W. S. Crockett

“ Surrounded on three sides by the Tweed, itself unseen from the Abbey precincts, and amidst a 'brotherhood of venerable trees,' in picturesqueness and seclusion it is perhaps the most charming monastic ruin in Great Britain. And here, in the lap of legends old, in the heart of the land he has made enchanted, and among his ancestral dust (for Dryburgh belonged to his forebears, and might have come to himself but for the stupidity of a spendthrift relative) , Walter Scott waits the breaking light of morn. ”

“ And if the Border Country, with its enchanted places and memories, delights a landscape-painter, it is equally attractive to students of architecture, to lovers of folk-lore and literary history, to writers of romance in search of traditions and local colour, and to those of us also who indulge a passion for collecting either as botanists or as geologists. The rivers and streams have a rare fascination, and anglers, having made their choice, can come by all the sport which they desire. ”

“ There is one place which should not be overlooked. To him who writes it is the sweetest and the best, entwined with memories lasting as life itself. With the story of Thomas of Ercildoune he first heard that of Sir Walter Scott. Under the weird shadow of the Rhymer's Tower, other names fell upon his ear—Ashestiel, Abbotsford, 'Marmion,' 'Waverley.' Much has been since then! But home and the days of youth are never forgotten. One hears still in memory the music of the Leader. Across the years comes there again and again a sweet old-time fragrance of yellow broom from Cowdenknowes. ”

“ Thousands of acres on the once bald and featureless hill-lands of Lauderdale have been brought within the benign influence of plough and harrow, and are choice ornaments in a county famous for its agricultural triumphs all the world over. But Romance, rather than agriculture, is the true glory of the Leader Valley. It will be difficult to find a locality—Yarrow excepted—which is more under the spell of the past. May not Lauderdale, indeed, be claimed as the very birthplace of Scottish melody itself? ”

“ A descendant of Wat of Harden, linked to the best blood of the Border, and with every phase of his life redolent of the Border feeling, history has had no difficulty in claiming Sir Walter Scott as the most representative Border man the world has seen. He was not born in the Border Country, but practically all his life was spent there. He came to the Border a sickly, delicate child, between his third and fourth year, and for threescore years and one he seldom left it for any lengthened interval. Edinburgh was the arena of much of his professional career. ”

“ The upper basin of the Teviot is mainly a barren vale, flanked by lofty rounded hills. For a greater distance it is a strip of alluvial plain, screened by terraced banks clad with the rankest vegetation, and with long stretches of undulating dale-land, and overhung at from three to eight miles by terminating heights, and in its lower reaches it is a richly variegated champaign country, possessing all the luxuriance without any of the tameness of a fertile plain, and stretching away in resulting loveliness to the picturesque Eildons on the one hand and the dome-like Cheviots on the other. ”

“ Lying peacefully amidst pastoral hills, by the side of a river unpolluted by modern commerce, this ancient Border town still presents the plain and austere aspect which it wore when the great stage-coaches passed through on their way from London to Edinburgh. In Newcastle, despite its numerous relics of antiquity, one's mind is ever dominated by the potent Present, whereas in Alnwick, it is ever under the spell of the dreamy Past. ”

“ From at least 1820, and irrespective of his London life, Lockhart was Scott's companion and confidant at Abbotsford. Seldom has the fellowship of letters shown a friendship so strong and true. It was sympathy other than that of a son-in-law which Lockhart brought to the writing of his great Biography, and which has made it one of the masterpieces of literature. Never, surely, was a great man more fortunate in his life-story than Scott at the hands of Lockhart, one of the most maligned and misunderstood men of his day, indeed, but a kindly, lovable soul withal. ”

“ No doubt, heroism on the hillside has a vast attraction to brave, fearless hearts like our own; but we should find, here in our own country, quite as much adventure as is good for us, and quite as much novelty also, if only we could bring ourselves to believe that knowledge of native scenes and traditions does not come to us in baptism or by virtue of our birth as British folk. If you ask a friend whether he knows the Border Country, he will probably answer yes, and then go on to say that he when a lad at school was a great reader of Scott, and thank heaven! ”

“ Sir Walter, mounted on Sybil, was marshalling the order of procession with a huge hunting-whip; and among a dozen frolicsome youths and maidens, who seemed disposed to laugh at all discipline, appeared, each on horseback, each as eager as the youngest sportsman in the troop, Sir Humphry Davy, Dr. Wollaston, and the patriarch of Scottish belles-lettres, Henry Mackenzie. The Man of Feeling, however, was persuaded with some difficulty to resign his steed for the present to his faithful negro follower, and to join Lady Scott in the sociable, until we should reach the ground of our battue. ”

