More ruthless than Hertford's, however, was the work at Bunkle of our own people in 1820. They pulled down an eleventh century church in order to build the present edifice. Only a fragment of the original building remains, but many of its carved stones may be seen in the walls of the existing church. Possibly the old structure was in a bad state of repair. One does not know for certain; but at date of its demolition the building appears to have been entire.
Our ancestors of a hundred years ago were not to be "lippened to" where ecclesiastical remains were concerned. They had what amounted to a passion for pulling down anything that was old, and where they did not pull down, they generally covered with hideous plaster any inside wall or ornamental work, which to them perhaps might savour of "papistry." Parish ministers, even late in the eighteenth and early in the nineteenth centuries, appear to have taken no interest in those beautiful Norman remains, numerous fragments of which even now exist in Berwickshire; of all those ministers who compiled the old Statistical Account of this county, but one or two make any mention of such things. One fears, indeed, that to some of those reverend gentlemen, or to others like them of later date, we are indebted for the destruction of priceless relics of the past. At Duns, for instance, as late as 1874 the original chancel of an old Norman church was pulled down by order of the incumbent, "to improve the church-yard." Then, as already mentioned, there is Bunkle, an instance of very early Norman work, pulled down in 1820. At Chirnside, the tower of its Norman church was sacrificed in 1750. though great part of the old church walls remain; in the south side is a Norman doorway six feet ten inches in height to the lintel and two feet ten and three-quarter inches wide. Of Edrom church, a very beautiful Norman doorway, said to be "the finest of its style in Scotland," has been preserved, entirely owing, apparently, to the fact that it had been made the entrance to a burial vault. At Legerwood, near Earlstoun, where stands the chancel of a Norman church, the arch is still entire but is defaced with plaster. Berwickshire, however, is not the only part of the Border where such things have been done.
Higher up Tweed, at Stobo in Peeblesshire, there is an interesting old church of Norman structure, with sixteenth and seventeenth century alterations; roof and interior fittings are modern, and the building is still used as the Parish Church. Sixteenth and seventeenth century alterations have now at least age to commend them, but it is difficult to see what plea can be advanced for some of those of comparatively recent date. According to "Ecclesiastical Architecture of Scotland," the most serious injury inflicted on the building was the entire destruction of the Norman chancel arch, in order to insert a modern pointed one, at the restoration of the church in 1868.
Over in Teviotdale, too, the same passion for altering, or for sweeping away relics of old times, ran its course. In 1762, the Town Council of Hawick gave orders for the destruction of the Town's Cross. So Popish a thing as a Cross could not be tolerated by those worthy and "unco" pious persons. The treasurer's accounts of the time show that tenpence per day was paid to two men for the work of taking down the Cross, and the carved stones seem to have been sold afterwards for eleven shillings and sixpence. No doubt the worthy bailies congratulated themselves on having not only rid the town of an emblem of Popery, but on having made quite a handsome monetary profit over the transaction.
But to return to Whitadder. In his "Scottish Rivers," Sir Thomas Dick Lauder writes of Billy Castle as the scene of a grisly tale connected with the Homes. He tells how, to the best of his reckoning about a century prior to the date at which he wrote, an old lady of that family resided here in a somewhat friendless condition, but with a considerable household of servants, chief of whom was a butler who had been in her service for many years, and in whose integrity she had entire confidence. This old lady, it seems, was in the habit of personally collecting rents from her tenants, and as there were then no country banks in which to deposit the money, it was her custom to count it in presence of the butler, prior to locking the guineas away in a strong cupboard in her bedroom. The door of this room was secured by an ingenious arrangement, whereby a heavy brass bolt, or cylinder, was allowed to fall by its own weight into an opening made exactly to fit it. To an eye in the head of the cylinder was attached a cord which worked through a pulley fastened to the ceiling, and thence by a series of running blocks passed to the bedside. Thus the old lady, without troubling to get out of bed, could bolt or unbolt her door at will, and so long as the cylinder was down, no one could possibly enter the room. Now, the butler had for years witnessed this counting and stowing away of the rent monies, and temptation had never yet assailed him. He might, indeed, plume himself on his honesty, and say with Verges: "I thank God I am as honest as any man living that is an old man and no honester than I." But alas! there came a night when the guineas chinked too seductively, and the devil whispered in the butler's ear. Perhaps some small financial embarrassment of his own was troubling the man. Anyhow, it came to his mind that if he could quietly fill up the hole into which the bolt of his mistress's bedroom door dropped, he might help himself to as much money as he needed. The time of year was the cherry season. What so easy as to fill up the bolt hole with cherry stones? The "geans" grew thick in Scotland, and they were black ripe now. "At midnight," says Sir Thomas, "he stole into his mistress's chamber, cut her throat from ear to ear, broke open her cabinet, and possessed himself of her money; and although he might have walked down stairs and out at the door without exciting either alarm or suspicion, he opened the window and let himself down nearly two stories high, broke his leg, and lay thus among the shrubbery till morning, without ever attempting to crawl away. He was seized, tried, condemned, and executed."
It is grisly enough, but hardly so grisly as the real story of what happened. The scene of the murder, however, was not Billy Castle—which, indeed, had then been dismantled and in ruins for two hundred years—but Linthill House, a fine old mansion standing on a "brae" overhanging Eye-water, five or six miles from Billy. Linthill is now inhabited by families of work-people, but it is still in good preservation, and at date of Sir Thomas Dick Lauder's story (1752), must have been a very-fine specimen of the old Scottish château.
