In the Border Country

The Nine-Stane Rig is the scene also of the fragmentary "Barthram's Dirge"—a clever Surtees forgery undetected by Scott. Leyden's second Hermitage ballad—two of the best in the "Minstrelsy"—deals with the Cout or Chief of Keeldar, in Northumberland, done to death by the "Ogre" in the Cout's Pool close to the Castle. In the little God's-acre at Hermitage the Cout's grave is pointed out (Keeldar also shows what purports to be the Cout's resting-place). Memories of Mary and Bothwell come to us, too, at Hermitage. Here the wounded Warden of the Marches was visited by the infatuated Queen, who rode over from Jedburgh to see him, returning the same day—a rough roundabout of fifty miles—which all but cost her life. Dalhousie's Dungeon, in the north-east tower, recalls the tragic end of one of the bravest and best men of his time—Sir Alexander Ramsay, of Dalhousie, who was starved to death at the instance of Liddesdale's Black Knight, here anything but the "Flower of Chivalry." One may wander all over the Hermitage and Liddel valleys without ever being free from the romance-feeling which haunts them. Relics of the Roman occupation are in abundance on every hillside—

This was the homeland of the Elliots, "lions of Liddesdale," and the sturdy Armstrongs, of the crafty Nixons and Croziers—"thieves all":

It is to be regretted that so few of the dozens of clan-strengths which at one time studded the district are any longer in evidence. Hartsgarth, Roan, (so named from the French Rouen), Redheugh, Mangerton—"Kinmont Willie's" Keep—Syde—"He is weel kenned Jock o' the Syde," Copshaw Park—the abode of "little Jock Elliot"—Westburnflat—an "Old Mortality" name—Whithaugh, Clintwood, Hillhouse, Peel, and Thorlieshope, have mostly all disappeared since Scott's day. A generation more utilitarian in its tastes has arisen, and the stones taken to set up dykes and fill drains. Near the junction of the Liddel and Hermitage stood the strongly posted Castle of the "Lords of Lydal," and the important township of Castleton—not unlike the Roxburghs between Tweed and Teviot; and, like them also, both have long since passed from the things that are. Only the worn pedestal of its "mercat-cross" and a lone kirkyard have been left to tell the tale. Two miles farther down is the village of Newcastleton, formerly Copshawholm, planned by the "good Duke Henry" in 1793, a rising summer resort with a population of about a thousand.

We cannot quit Liddesdale without recalling that this is "Dandie Dinmont's" Country. In writing "Guy Mannering" Scott drew largely from his earlier experiences amongst the honest-souled store-farmers and poetry-loving peasants of Liddelside. At Millburn, on the Hermitage, he enjoyed the hospitality of kindly Willie Elliot, who stood for the "great original" of "Dandie Dinmont."

THE END.