“ Robert Burns is said to have gazed in wondrous and even prayerful rapture on the vision of Kelso Bridge and the Tweed, forming an almost perfect picture. And this, with the Abbey, 'like some antique Titan predominating over the dwarfs of a later world'; ruined Roxburgh, between Tweed's and Teviot's flow; and the near neighbourhood of other memory-moving spots, were just the scenes which made the best appeal to Scott, which influenced him most, and the fruits of whose inspiration we still daily reap. Jedburgh has some claim on the Scott student and for the lover of old romance. ”

“ There is a placid monotone about its bare treeless scenery—an unbroken pastoral stillness on the sloping braes and hillsides, as they rise, fall, and bend in a uniformly deep colouring. The silence of the place is forced upon the attention, deepened even by the occasional break in the flow of the stream, or by the bleating of the sheep that, white and motionless amid the pasture, dot the knowes. We are attracted by the silence, and we are also depressed. ”

“ The dead face is so tired that nobody can look upon it without a gush of pity, and a feeling of thankfulness that at last the man is in his grave. We are not moved by the grandeur of its modelling; the appeal it makes is to a larger humanity [181] than that. It is the face of a brother man, stretched out too long upon the rack of this tough world. The majesty of the forehead, and the dour earnestness of the features, tell of Walter Scott, the genius ”

“ The Yarrow is the Scottish Rhine-land on a small scale, even more so than the Tweed. Tweedside, indeed, has not a tithe of Yarrow's ballad wealth, and the Tweed ballads and folk-lore are absolutely different in respect both of subject-matter and of manner. The curious feature about Yarrow is the wonderful sameness which characterises the whole of its minstrelsy. For hundreds of years that has been so. Sadness is the uppermost note that is sounded. All through we are face to face with a feeling of dejection as remarkable as it is common. ”

“ Even the remote uplands, long untouched by outside influences, have not escaped the modern spirit. The river must needs remain in statu quo, but the contrast between Sir Walter's Tweedside and ours is considerable. A century of commerce and agriculture has wrought marvels on the once bare and featureless and uncultivated banks of the Tweed. And none would have rejoiced at its present picturesque and prosperous condition more than Scott himself. ”

“ Those deep green grassy knowes of the valley are peculiarly susceptible of change. In the morning with a blue sky, or with breaks of sunlight through the fleeting clouds, the green hillsides and the stream smile and gleam in sympathy with the cheerfulness of heaven. But under a grey sky, or at the gloaming, the Yarrow wears a peculiarly wan aspect—a look of sadness. And no valley I know is more susceptible of sudden change. ”

“ Bruce's heart he laid by the high altar at Melrose, the Douglas with his own dear dust in the Kirk of St. Bride, among the Lanarkshire uplands. It was this Symon who brought to Scotland the famous Lee Penny—Scott's 'Talisman,' the most celebrated charm in the country—a heart-shaped, dark-red stone now set in a groat of Edward IV., with a silver chain and ring attached, and long sought after by the superstitious as a positive cure for the worst ailments of man and beast. ”

“ Walk about Carlisle, and one is charmed with the exquisite pleasantness of the place, the sense of comfort and prosperity that reigns in its streets and suburbs, the steady flow of traffic running through it, and the welcome geniality of its inhabitants. What a delightful spot is Stanwix yonder, for instance! And the banks of the Eden have something of those "Eden scenes" about them which Burns claimed for the Jed. That Bridge is not unlike Rennie's at Kelso. The public buildings are worth a more minute examination than the passing stranger usually gives. ”

“ At the sound of his voice the dying tailor unclosed his eyes, and eagerly and wistfully sat up, clasping his hands with an expression of rapturous gratefulness and devotion that, in the midst of deformity, disease, pain and wretchedness, was at once beautiful and sublime. He cried with a loud voice, "The Lord bless and reward you!" and expired with the effort.' One painting only has place in the Library—a full-length of the second Sir Walter, by Sir William Allan (1822) , in the uniform of the 15th Hussars, his horse by his side. 'A handsomer fellow never put foot into stirrup,' said Scott. ”