The old lady's room was entered as Sir Thomas describes, but the butler did not immediately cut her throat. She was awakened by the sound of the stealthy rifling of the cupboard, or strong iron-bound box, in which her valuables were kept, and with that pluck which is characteristic of the old-time Scottish lady, she jumped up to grapple with the robber. Then he cut her throat, and leaving her for dead on the bed, proceeded with his rifling. A slight noise, nowever, disturbed him, and, looking round, a terrifying sight met his gaze; the woman whom he had believed to be dead was on her feet, blindly groping her bloody way along the wall to the bell. Before he could seize her and complete his work, she had pulled the rope with all the strength left to her, and had alarmed the other servants. Thus the murderer had no opportunity to leave by way of the stairs. He jumped from the window—no great feat for an active man with his wits about him. But the butler was flurried; perhaps, also, he was stout, as is not uncommon with pampered servants. In any case, he missed his footing, came down badly, and broke his leg. He did not, however, lie where he fell, inert and helpless. With painful, effort the man dragged himself to a field near by, where, amongst sweet-scented flowering beans, he lay concealed for some days. On the fourth day, as he lay groaning beside a tiny spring of water which still flows near the middle of the field, he chanced to be seen by some children, who gave information. The wretched man was taken, tried, and executed—the last instance in Scotland of a criminal being hung in chains. The blood of a murdered person, they say, refuses to be washed clean from any wood-work into which it may have soaked—witness that ghastly dark patch that disfigures a floor in Holyrood. Here at Linthill at least there is no doubt of the fact that those marks remain; in spite of very visible attempts to remove the stains from the wood-work by planing them out, the prints of the poor lady's bloody hands still cling to the oak wainscoting of the gloomy old room where the deed was committed. About house and grounds there hangs now an air of dejection and decay, though Eye ripples cheerily just beyond the garden foot and the surrounding landscape is bright with pleasant woods and smiling fields.
Surely if ever ghost walked, it should be here at Linthill; that midnight bell should clang, a window be thrown open, the thud be heard of a heavy body falling on the ground. But it is not mistress or man that haunts that house. It is of other things they tell who have been there; of an upper chamber, to which nightly comes the shuffling tramp of men bearing from a vehicle which is heard to drive up to the house door, a heavy weight, which they deposit on the floor. More shuffling, a room door quietly closed, the sound of retreating steps, then silence. "Hout!" say the womenfolk of those who now inhabit part of the old house, "it'll no be naething." But they look behind them with a glance not too assured, and the voice that says t is "naething" is not over-steady in tone.
A little higher up the river than Blanerne we come to Broomhouse, where also once stood a castle. In a field on this estate is a spot, still called "Bawtie's Grave," where the body of Sir Anthony Darcy—"Le Sieur de la Beauté"—Warden of the Marches in 1517, is said to lie buried. Darcy, or de la Bastie (or de la Beauté), as he was generally called, was a Frenchman, a man possessed of great personal beauty and attraction; but the fact that he had been appointed Warden of the Marches and Captain of Dunbar Castle in room of Lord Home, who had been treacherously put to death in Edinburgh, rendered him very obnoxious to the inhabitants of that part of Berwickshire in which the Homes held sway. It was through Darcy that Lord Home and his brother had been decoyed to Edinburgh, said the kin and supporters of the Home family. Vengeance must be taken.
Nor was time wasted over it. An occasion soon arose when Darcy in his capacity of Warden had to visit Langton Tower, (no great distance from Duns), in order to settle some family feud of the Cockburns, relatives by marriage of the Homes. Here, outside the tower, Sir David Home, with a party of horsemen, came up, and speedily picked a quarrel with the Sieur. Swords were out in a minute, and Home's band was too strong for Darcy and his men. Several of the French attendants of the Sieur fell, and as the rest of his party were mostly Borderers, and therefore not very eager to fight for him, the Warden found himself compelled to ride for it. He headed in the direction of Dunbar. But the ground over which he had to gallop was swampy, and de la Beauté's heavy horse sank fetlock deep at every stride, finally "bogging" in a morass some distance to the east of Duns. Darcy is said to have continued his flight on foot, but the chase did not last long; Home and his followers bore down upon him—a well-mounted "little foot-page," they say, the first man up.
"The leddies o' France may wail and mourn,
May wail and mourn fu' sair,
For the Bonny Bawtie's lang broun lucks
They'll never see waving mair."
They were on him at once; his head was fiercely hewn off, carried in triumph to Home Castle, and there fastened to the end of a spear on the battlements, to gaze blind-eyed over the wide Merse, the land he had tried to govern. Pitscottie says that Sir David Home of Wedderburn cut off Darcy's long flow ing locks, and plaiting them into a wreath, knit them as a trophy to his saddle bow.
Perhaps the Sieur in the end got no more than his deserts, or at least no more than he may frequently have dealt out to others. He came of a stock famed in France for cruelty and oppression; and the peasants round Allevard, in the Savoie,—where stand the fragments of what was once his ancestral home—still tell of that dreadful night when Messire Satan himself wras seen to take his stand on the loftiest battlement of the castle. And they relate how then the walls rocked and swayed and with hideous crash toppled to the ground. Perhaps it was this very catastrophe which sent the "Bonny Bawtie" to Scotland.
A cairn once marked the spot where the Sieur's body found a resting place. But, unfortunately, such a ready-made quarry of stones attracted the notice of a person who contracted to repair the district roads. It is many years ago now, and there was no one to say him nay. He carted away the interesting land-mark and broke up the cairn into road metal.
Home Castle still dominates this part of the Border, but no longer is it the building of "Bawtie's" day. That was pulled down in the time of the Protector, by Cromwell's soldiers under Colonel Fenwick. Thomas Cockburn, Governor in 1650 when Fenwick summoned the castle to surrender, was valiant only on paper; a few rounds from the English guns caused his valour to ooze from his fingers' ends, and sent up the white flag. That was the end of the old castle. Fenwick dismantled it and pulled down the walls; the present building, imposing as it seems, standing grim and erect on its rocky height, is but a dummy fortress, built in the early eighteenth century on the old foundations, from the old material, by the Earl of Marchmont. The original building dated from the thirteenth century, and a stormy life it had, like many Border strongholds alternately in Scottish and in English hands. In 1547, after a gallant defence by the widow of the fourth Lord Home, it was taken by the English under Somerset; two years later it was recaptured by that lady's son, the fifth Lord Home.
"Too old at forty," is the cry raised in these days—presumably by those who have not yet attained to that patriarchal age—but when a state of war was the chronic condition of the Border-land, men of vastly greater age than forty were not seldom able to show the way to warriors young enough to be their grandsons. At this taking of Home Castle in the closing days of December 1548, it was a man over sixty, one of the name of Home, who was the first to mount the wall. The attack was made at night, on the side where the castle was both naturally and artificially strongest, and where consequently least vigilant guard might probably be kept. As Home, ahead of his comrades, began to slide his body cautiously over the parapet, the suspicions of a sentry pacing at some little distance were roused, and he challenged and turned out the guard. This man had not actually seen anything, the night was too dark for that, but he had, as it were, smelt danger, with that strange extra sense that sometimes in such circumstances raises man more nearly to the level of his superior in certain things—the wild animal. However, in this case the sentry got no credit, but only ridicule, from his comrades, for examination showed that there was no cause whatever for his having brought the guard out into the cold, looking for mares' nests over the ramparts. Home and his party had dropped hurriedly back, and during the time that the Englishmen were glancing carelessly over the wall, they lay securely hidden close at its base. As soon, however, as the English soldiers had returned to the snug warmth of their guard-room, and the mortified sentry was once more pacing up and down, Home was again the first of the Scots to clamber up and to fall upon the astonished Englishman, whom this time he slew, a fate which overtook most of the castle's garrison. "Treachery helped the assailants," said the English. "Home Castle was taken by night, and treason, by the Scots," is the entry in King Edward's Journal.
