The Spell of Scotland

it's hame, ham

hame, hame, to

of Scotland invited your boat to make harbour; you could "return

c voyage at but one sea-city, and that many miles up a broad in-reaching river. Or, you can come up the English roads by Carlisle or by Newcastle, and cross the Border in the conquering way, which never yet was

Glasgow. The steamers are second-class compared with those which make port farther south. They are slower. But their very lack of modern splendour and their slow speed give time in which to reconstruct your Scotland, out of which perhaps you have been banished since the Covenant, or the Fifteen, or the Forty Five; or perhaps out of which

driven out no doubt by the fluctuant fortunes of Covenanter and Cavalier, or, it may be, because he believed he carried the only true faith in his chalice-o

s after the first Rising, and lands and treasure were forfeited, still I look on entire Scotland as my demesne. I surrender not one least portion of it. Not any castle, ruined or restored, is alien to me. Highlander and Lowlander are my undivisive kin. However empty may seem

ntic reliance on the fact that it did furnish to England, to the British Empire, the royal line, the Stewarts. Even Queen Victoria, who was so little a Stewart,

at Britain and Ireland," and enter on a more vigorous provincial life, live her own life, instead of exporting vigour to the colonies-and her exportation is almost done. Sh

ly. No one can regret-except he is a reformer and a socialist-the absence of the doings of to-day; they would be so realistic, so actual, so small, so of the province and the parish. Whereas in the Golden

l the country as you go. Not only over fair Melrose lies the moonlight of romance, making the ruin more lovely and more complete than the abbey could ever have

did not know that we were returning to Scotland. Our landing was to be made as quietly, without pibroch, as when the Old Pretender landed at Peterhead

ES

way when Edward First was king, and all the Edwards who followed him, and the Richards and the Henrys-they all measured ambition with Scotland and f

First of England. We stopped at York for the minster, and because Alexander III was here married to Margaret, daughter of Henry III; and their daughter being married to Eric of Norway in those old days when S

tish life. We only looked across the purpling sea where already the day was fading, where the sl

g came to sing itself as I l

e's in

hame, sen

's in G

g for r

ave as bra

ame, send

d across this sea and sung

xcept that other men dispute it? In the old days England called it treason for a Borderer, man or woman, to intermarry with Scotch Borderer. The lure, you

e Ages," who later became Pius II. He came to this country by boat, but becoming afraid of the sea, returned by land, even opposite to the way w

way from London, he came northward to visit William Drummond of Hawthornden. Who would not journey to such a name? But, alas, a fire destroyed "m

went into Scotland without a penny, and succeeded in getting gold to further him on his way-"Marr, Murraye, Elg

ghway. But we must remember that he wrote his "Perfect Desc

de brown cloth great coat with pockets which might be carrying two volumes of his folio dictionary, and in his hand a large oak staff. One tries to forget that years before this journey he had said to Boswell, "Sir, the noblest prosp

s well as English. A few years afterward James Hogg comes down this way to visit his countryman, Tammas Carlyle in

ast journey back from Italy-to Dryburgh! And Shadowy Jeanie Deans comes downward,

up and down, sending his merry men up and down. And one of the most native is William Winter

ported in the world's history and undefined in the world's geography, and sent them back into what is England. The Romans in single journeys, and in certain imperial attempts, did penetrate as far as Inverness. But they never conquered Scotland. Only Scotland of all the world held them back. And in order to define their defeat and to place

