The Scott Country

the Black Hill of Earlston, are Drygrange and the "Broom o' the Cowdenknowes". Near by, at Mellerstain, lived and sang Grizel Baillie, who was Grizel Hume; and in the Kirk of L

urgh of Lauder, the last of the municipalities in the land to retain its old burghal rights and customs. Many are the hill-forts and camps that look down on the now peaceful scenes through which the road-a favourite tourist coach route-passes on its way from the crossing of the Lammermoors to the Tweed; and among them are Channelkirk where Cuthbert

site to Abbotsford. On the links and bends of the Gala, and its side glens of the Heriot, the Armit, and the Luggate, are many places of historic note-Crookston, of the Borthwicks, for example; Stow-the "Stowe of Wedale", of Arthurian and medi?val fame; Bowland, like Eildon Hall, on the farther side of the Eildons, a possession of the House of Buccleuch; the ruined "broch" on the Bow Hill, facing, across the valley

rful neighbours; and the first of these has been identified, with some sanction from Scott himself, as the "Glendearg" of the Glendinnings in The Monastery and The Abbot. Near the bridge which crosses the Tweed at the "Pavilion of Alwyn", and the "groves of noble Somerville", was the scene of the misadventure of Philip, the Sacristan, at the hands of the spirits, and of Mysie Happer, the daughter of the miller of the Halidome. The dairy farm of the "monks of St. Mary's" was o

eed flows roun

slopes to

ry dates from the same abbey-building reign as its rivals on Tweedside; but architecturally the church belongs to another horizon. Of the original Norman fabric that stood on the site 38 scarcely a trace remains. It was swept away during the descent upon it of Edward II in 1322, and what remained must have perished under the equally destructive assault of Richard II in 1385. Between these two dates, a building arose, represented by the eastern end of the nave with its flying buttresses and by adjoining parts of the choir and transepts, that may be regarded as a monument of the piety and the gratitude of Robert the Bruce, whose heart, brought back from the Paynim lands to which the "good Sir James" of Douglas had carried it, is buried in the Abbey. The work of rebuilding was continued for nearly a couple of centuries longer; and it is evident that the highest art and cra

fairy'

s straight th

eakish knot,

ghtens the aisle in which, as is fabled, the Wizard Michael sleeps with his magic books beside him. Familiar a

r floweret, g

in the cloist

aulted r

that locked e

e-lys or a qu

s, with their clu

with capital fl

lances which gar

ay, of the English Warden who desecrated their tombs and was overtaken and slain at Ancrum Moor; among minor clans "Ye race of ye House of Zair"-Kerrs and Pringles; and, later in date but of the same s

God and M

n keep this haly

he parish church in the seventeenth century. Walter Scott helped to rescue it from va

market place, and does a modest business with the country round. Its chief source of prosperity, however, is in its situation and its associations; it may be called the capital of the "Scott Country". Abbotsford is little more than a couple of miles away. The road to it passes Darnick Tower, a red keep festooned with greenery,

's heart-

rk Elliot's

nd Huntly-burn and the "Rhymer's Glen", and thus near to the pretty village of Bowden, which sits under the lo

e. On the strength of a tradition that there was here a crossing-place 42 of the monks, Abbotsford got its new and ever memorable name. A modest cottage, which forms part of the west wing, gradually grew with the growth of the owner's fame and fortunes, until, at the end of fourteen years, by addition and reconstruction, mainly all of Sir Walter's own devising, it had become the stately baronial mansion, adorned with turrets, corbels, and crowsteps, that challenges the eye by its form and size as well as by its history. Into it the author of the Waverley Novels may be said to have built his fancies, his aspirations, and his ambitions; and here he counted

t of clouds or

tting sun's p

g o'er Eildon's

s associated more with his triumphs than with his misfortunes. Here he trod his fields, delighted "to call this wooded patch of earth his own", entertained literary celebrities like Washington Irving, Maria Edgeworth, and the Wordsworths, held almost feudal r