Again, in 1569, it was battered by the heavy siege guns of the Earl of Sussex and once more for a time was held by-England; finally in 1650 came its last experience of war. It was at Home Castle that Mary of Gueldres, Queen of James II of Scotland, lay whilst her husband besieged Roxburgh in 1460. One hundred and six years later, Mary Queen of Scots was there on her way to Craigmillar from Jedburgh.
In days when the bale-fire's red glare on the sky by night, or its heavy column of smoke by day, was the only means of warning the country of coming invasion from the south, Home Castle, with its wide outlook, was the ideal centre of a system of beacon signals on the Scottish border. The position was matchless for such purpose; nothing could escape the watchful eyes of those perched on the lofty battlements of this "Sentinel of the Merse," no flaming signal from the fords over Tweed fail to be seen. In an instant, at need, fires would be flashing their messages over all the land, warning not only the whole Border, but Dunbar, Haddington, Edinburgh, and even the distant shores of life. "A baile is warnyng of ther cumyng quhat power whatever thai be of. Twa bailes togedder at anis thai cumyng in deide. Four balis, ilk ane besyde uther and all at anys as four candills, sal be suthfast knawlege that thai ar of gret power and menys." So ran part of the instructions issued in the fifteenth century. But almost in our own day—at least in the days of the grandfathers of some now living—Home Castle flashed its warning and set half Scotland flying to arms. Britain then lived under the lively apprehension of a French invasion. With an immense army, fully equipped, Napoleon lay at Boulogne waiting a favourable opportunity to embark. Little wonder, therefore, that men were uneasy in their minds, and that ere they turned in to bed of a night country folk cast anxious glances towards some commanding "Law" or Fell, where they knew that a beacon lay ready to be fired by those who kept watch. In the dull blackness of the night of 31st January, 1804, the long-looked-for summons came. All over the Border, on hill after hill where of old those dreaded warnings had been wont to flash, a tiny spark was seen, then a long tongue of flame leaping skyward. The French were coming in earnest at last!
Just as ready as it had been in the fiercest days of Border warfare was now the response to the sudden call to arms. Over a country almost roadless, rural members of the various Yeomanry corps galloped through the mirk night, reckless of everything save only that each might reach his assembly point in time to fall in with his comrades. Scarce a man failed to report himself as ready for service—in all the Border I believe there were but two or three. And though it turned out that the alarm fires had been lit through an error of judgment on the part of one of the watchers, there is no doubt that to the bulk of the men who turned out so full of courage and enthusiasm that night, the feeling at first, if mixed with relief, was one of disappointment that they had had no chance of trying a fall with "Boney" and his veterans. The man who was the first to fire his beacon on that 31st of January was a watcher at Home Castle. Peering anxiously through the gloom, he imagined that he saw a light flare up in the direction of Berwick. It was in reality only a fire lit by Northumbrian charcoal-burners that he saw, and its locality was many points to the south of Berwick, but as the blaze sprang higher, and the flames waxed, the excited watcher lost his head, and, forgetting to verify the position, feverishly set a light to his own beacon and sent the summons to arms flying over the Border. Had it not chanced that the watcher by the beacon on St. Abb's Head was a man of cool temperament, all Scotland had been buzzing that night like a hornets' nest. This man, however, reasoned with himself that news of an invasion, if it came at all, must necessarily come from a coastal, and not from an inland station, and therefore he very wisely did not repeat the signal.
The spirit shown on the occasion of this false alarm, and the promptitude with which yeomanry and volunteers turned out, are things of which Borderers are justly proud. Many of the yeomanry rode from forty to fifty miles that night in order to be in time; and even greater distances were covered. Sir Walter Scott himself was in Cumberland when word of the firing of the beacons came to him, but within twenty-four hours he and his horse had reached Dalkeith, where his regiment was assembled, a distance of one hundred miles from his starting point. In one or two instances, where members of a corps chanced to be from home, in Edinburgh on private business, mother or wife sent off with the troop when it marched, the horse, uniform, and arms of husband or son, so that nothing might prevent them from joining their regiment at Dalkeith. The substance of the message then sent to her son by the widowed mother of the writer's grandfather, will be found in Sir Walter's Notes to The Antiquary. If in our day like cause should unhappily arise, if the dread shadow of invasion should ever again fall on our land, no doubt the response would be as eager as it was in 1804; the same spirit is there that burned in our forefathers. But of what value now-a-days are half-trained men if they come to be pitted against the disciplined troops of a Continental Power? Of no more avail than that herd of wild bulls that the Spaniards in 1670 tried to drive down on Morgan's Buccaneers at Panama.
Many a tale is still told of the events of that stirring night of 31st January, 1804. One of the Selkirk volunteers, a man named Chisholm, had been married that day; but there was no hesitation on his part. "Weel, Peggy, my woman," he said in parting with his day-old bride, "if I'm killed, ye'll hear tell o't. And if I'm no killed, I'll come back as sune as I can." A particularly "canny" Scot was another volunteer, whose mother anxiously demanded ere he marched if he had any money with him in case of need. "Na, na!" he said, "they may kill me if they like, but they'll get nae siller off me."
A few cases of the white feather there were, of course; in so large a body of undisciplined men there could hardly fail to be some who had no stomach for the fight, but instances of cowardice were surprisingly few. One or two there were who hid under beds; and one youth, as he joined the ranks, was heard to blubber, "Oh, mother, mother, I wish I'd been born a woman." But of those who should have mustered at Kelso, only two out of' five hundred failed to answer to their names, and possibly they may have had legitimate cause for their absence. Many of the members of foot regiments were long distances away when the alarm was given. Of the Duns volunteers, for instance, two members were fifteen miles distant when the beacons blazed up. Yet they made all speed into the town, got their arms and accoutrements, marched all through the night, and fell in alongside their comrades at Haddington next forenoon. Many—all the men of Lessudden, for example—marched without uniforms. Anunpleasant experience had been theirs had they fallen, in civilian dress, into the hands of the enemy.