, with lookout towers at regular and frequent intervals, with soldiers gathered from every corner of the Empire, often the spawn of it, and with

ough the littoral of Northumberland, as the s

vessel skir

nous North

, and hills s

e nun's deli

rw

is of the Empire, it is of Britain; but battled round about, and battled for as it has been since ambitious time began, it is of neither England nor Scotland. "Our to

ual fact. I do not suppose the present serious-looking, trades-minded people of the city, with their dash of fair Danish, remember their singular situation day by day. The tu

nessed, what refuge, what pawn, has it not been, this

Roman bridge of many spans, antique looking as the Roman-Moorish-Spanish bridge at Cordova, and as antique as 1609, an Act of Union fol

ed of them; for this "our town," was the refuge for her harriers on retaliatory Border raids, particularly that most terrible Monday-to-Saturday foray of 1570, that answer to

wns and villages about Edinburgh as ye conveniently can. Sack Leith and burn it and subvert it, and all the rest, putting man, woman and child to fire and sword without exception, when any resistance is made against you. And this done, pass over to the Fife land, and extend like extremities and destructions in all towns and villages whereunto ye may reach conveniently, not for

ster of Edward III, were united in marriage. Even then did the kingdoms seek an Act of Union. And Prince David was four, and Princess Joanna was

EN

in, if at some remove, from that Stewart queen who belonged to "the monstrous regiment of women," and to whose ch

e would dine direct on salmon trout just drawn frae the Tweed

ide to the Hermitage to see Bothwell, and just before the fatal affair in Kirk o' Field. Even then, and even with her spirit still unbroken, she felt the coming

n the town from Halidon Hill, on the west, where two hundred years before (

hurches, and according to the creeds that warred as bitterly as crowns; masts in the offing, whence this last time one might take ship to France, that pleasant smiling land so different from this dour realm. At all these Mary must have looked

triumph that is Scotland's and was Mary's. The North Sea is turning purple far out on the horizon, and white sea birds are flying across beyond sound. The long level light of

od

peace, where castles are in ruins, and a few stately modern homes proclaim the permanence of Scottish nobility; and where there is no bird and no flower unsung by Scottish minstrelsy,

, you can make Norham Castle before twilight, even as Marm

Norham's c

air river, br

ot's moun

towers, the

grates, where

walls that ro

w luster

ed-stone tower has stood there at the top of the steep bank since the middle Eleven Hundreds. Henry II held it as a royal castle, while his craven son John-not so craven in battle-regarded it as the first of his fortresses. Edward I made it his h

ad dalliance in those slack days preceding Flodden-the lady who had sung to him in Holyrood the

the fiery s

he champio

e on hi

s tower, looks down on the battlefield, and in the upper room, called the

ye 4th of Sc

d castle, A

y, and sending messages to the advancing Earl, but truly loved this

was here that the most famous ford was found between the two countries, witness and way to so many acts of disunion; from the time when

is dangerous

Tweed Leet'

red desp

obert Burns crossed into England. He entered the day in his diary, May 7, 1787. "Coldst

to England. And here he knelt down, on the green lawn, and

pour'd the

rough Wallace's

nobly stem

the second g

s God, peculi

spirer, guardi

er, Scotia's

patriot and th

ion raise, her or

f this crossing after i

here he raised the first of the still famous Coldstream Guards, to bring King Charles "o'er the water" back to the throne. Col

ou hear nothing but remembered bits of Marmion as you walk the highway-lies Flodden Field. It was the grea

s fighting in France, an admirable time wherein to advance into England. James h

strokes with

ree miles on

e banners

sh breez

at he had brought a hundred thousand men to his standard. T

hour of Wal

'd Bruce to r

nt Andrew an

ght had se

ark book a le

had been B

ing faintly if deserted, where it was brown and sere in September, 1513. One should be repeating his "Marmion," as Sc

he ridge of

ightening cl

smoke the p

torm the wh

hey, dashing

billows o

rests of chi

ke foam upo

t distinc

the battle o

and falchions

's arrow fli

and stooped

d disor

le the flower of Scotland was here; and slain-the king, twelve earls, fifteen l

summer sun to be dun and sere, and those burns which made merry on the outward way-can it be that there are red sh

the order sent our

r once by guil

Forest that fouch

ur land are ca

mair liltin' at

rns are heart

anin' on ilka

the Forest ar

ir historic tragedies, or why upon such a field as Flodden, and many another, t