es from the High Street and Canongate houses have also found their way here; while within the house has been collected a museum of Border antiquities, 44 along with portraits, and personal souvenirs and relics, gathered from all corners of the land. The house has been left "very much as in Sir Walter's time"; and a constant stream of pilgrims visits it. In the library are relics of Napoleon, of Prince Charlie and Flora Macdonald, of Nelson and Wellington; in the drawi

the "Shirra". He had legal and other county business that carried him often during a third of a century to the head town of his

d front of Ne

in Bord

e", to Kelso. The "Souters of Selkirk" have since given themselves to war, to shoemaking, and latterly to tweed manufacture. But the town has not neglected poetry, and bards of later date have been born and have sung in it, since Burns and Scott drew the "birse" across their lips. It is set well above the vale of the Ettrick,

Highlands. There have been many romantic crossings of Minchmoor, and meetings and partings at "Wallace's 46 Trench"-part of the old Catrail or Picts' Dyke-and at the Cheese Well. Walter Scott accompanied his friend Mungo Park-whose statue stands near his own in the streets of Selkirk-when Park was starting on his African journey. They separated on the ridge above Williamhope, where, as has already been told, Sir William Dougla

et me at Pe

four in hi

sall come

n I suld h

, three hundred years after the "Outlaw's" time, the "Shirra" assembled and

es 47 in the fork between Ettrick and Yarrow. Behind it is Bowhill, at the time when the Lay was written the favourite seat of the Buccleuch family; and the "

's stat

m Yarrow's bi

"embattled

rous grate a

ed back the

ard the Irish prisoners who surrendered at Philiphaugh were massacred; another story asserts that they were slaughtered on "Slainmenslee". Newark was a royal hunting-seat in

ings a mournful song of the 'good heart's bluid' that once stained its wave; of the drowned youth caught in the 'cleaving o' the craig'. The winds that sweep the hillsides and bend 'the birks a' bowing' whisper still of the wail of the 'winsome marrow', and have an undernote of sadness on the brightest day of summer; while with the fall of the red and yellow leaf the very spirit of 'pastoral melancholy' broods and sleeps in the enchanted valley. Always, by Yarrow, the comely youth goes forth only to fall by the sword, fighting agains

together with the memorials placed in it of Sir Walter, of Willie Laidlaw, his friend and amanuensis, of Wordsworth, and of the Ettrick Shepherd, all of them residents or visitors on Yarrow and worshippers in this secluded fane. In a field close by is a stone carved in rude Latin minuscules to the "Sons of Liberalis, of the Dumnogeni", a relic of post-Roman times. Abov

escending fro

stream of

are and o

Shepherd w

ong its bank

es that had

leaves upon

e Border Mi

In his youth he had herded sheep on Blackhouse heights, where looking down on the ruined peel on the Douglas burn are the stones that mark the plac

d up, Lord Wil

r that ye

ut the shadow of

in the water

. Mary's Church, whose deserted graveyard is set on a shelf of Hendersy

f St. Mary's, at Cappercleuch, pours in the Meggat Water, a stream that drains some of the highest ground in the Southern Uplands. It was a favourite royal hunting-forest in 1529, when James V came this way intent on the extirpation of the Border thieves; and fate threw in 51 his path Cockburn of Henderland, w

a ye my hea

he mools on h

a ye my he

ned aside

vous of generations of thirsty fishers and poets, on the narrow space between the lochs, and looks towards the hills up which the crossroad climbs steeply, making for Ettrick. It was at this famous hostelry that Hogg gave his classical order, 52 after a hard night's drinking with Christopher North and other congenial company, "Tibbie, bring in the Loch!" "He taught the wandering winds to sing", reads the inscription on his monument; and the strong song of the winds that blow down Ettrick accompanies the traveller as he climbs over by the Packman's Grave, descends to Tushielaw and, turning upstream at Crosslee, follows the valley to th