To return to Whitadder.—Some miles above Broomhouse we come to Cockburn Law, a conical hill of about 1100 feet in height, round three sides of which the river bends sharply. On the northern slope of the hill is the site, and what little remains to be traced, of Edinshall, a circular tower dating probably from the seventh century. According to the oid Statistical Account of the Parish, the walls of this tower,—Edwin's Hall,—measured in diameter 85 feet 10 inches, and in thickness 15 feet 10 inches, enclosing in their depths many cells or chambers. Their height must once have been very considerable, for even at date of the Statistical Account—the end of the eighteenth century—they stood about eight feet high, and were surrounded on all sides by a scattered mass of fallen stones. The ground around shows traces of having been fortified, but the tower itself probably was never a place of strength. The stones of which the building was constructed were large, and close fitting, but not bound together with mortar, which indeed was not in use in Scotland so early as the date of the building of Edinshall,—hence the tower was a quarry too convenient to be respected by agriculturists of a hundred years ago. Most of the material of the ancient build ing has been taken to construct drains, or to build "dry stane dykes." The "rude hand of ignorance" has indeed been heavy on the antiquities of Scotland.
Where the stream bends sharply to the left as one fishes up those glorious pools and boulder-strewn rapids, there stands a cottage not far removed from Edinshall, which on the Ordnance Survey maps bears the very un-Scottish name of Elba. It has, however, not even a remote connection with the place of exile of an Emperor. The learned would have us believe that the name is derived from the Gaelic "Eil," a hill, and "both," a dwelling. It may be so; but it seems much more likely that "Elba" is merely the Ordnance Survey people's spelling of the word "elbow," as it is pronounced in Scotland; the river here makes an extremely sharp bend, or elbow. Near Elba is an old copper mine which was worked to advantage by an English company midway in the eighteenth century. Abandoned after a time, it was reopened in 1825, but was soon again closed. Copper was not there in sufficient quantity to pay; probably it had been worked out before. Four or five miles from here we come to Abbey St. Bathans, a name which conjures up visions of peaceful old ruins nestling among whispering elms by clear and swift flowing waters. There is now, however, little of interest to be found. St. Bathans was originally a convent of Cistercian Nuns, with the title of a Priory, and was founded towards the end of the twelfth century by Ada, daughter of William the Lion. As late as 1833, the then recently written Statistical Account of the Parish says that the north and east walls of the church "still bear marks of antiquity," and that in the north wall is "an arched door which communicated with the residence of the Nuns"; but, says the Account, this door "is now built up."
"Adjoining the church, and between it: and the Whitadder, remains of the Priory were visible a few years ago." Where are they now? Built into some wall or farm building, no doubt, or broken up, perhaps, to repair roads or field drains. And where is the font, with its leaden pipe, that stood "in the wall near the altar"? Perhaps—if it still exists, unbroken,—it may now be used as a trough for feeding pigs, as has been the fate of many another such vessel. It is hard to forgive the dull, brutish ignorance that wilfully wrecked so much of the beauty and interest that the past bequeathed to us.
It is not easy to say who was the saint from whom Abbey St. Bathans inherited its name. Probably it was Bothan, Prior of Old Mailros in the seventh century, a holy man of great fame in the Border. There is a well or spring not far distant from the church of St. Bathans, whose miraculous powers of healing all sickness or disease were doubtless derived from the good Father. These powers have now long decayed, but as late as 1833—possibly even later—some curious beliefs regarding the well were held in the neighbourhood, and its waters, it was well known, would "neither fog nor freeze" in the coldest weather.
Shortly after leaving Abbey St. Bathans, as we gradually near the Lammermuirs, the land on both sides of Whitadder begins more to partake of the hill-farm variety, where grouse and blackgame swarm thick on the stooked corn in late autumn. From the south side, a little above Ellemford, there enters a considerable stream, the water of Dye, said to be of good repute as regards its trout. One of these high, round backed hills here is probably the scene of some great battle of old times. "Manslaughter Law" is the satisfying name of the hill. There is a tumulus still remaining on the north side of it, and near at hand weapons have been dug up, says the Statistical Account. One wonders what their fate may have been. They, at any rate, would surely be preserved? It is by no means so sure. One sword, at least, that was found many years ago on the west side of Manslaughter Law, met with the fate one might expect from the kind of people who used to quarry into beautiful old abbeys in order to get material to build a pig-stye. It was taken to the village smithy, and there "improved" out of existence—made into horseshoes perhaps, or a "grape for howkin' tatties." Had it been a helmet that was then unearthed, no doubt a use would have been found for it such as that which the Elizabethan poet sadly suggests for the helmet of the worn out old man-at-arms:
"His helmet now shall make a hive for bees."
Eastward from the spot where this sword was found is a barrow which, says the Statistical Account, "probably covers more arms"; and on a hill by Waich Water, a tributary of the Dye, are the Twin-Law Cairns, which are supposed to mark the resting place of twin brothers who fell here,—perhaps in pre-historic times. Tradition says that these two were commanders of rival armies, Scottish and Saxon, and that, neither at the time being aware of their relationship, they undertook to fight it out, as champions of the rival hosts. When both lay dead, some old man, who had known the brothers in their childhood, gazing on them, with grief discovered the relationship of the slain men; and to commemorate the tragedy, the soldiers of both hosts formed lines from Waich Water to the hill's summit, and passed up stones wherewith they built these cairns.
At Byrecleuch Ridge, towards the head of Dye Water, is another enormous and very remarkable cairn called the Mutiny Stones. This great mass of piled up stone measures two hundred and forty feet in length; where broadest, seventy-five feet; and its greatest height is eighteen feet. What does it commemorate? A great fight, say some, that took place in 1402 between the Earl of Dunbar and Hepburn of Hailes, in which the latter was killed. A prehistoric place of sepulture, hazards Sir Herbert Maxwell. But it was not here that Hepburn fell; that was elsewhere in the Merse. And they were little likely in the fifteenth century to have taken such titanic pains to hand his memory down to posterity. The prehistoric place of sepulture sounds the more probable theory. But why "Mutiny Stones"? There must surely be some local tradition more satisfying than that of the Hepburn-Dunbar fight.
