in the early part of last century. It was afterwards pulled down, and the materials converted, according to the morality and taste of the time, into one of the least architecturally attractive palish edifices in Christendom." As to Neidpath's age, there is no sure record, but as it was a seat of that Sir Simon Fraser who defeated the English three times in one day at Roslin Muir in 1303, its antiquity must be very great. And what a place of immense strength it must originally have been, before the days of artillery. Its walls are ten feet thick, put together with that ancient form of cement which, when dry, became hard as the stones it bound together; and it stands on a high rock overhanging an elbow of Tweed where the water is deep, and was therefore on the river face unassailable.
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But the day of artillery came too soon for Neidpath. It fell before the guns of Cromwell in 1650. after a most gallant resistance under the young Lord Yester,—father, I suppose, of the Lord Yester who wrote the fine old ballad "Tweedside."
Like every other part of the Yale of Tweed, here also it is beautiful. Looking back towards Peebles from above Neidpath the view is very fine, though perhaps an eyesore may be found in the unwholesome speckled appearance given to the castle by the way in which the "facing" of its walls has been done.
Little more than a mile from here, Tweed is joined by Manor Water, a stream now probably best known as that beside which stands the cottage of "Bowed Davie," the original of Scott's "Black Dwarf" of Mucklestane Muir. Sir Walter was staying at Hallyards, on Manor Water, in 1797, with his friend Adam Ferguson, and it was on that occasion that he first saw David Ritchie, a poor mis-shapen dwarf, embittered by the derision which his extraordinary personal appearance everywhere brought on him, and who had retired to this unfrequented valley, where he built himself a cottage of dimensions in keeping with his own stature.
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The cottage still stands, "where from his bole the awsome form peer'd grim on passer-bye," but at least the exterior has been modernised, and an addition has been made; his garden wall, with its ponderous stones, is much as Bowed Davie left it. The "Black Dwarf" was not written till a good many years after Ritchie's death. His grave is in Manor Kirkyard, not, as he himself originally meant it to be, in a secluded spot of his own choice, surrounded by the rowan-trees that it comforted him to think could be relied on to keep witches, and evil spirits generally, at a respectable distance. Poor Davie! There were worse things than witches to be taken into account. It is said—Dr. John Brown mentions it—that his body proved a temptation too great to be resisted by resurrectionists. They dug him up, and carried the poor "thrawn" frame to where it could be sold. Perhaps in death he still excites that derision or pity which in life so angered him; his bones may now lie in some city anatomical museum.
Within the Vestry of Manor Parish Kirk, there is, accord ing to the Ordnance Gazetteer of Scotland edited by Mr. F. H. Groome, "a table made of oak that had been used for church building not later than the thirteenth century; and a bell in the belfry bears the Latin inscription: 'In honore Sanct. Gordiani MCCCCLXXVIII.'" And far up the vale, near Kirkhope, is the site of this St. Gordian's Kirk, "marked by a granite runic cross, with the old font stone at its base."
Manor Valley in days of old must have been a "mischancey" spot for any stranger whose intentions were, so to speak, not "strictly honourable." There were, in and about it, not fewer than nine or ten peel towers, two at least of which—Barns and Castlehill—belonged to the Burnets, than whom none bore higher reputation as reivers and men of action. In 1591 no Borderer was more renowned for his exploits and for his conduct of midnight forays, than William Burnet, the "Hoolet of Barns." His tower, Barns, is rather nearer Tweed than Manor, but it is included in the strongholds of Manor Valley. It is still in excellent preservation, but the roof is modern, and the upper part of the tower has been greatly altered from what it was originally. The accommodation in such towers must have been something of the most cramped; in this instance the outside dimensions of the tower (three stories) are only twenty-eight by twenty feet. On the lintel of the door is the date 1498, but there appears to be some uncertainty as to whether the figures were not added at a later time. Castlehill, now a ruin, "hollow-eyed, owl-haunted," was somewhat larger and stronger than Barns. Higher up the valley is Posso, now mere fragments of walls. It was of old a seat of the Bairds, who were succeeded in the sixteenth century by the Naesmiths.