“ The Romans have left a mighty monument of their power—none more significant—in the huge barrier thrown across the lower half of the county, and in the stations and roads connected with it. In some respects the Roman Wall may be accounted Northumberland's principal attraction, and a pilgrimage between Tyne and Solway must always repay itself. If one is artistically inclined, there are beauty-spots for all canvases—as befits the birthplace of such masters as Bewick and Foster. And as an angler's paradise the Cheviot uplands have long been popular. ”

“ Richard Warner—afterwards the author of a work on the Waverley Novels—describes the lower half of the river between Berwick and Kelso: 'The country around Berwick, though swelling into hills and sinking into vales, has neither beauty nor variety, the one being uniform and lumpish, the other wide and unwooded. A naked surface everywhere presents itself, unadorned with those indispensable features in agreeable landscape, lofty trees and spreading shrubs. ”

“ Built upon a hill [Pg 61] which its walls once enclosed but which would now shut out its most populous suburbs, Carlisle commands a prospect only limited by the lofty mountain chain that encircles the great basin in which Cumberland lies. From the summit of the Cathedral or from the Keep of the Castle, the eye sweeps without interruption a vast prepossessing landscape, rich in wood and water and fertile valleys, over which the light and shade are ever gambolling, and the seasons spreading their variegated hues. ”

“ Unlike building, or even painting, or indeed any other kind of pursuit, this has no end, and is never interrupted, but goes on from day to day and from year to year with a perpetually augmenting interest. Farming I hate; what have I to do with fattening and killing beasts, or raising corn only to cut it down, and to wrangle with farmers about prices, and to be constantly at the mercy of the seasons? There can be no such disappointments or annoyances in planting trees.'
Scott left Ashestiel at Whitsunday, 1812—a rather comical 'flitting,' according to his own account of it. ”

“ Our way lies through some of the most storied scenery in the Lowlands. The names on the map will give us an idea of the exceedingly romantic character of this second half of the Teviot. Here we come into touch with such song-haunted tributaries as the Jed and Oxnam, the Rule and Kale, and Ale, and with many of the great houses whose history has contributed more than any other to the making of the Border Country. The names of Scott and Ker, Elliot and Douglas, Turnbull and Riddell are patent to every parish through which we pass. ”

“ I had thought to make a mere morning visit, but found I was not to be let off so lightly. "You must not think our neighbourhood is to be read in a morning, like a newspaper," said Scott. "It takes several days of study for an observant traveller that has a relish for auld-world trumpery. After breakfast you shall make your visit to Melrose Abbey. When you come back, I'll take you out on a ramble about the neighbourhood. To-morrow we will take a look at the Yarrow, and the next day we will drive over to Dryburgh Abbey, which is a fine old ruin well worth your seeing." ”

“ 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. ”

“ A wondrously historic countryside, too, is all this pleasantly-rolling tableland, mile upon mile to the Liddesdale and Eskdale heights with the Langholm Monument fairly visible as a rule, and sometimes even the famous Repentance Tower opposite Hoddom Kirk. Within twenty miles or so of Carlisle, up through the old Waste and Debateable Lands, or over into the romantic Vale of the Irthing, the dividing-point betwixt Cumberland and Northumberland, the district is full of the most fascinating material for the geographer and the historian. ”

“ That Abbotsford should attract its tens of thousands from all ends of the earth was to be expected after such a strenuous life as Scott's. Human nature must always pay homage at the shrine of the truly great, and if it be true that no [8] writer has given pleasure to vaster multitudes, and that never has the life of his country been so well limned as by this master-hand, it will be equally true of Abbotsford that it will never want those to whom everything about it and its very dust is dear. ”

“ By-and-by, it became a great rolling plain or table-land, and in age after age—how many and how long it were vain to speculate—there was carried on that stupendous process by which those fair green hills and glens have been so marvellously scooped out, and moulded and rounded into the objects of beauty that we see about us now. ”

“ A glance at the Abbotsford life will bring us nearer Scott as a man—and as the most lovable of men. Treading, as one does to-day, in his very footsteps, we shall want to know how he lived there, and in what manner the pleasant days were spent. Scott's habits at Abbotsford, as at Ashestiel, were delightfully simple. ”

“ Everybody must admit the ideally happy life spent by Scott himself at Abbotsford—prior to 1826, at any rate. Few men enjoyed life more. His happiness, in the main, sprang from the physical side of things—the out-of-doors sports and exercises in which he revelled, and which were among the chief attractions of his Abbotsford. Scott was never happier than when he was making others happy. No man sacrificed himself more on that side. And surely that was religion at its reallest. Scott did not say much about religion. He had, like Lockhart, all a Scotsman's reticence on the subject. ”