The upper part of Whitadder must once have been well fitted to check hostile raids from the south whose object was to strike the fat Lothians through the passes over the Lammermuirs. In the few miles of wild hill country that sweep from its source on Clint's Dod down to its junction with Dye Water, there formerly stood no fewer than six castles, Chambers tells us,—John's Cleuch, Gamelshiel, (the lady of which was killed by a wolf as she walked near her home one evening in the gloaming) Penshiel, Redpath, Harehead, and Cranshaws. Except in the case of Cranshaws, there are now few traces left standing of these strongholds. Cranshaws, a building of the sixteenth century, is in good preservation; of Gamelshiel there remains a bit of wall, of Penshiel a fragment of vaulting; of the others no stone. Cranshaws of old, it is said, was long the haunt of one of those Brownies, or familiar spirits, that were wont in the good old days of our forefathers mysterious ly to do by night, when the household slept, all manner of domestic or farm work for those who humoured them and treated them well in the matter of food, or other indulgence affected by their kind. There was nothing a Brownie would not do for the family he favoured, provided that he was kept in good humour; otherwise, or if he were laughed at or his work lightly spoken of, it were better for that family that it had never been born; their sleep was disturbed o' nights, malevolent ill-luck dogged them by day, until he was propitiated. But leave out for him each night a jug of milk and a barley bannock,—they were not luxurious in their tastes, those Brownies,—and at dawn you would find
".... how the drudging goblin sweat
To earn his cream bowl duly set;
When in one night, ere glimpse of morn,
His shadow'y flail hath threshed the corn
That ten day-lab'rers could not end;
Then lies him down, the Lubber-fiend,
And stretched out all the chimney's length,
Basks at the tire his hairy strength;
And crop-full out of doors he flings
Ere the first cock his matin rings."
They tell that this particular Brownie at Cranshaws, being offended at some reflection made on his work, the following night took up an entire crop that he had thrashed, curried it to the Raven Craig, two miles down the river, and threw it over the cliff. Belief in the Brownie died hard in the Border I am not sure that in remote "up the water" districts he did not survive almost till the advent of motor cars and bicycles.
But a step over the moor from Waich Water, across by Twin-Law Cairns and down by the Harecleuch Hill we come to the head-waters of the most considerable of Whitadder's tributaries—Blackadder, "vulgarly so pronounced," says the old Statistical Account. Its real name is "Blackwater," according to that authority, because it rises out of peaty swamps that impart to its waters a look of sullen gloom. I am unable to say what now may be its reputation as a trout stream, but long years ago it abounded with "a particular species of trout, much larger than the common burn trout, and remarkably fat." The Statistical Account mentions a notable peculiarity of Blackadder, on the accuracy of which one would be inclined to throw doubt. It says that though every other stream in the country which eventually mingles its waters with Tweed, swarms with salmon in the season, yet into Blackwater they do not go; or if they enter at all, it is found that they die before they can ascend many miles. The swampy source of the stream "is commonly ascribed as the reason why the fish cannot frequent the river," says the Account. Drainage, one would be inclined to think, has long ago removed that fatal nature from the water, if it ever existed. Trout throve on it, at all events, red-fleshed beauties, "similar," says the clerical writer of the Statistical Account of the Parish of Fogo—a man and a fisher, surely—"to those of Eden Water, which joins Tweed three miles below Kelso. The Eden rises also in a marshy district, which may be the cause of this similarity of the fish." But most Border streams take their rise in more or less marshy districts, though they may not flow direct from a swamp.
Was it in the Eden that Thomson, author of "The Seasons," learned to fish? Or was it in Jed? He was born at Ednam,—Edenham,—a village on the Eden, and he may have loved to revisit it in later years, and to catch the lusty speckled trout for which the stream has always been famous. Probably, however, he learned to throw a fly on Jed, for he passed his boyhood at Southdean—to which parish his father had been transferred as Minister long ere the son was fit to wield a rod—and he himself got his early education at Jedburgh. In Jed or in Eden, then, and perhaps in Teviot and Ale—he was much at Ancrum—he learned the art; and not unskilled in it indeed must he have been. Where in all literature can one find a description of trout-fishing so perfect as the following?
"Just in the dubious point, where with the pool
Is mix'd the trembling stream, or where it boils
Around the stone, or from the hollow'd bank
Reverted plays in undulating flow,
There throw, nice judging, the delusive fly;
And, as you lead it round in artful curve,
With eye attentive mark the springing game.
Strait as above the surface of the flood
They wanton rise, or, urged by hunger, leap,
There fix, with gentle twitch, the barbed hook;
Some lightly tossing to the grassy bank
And to the shelving shore slow dragging some
With various hand proportion'd to their force.
If yet too young, and easily deceived,
A worthless prey scarce bends your pliant rod,
Him, piteous of his youth, and the short space
He has enjoy'd the vital light of heaven,
Soft disengage, and back into the stream
The speckled captive throw; but, should you lure
From his dark haunt, beneath the tangled roots
Of pendent trees, the monarch of the brook,
Behoves you then to ply your finest art.
Long time he, following cautious, scans the fly,
And oft attempts to seize it, but as oft
The dimpled water speaks his jealous fear.
At last, while haply o'er the shaded sun
Passes a cloud, he desperate takes the death
With sullen plunge: at once he darts along,
Deep struck, and runs out all the lengthen'd line,
Then seeks the farthest ooze, the sheltering weed,
The cavern'd bank, his old secure abode,
And (lies aloft, and flounces round the pool,
Indignant of the guile. With yielding hand
That feels him still, yet to his furious course
Gives way, you, now retiring, following how,
Across the stream, exhaust his idle rage,
Till floating broad upon his breathless side,
And to his fate abandon'd, to the shore
You gaily drag your unresisting prize."
Many a long day of Spring and Summer must the man who could paint so perfect a picture have passed, rod in hand and creel on back, by the hurrying streams and quiet pools of some Border Water, many a time have listened to the summer breeze whispering in the leafy banks, and heard, as in a dream, the low murmur of Jed or Ale. And what sport must they have had in the old days when Thomson fished—and even in the days when Stoddart fished—when farmers were ignorant, or careless, of the science of drainage, and rivers ran for days, nay, for weeks after rain, clear and brown, dimpled with rising trout. What sport indeed of all kinds must there have been here in the south of Scotland in very ancient days when the country was mostly forest or swamp, and wild animals, now long extinct, roamed free over hill and dale. It has been mentioned a page or two back how the lady of Gamelshiel Tower was killed by a wolf. Here, at the bead waters of Blackadder—as the crow flies not a dozen miles from Gamelshiel—we are in the midst of a district once infested by wolves. Westruther, through which parish Blackadder runs, was originally "Wolfstruther," the "swamp of the wolves." And all over the surrounding country, place names speak of the beasts of the field. An MS. account of Berwickshire tells how Westruther was "a place of old which had great woods, with wild beasts, fra quhilk the dwellings and hills were designed, as Wolfstruther, Raecleuch, Hindside, Hartlaw and Harelaw."
"There's hart and hynd, and dae and rae,
And of a' wilde hestis grete plentie,"
as we read in the "Sang of the Outlaw Murray.
The last-mentioned name, Harelaw, calls up visions of another chase than that of the hare. Sir Thomas Dick Lauder in his "Scottish Rivers," (written sometime about 1848), mentions that one of the most curious facts connected with Harelaw Moor was that a man, who, Sir Thomas says, died "not long ago," recollected having seen Sir John Cope and his dragoons in full flight across it from the battle of Prestonpans, breathlessly demanding from all the country people they met information as to the shortest road to Coldstream.
"Says the Berwickers unto Sir John,
'O what's become o' all your men?'
'In faith,' says he, 'I dinna ken;
I left them a' this morning.'"
He must have been a very aged man, but if "not long ago" meant any time, as late, say, as the Twenties of last century, no doubt it would be possible that as a boy of eight or ten, he might have seen the panic-stricken dragoons spurring over the moor. Such a sight would remain vivid in the memory of even a very old man. Childhood's incidents outlive all others.
Above Harelaw Moor, on a feeder of the Blackadder, is Wedderlie, formerly an old Border keep of the usual pattern, but towards the close of the seventeenth century embodied with a fine building in the Scottish style of that day. It is said to have belonged originally to that family, the Edgars, the graves of two members of which are commemorated by the Twin-Law Cairns. The family name lives still in that of the neighbouring Edgar-burn, near to which streamlet is Gibb's Cross, said to be the scene of a martyrdom for sake of the Reformed Faith; and hard by is Evelaw Tower—a house apparently without a history—still in tolerable preservation. At Wedderlie, of old time, says Sir Thomas Dick Lauder, there stood a very ancient chapel, of which some traces of a vault remain, or remained at a recent date. Local tradition had it that at time of the Reformation the monks hid in this vault all their church plate and other precious possessions, meaning at the first convenient opportunity to remove them to a place of greater safety. The convenient opportunity, it was thought in more modern times, had never come, for in a cave hard by the vault there was one day discovered a great quantity of coins—all of which, by the way, speedily and mysteriously disappeared. It is said, however, that they were not of dates that could in any degree connect this cache with the Reformation, and it is suggested in Sir Thomas's book that they were concealed there by the inhabitants of Wedderlie during the Religious wars of the seventeenth century. Those "in the know" may all have been killed, of course; the secret of the hiding place was not likely to be within the ken of more than one or two.
These finds of coins of all dates are by no means rare in the Scottish border counties. One would fain know something of those who hid them, and of the events which were passing at the time when they were buried. Were they the spoil of some reiver, ravished from a roof-tree blackened and left desolate south from Cheviot and Tweed; spoil for convenience sake thus put away by one to whom the chance of a more convenient season to recover it was ended by a bloody death? Or were they, sometimes, store, of coins hastily secreted by quiet country folk fleeing in terror from the violence of English soldiery—men such as they who came north with Hertford in 1544, whose orders were to put man, woman, and child to fire and the sword, without exception, if any resistance should be met with? What wonder if the harmless country people then left all, and fled for their lives and the honour of their women! For what so easy as to find excuse to carry out such orders? A child ill treated, a woman outraged; and a man—husband, father, lover—mad with horror and impotent rage, "resisting!"
Coins, in greater or less number, are continually turning up in all sorts of unlikely spots. Sometimes in a marshy field (where one would least expect buried treasure), the spade of an Irish drainer has been known to throw out Elizabethan crowns. How did they get there? Perhaps it might have been when the horse of some rider, bogged and struggling to get clear, in its violent efforts burst the fastenings of a saddle bag or wallet, or unseated its rider, emptying whatever may have been the equivalent of a trousers' pocket in days when men wore mail. Some of these Elizabethan coins, perhaps, found their resting place in 1570, when the English under the Earl of Sussex harried and burnt the border, in "Tyvydale bernyng on bothe hands at the lest two myle, levyng neyther castell, towne, nor tower unbrent, tyll we came to Jedworth." And so on, across by Hawick and Branxholm, up by Oxnain Water and Kale and Bowmont, and round about Kelso, burning and destroying homes, and hanging prisoners. "Thus," says Lord Hunsdon in a letter to Sir W. Cecil, "Thus hathe hyr Majesty had as honorable a revenge of the recevars of hyr rebels, and of all such as have byn common spoylars of hyr pepoll, and burners of her cuntrey, as ever any of hyr predecessors had." They were not weakly addicted to half measures in those days, whichever side was "top dog."
"And so we pray to God to send youre Majestie a longe and prosperowse raigne, and all youre enemyes to feare youe as moch as the Scottish Borderers feare youe at this present," ended Lords Sussex and Hunsdon in a despatch written by them to the Queen from "Barwick" on 23rd April, 1570.
The lost Pay-chest of Montrose's army at Philiphaugh has given rise to many a story of treasure hunted for or recovered. Sir Walter Scott tells how on the day of the battle the Earl of Traquair and one of his followers, a blacksmith, carrying with them a large sum of money, the pay of the troops, were on their way across the hills to join Montrose at Selkirk. When as far away as Minchmuir, they heard the sound of heavy firing, to which Lord Traquair attached little importance, believing it to be merely Montrose exercising his men, but which, from the long continued and irregular nature of the firing, the blacksmith made certain was an engagement. By the time they reached Broadmeadows, there was no question as to whose conjecture was the correct one. By ones and twos, like the first heavy drops, forerunners of a deluge to follow from some ink-black cloud, came men flying for their lies, on horses pushed beyond the utmost limits of their speed; then more fugitives, and more, and hard on their heels, Leslie's troopers thundering. Lord Traquair and the blacksmith turned and fled with the throng. But the money was in Lord Traquair's saddle-bags, and the weight was great; he was like to be captured, for his horse thus handicapped could not face the hill and the heavy ground. Whether the blacksmith offered to sacrifice himself to save his master, or the master ordered the servant to dismount, one does not know, but the outcome was that Lord Traquair fled over the moor on the blacksmith's comparatively fresh horse, and the blacksmith, on a spent animal, was left to make the best of his way with the silver. Leaving the press of fugitives, he fled up Yarrow at the top speed of his tired horse, but finding himself closely pursued, to save himself and to lighten the animal's load, he flung away the bags of money. He said afterwards that he threw them into a well or pond near Tinnis, a little above Hangingshaw, and many a well and many a pond has since been vainly dragged for the lost treasure. No man has yet recovered it. Probably that blacksmith knew a thing or two, and he was not likely to give away the show. Whether or no, however, it is certain that many silver coins having dates of about the time of the battle were in Sir Walter's day ploughed up on the river haughs of Tinnis. And at a much later date, a quantity of coins and some silver plate were unearthed nearer Philiphaugh, on the actual scene of the fight. These coins were claimed by the Exchequer. A dozen wine bottles, also, of old pattern, were found buried here, but what had been the liquor contained in them it was not possible to say; the bouquet had entirely perished, and even the colour.
There is a pool in Yarrow, near Harehead, into which tradition says that Montrose flung his treasure chest, telling the Devil to keep it till he should return to claim it. Up to the present the Foul Fiend has not released his care, for when—as is said,—the pool was run dry, or nearly dry, a good many years ago, only a Lochabar-axe was found in it. A somewhat more probable story of the chest is that the bearer, as he hurried past, flung it into a cottage, near Foulshiels, and then rode for his life. Some of Leslie's men got it there, and looted it.
Whose is the portrait that is contained in the little locket which was found, years ago, on the field of Philiphaugh? On the one side is the representation of a heart pierced by darts, and the motto "I dye for Loyalty"; on the other, a long straight sword is engraved. Inside is a portrait, and opposite the portrait, the words "I mourne for Monarchie."
Sometimes coins have been found, too, as at Blackcastle Rings, on Blackadder, at its junction with the Faungrist Burn. Here, on the northern bank of the river, is what must once have been a strongly fortified camp; opposite, on the southern side, and running along the river's bank for fully half a mile, after which it branches to the south, is a well marked line of entrenchment. Eighty years ago, or thereabouts, an old silver chain was unearthed in the camp; and in the trench, a little distance away, when turf was being removed, they came upon quite a number of gold and silver coins of the reign of Edward III. It was somewhere in this neighbourhood, (though probably nearer Duns,) that Lord Percy the English Warden, at the head of seven thousand men, lay encamped in the year 1372, when (as is mentioned by Redpath), his host was dispersed, or at least was said to have been compelled to retire across the Tweed, on foot and without their baggage, owing to a simple stratagem of the Scots. To scare away from their poor little crops the deer and wild cattle that were wont when night fell to ravage the ill-cultivated patches, the country folk of that district were accustomed to sound at frequent intervals a primitive kind of drum. To the ends of long poles were fixed what may best be termed huge rattles, made of dried skins tightly stretched over semi-circular ribs of wood. Inside each skin were put a few round pebbles. Obviously, when shaken vigorously, these rattles would give out a noise quite terrifying to any four footed animal, especially when heard in the stillness of night. Accordingly, one pitchy night, in the hour before dawn when sleep lay heavy on the invading force, a certain number of the Scots, bearing with them those unwarlike instruments, stole quietly through the tangled growth to the heights on either side of the English camp.
Then broke out a din truly infernal. Picketed horses, mad with terror, strained back on their head-ropes, and breaking loose, stampeded through the camp, trampling over the recumbent forms of men wearied and even yet but halt-awake, many of the younger among them more than ready to share the panic of their horses. If the tale be not exaggerated, daylight showed an army deprived of its transport animals, its horsemen compelled to foot it, their steeds the prey of the wily Scots; a baggageless force compelled to fall back in disorder across Tweed.
In this part of Berwickshire you may still faintly trace here and there the outline of a ditch and earthen rampart called Herrits Dyke, which, local tradition says, once ran from Berwick inland to near Legerwood on Leader Water,—a work not dis-similar to the Catrail, (which cuts across something like fifty miles of the Border, from Peel Fell in the Cheviots to Torwoodlee on Gala), but without the double wall of Catrail. There are various sections of defensive works of this nature in the Border—if they were defensive, for instance, on the hill less than half a mile from the old castle of Holydean, near St. Boswells, in Roxburghshire, there is a particularly well-marked ditch and double rampart running for some distance across the moor. It can scarcely be a continuation of Herrits Dyke, for its construction is different, and its course must run almost at a right angle to Herrits, which is, indeed, many miles away from Holydean. This ditch points almost directly towards Torwoodlee, but it is out of the accepted Catrail track, unless the latter, instead of stopping at Torwoodlee, (as one has been taught), turned sharply and swept down the vale-of Gala, and once more crossed Tweed. It is curious, if these works are defensive, that no ancient weapons have ever been found in or near them.
Down the water a few miles from Blackcastle Rings stands the little town of Greenlaw, a settlement which dates from very early times, but not on its present site. Originally the village stood about a mile and a half to the south east, on the isolated green "law" or hill from which it takes its name. The history of the present town goes no farther back than the end of the seventeenth century, a date about contemporaneous with that of its Market Cross, which stands now on the west side of the place. This cross is said to have been erected by Sir Patrick Home of Polwarth (afterwards created Earl of March-mont) in the year 1696. In 1829 it was pulled down, to make room for something else—in the maddening fashion that possessed our ancestors of the period—and, in the usual manner, it was chucked aside as "auld world trash." In 1881, however, the cross, or at least the greater part of it, minus the top, which originally bore a lion rampant, was discovered in the basement of the old church tower, and was then re-erected where it now stands.
Still farther down the river is the Roman camp at Chesters. But even as long ago as 1798, the writer of the Statistical Account of the Parish of Fogo complained that the old camp was "very much defaced," and that the stones had mostly been "removed to make room for the plough." The rage for agricultural improvement was in 1798 but in extreme infancy; and as no Society for the preservation of ancient monuments came into existence for many a long year afterwards, and interest in such things was confined to the very few, it is safe to infer that not a great deal of this camp now exists.
From Chesters to Marchmont is but a step. Marchmont House dates from about 1754, and was built by the third Earl of Marchmont, near the site of Redbraes, the residence of his grandfather, that Sir Patrick Home of Polwarth who erected the cross in Greenlaw. The village and church of Polwarth are at no great distance. The original church was consecrated in the tenth century, and was restored in 1378, from which date it stood till 1703, when Sir Patrick Home (then Earl of Marchmont) rebuilt it. In the family vault of this church, Sir Patrick lay in hiding for several weeks in 1684, when the search for him was hot and discovery would have cost him his head. The secret of his whereabouts was known to three persons—to his wife, his daughter Grisell (whose name as Lady Grisell Baillie, lives still in the affectionate remembrance of the Scottish Border), and to Jamie Winter, a faithful retainer. Grisell Home, then a girl of eighteen, during all the time of his concealment contrived, with very great risk and difficulty, to convey food to her father in his gruesome lodging. Each night, she slipped stealthily from the house, and—sorest trial of all to the nerves of an imaginative Scot,—made her cautious way in the darkness across the "bogle"-haunted churchyard to her father's lair. Many a shift were she and her mother put to in order to get food sufficient for their prisoner without rousing suspicion among the servants, and more than once the situation was all but given away by the innocent hut embarrassing comments of young and irresponsible members of the family. Sometimes the servants cannot have been present at meals, one would think; or else they smelt a rat, and were discreetly blind. One day at dinner, Grisell had with careful cunning succeeded in smuggling an entire sheep's head off the dish on to her own lap, thence presently to be borne surreptitiously from the room, when her young brother, with the maddening candour and persistency of childhood, called the company's attention to his sister's prodigious appetite, which not only enabled her to gobble up in next to no time so much good meat, but even rendered her able to make the very bones vanish.
But the scent at length began to grow hot; they had nearly run the fox to his earth. Suspicion hovered over the neighbourhood of the church, and no longer could the vault be deemed even a moderately safe hiding place. A new den was necessary; and a new den was found, one perhaps even more cramped than the old quarters, if a trifle less insanitary. A large deal box was made by the faithful Jamie Winter, and was secretly conveyed into a cellar at Redbraes, of which Lady Home kept the key. But to get the "muckle kist" snugly into its resting place, it was necessary to scrape away the earthen floor of the cellar under the flooring hoards, so that the box might be entirely hidden when the boards were re-laid. This work could not be done with pick and shovel, lest the noise should betray what was going on. Grisell, therefore, and Jamie Winter literally with their own hands carried out the arduous job; the earth was scraped away, and poor Grisell Home's nails had almost entirely disappeared ere the work wyas finished and the hiding place made ready for her father. It was scarcely an ideal place of concealment; water oozed in so quickly that one night when Sir Patrick was about to descend into his narrow lodging, it was found that the bedding on which he was used to lie was afloat. And, with its other drawbacks, it had not even the advantage, as a hiding place, of being above suspicion. Had it not been, indeed, for the presence of mind of a kinsman and namesake, Home of Halyburton, a party of dragoons had certainly captured Sir Patrick one day. But Halyburton's liquor was good, and after their thirty mile march from Edinburgh, the temptation to wet their whistle could not be resisted. It did not take long, but it was long enough; a groom on a fast, powerful horse slipped away over the moor to Redbraes, bearing with him no word of writing, but a letter addressed to Lady Home, of which the contents were nothing but a feather,—a hint sufficiently well understood. Ere the dragoons arrived at Redbraes, Sir Patrick was clear away and well on the road to the coast and Holland, and safety.
As we travel down Blackadder towards its junction with the Whitadder, about equidistant between the two rivers we come to the only town of any importance in the district—Duns, or Dunse as it used, not very appropriately, to be spelled from 1740 to 1882, in which latter year the ancient spelling was revived. The original hamlet or settlement stood on the Dun or Law which adjoins the present town. But Hertford wiped that pretty well out of existence in 1545, as he wiped out many another stronghold and township in the south of Scotland. What was left of the place soon fell into utter decay and ruin, and a new settlement on the present site, then guarded On three sides by a more or less impassable swamp, sprung up in 1588. Duns is one of several places which claim the honour of having been the birthplace of the learned Duns Scotus (1265-1338), but even though she be unable quite to substantiate this claim, her record of worthy sons is no short one. And was not that woman, famed in the seventeenth century, she who was possessed of an evil spirit which caused her, an illiterate person, to talk fluently in the Latin tongue, a native of Duns! The Privy Council Record, under date 13th July, 1630, contains an order for bringing before it Margaret Lumsden, "the possessed woman in Duns," along with her father-in-law and her brother, that order might be taken in the case, "as the importance and nature of such a great cause requires." A fast for her benefit was even proposed by sundry clergymen; interest in her case was acute and widespread. Twenty-nine years later, an account of the circumstances was written by the Earl of Lauderdale, and was published in Baxter's "Certainty of the World of Spirits." Lord Lauderdale was a schoolboy in 1630, but he was accustomed to hear the case very fully discussed by his father and the minister of Duns, the latter of whom, at least, firmly believed that the woman was possessed by an evil spirit. The Earl wrote as follows to Baxter: "I will not trouble you with many circumstances; one only I shall tell you, which I think will evince a real possession. The report being spread in the country, a knight of the name of Forbes, who lived in the north of Scotland, being come to Edinburgh, meeting there with a minister of the north, and both of them desirous to see the woman, the northern minister invited the knight to my father's house (which was within ten or twelve miles of the woman), whither they came, and next morning went to see the woman. They found her a poor ignorant creature, and seeing nothing extraordinary, the minister says in Latin to the knight: 'Nondum audivimus spiritum loquentem.' Presently a voice comes out of the woman's mouth: 'Andis loquentem, audis loquentem.' This put the minister into some amazement (which I think made him not mind his own Latin); he took off his hat, and said: 'Misereatur Deus peccatoris!' The voice presently out of the woman's mouth said: 'Dic peccatricis, dic peccatricis'; whereupon both of them came out of the house fully satisfied, took horse immediately, and returned to my father's house at Thirlestane Castle, in Lauderdale, where they related this passage. This I do exactly remember. Many more particulars might be got in that part of the country; but this Latin criticism, in a most illiterate ignorant woman, where there was no pretence to dispossessing, is enough, I think." It was, of course, an infallible sign of demoniac possession that the victim, mostly an illiterate person, should break out into Latin or Greek, Hebrew or what not. That was how the devil usually betrayed himself; he could by no means control his weakness for talking—generally very badly—in foreign tongues.