James Smail

“ Mary’s Loch, for the purpose of spending a few days in that pleasant locality. The season was mild, and the soft dreamy autumn sunlight added beauty to the yellowing wood-banks along the romantic valley and every day brightened the green uplands in the vicinity of St. Mary’s. Neither hill nor valley scenery could have been prettier at any season; but tourists and visitors had all disappeared, so that our wanderings in the district of the lake were of a solitary nature, unless when accompanied by the gentleman under whose hospitable roof we stayed during our sojourn. ”

“ The lake is well stocked with fine large trout, perch, eels, and pike; and salmon are occasionally plentiful in its waters, which they enter from the Yarrow. The burns that enter it are also numerously stocked with small trout. From these circumstances the place has for many years been a retreat for a large number of anglers, who, along with enjoying fine sport, find cosy up-putting at Tibbie Shiel’s. In Tibbie’s snug cottage, more “runs,” imaginary and real—for “anglers’ lies,” form a proverbial term in all river-side cottages,—are talked over, than under any roof in Scotland. ”

“ Ball-playing in the river affords great amusement to a large number of on-lookers, who crowd the bridges and the banks of the river in order to see the sport. The on-lookers are of both sexes, the females being all of the poorest class. Men and boys, however, of all grades and ages, eagerly watch the game.
From the mouth of the Yarrow upwards, for somewhere about five miles, the visitor passes through as beautiful and romantic a valley as Scotland can reveal ”

“ And of these we are certain a large portion will bear away remembrances of wild corries, and fine solitary glens and nooks, green sunny hills and gleaming waterfalls, that will not for many a long day pass into forgetfulness; for, without either tradition or ballad, the district of Yarrow and St. Mary’s
“With beauty all its own is blest.” ”

“ In the departed days of salmon-spearing, fine sport was often had in the small waters in the neighbourhood of the lake, and of this sport almost every shepherd and farmer was fond, and none more so than Hogg himself. Pike-spearing, in the shallow or breeding-places in St. Mary’s Loch, was also a sport occasionally indulged in; and our friend, who has resided from infancy in the district, gave us an account of a ludicrous onslaught he made upon a large pike he was anxious to secure. ”

“ We are able positively to state, however, that some jackdaws have for a number of years built and reared their young in open nests in a Roxburghshire rookery we know; and we have at present eggs and a young bird before us, which we this season abstracted personally from one of these nests. The trees on which the daws build in the rookery we refer to, are spruce firs of pretty full foliage, and this shows the birds’ natural desire for seclusion. One nest only is built on each tree, and it is deeper and more shapely and solid than the rook’s ”

“ That they have made a considerable change in their diet, in Border localities at least, is indisputable; and although their young are eaten in towns and villages, few country people will partake of them, simply because they know how rank much of the food is upon which they feed. They revel over the rankest quarry, whatever the fallen animal; and when a sheep falls on the hills, they have its eyes pecked almost as soon as it ceases to struggle, and should it be the nesting season, the entrails immediately follow. ”

“ A number of ladies wield the trout-rod, but very few on Tweedside try the salmon. “Where Ettrick twines with Yarrow,” the rich woodland scenery of Bowhill, belonging to the nobleman above-named, begins, and the finely grown trees of all the varieties commonly grown in Scotland—the dark Scotch pine being often placed so as to produce a fine effect among the hardwoods—are set off to great advantage by the steep banks and undulations along the Yarrow, and the background of heath or grass-covered hills. ”

“ The shepherd’s wife, who attends to the wants of travellers at Birkhill, is a character worth knowing. She is strong-minded and strong-nerved; and a number of authentic anecdotes are told of her prowess. The following is one of the best.
Her house is solitary, no other dwelling being within miles of it, and during the day, when her husband and son are on the hills, she has sometimes strange visitors, for the road passing the door connects the east with the west of Scotland in that district. ”

“ The jackdaws inhabiting ruins and precipices do not, as a rule, mix with rooks or other birds, whereas those that reside in rookeries adopt the habits of rooks, and scour the fields promiscuously with them. They abstain from carrion, but otherwise they feed like rooks, and a fresh egg to breakfast is not uncommon with them. When about nightfall the long dangerous chains of rooks are sailing homewards, the short sharp “ca,” or, as the Scotch say, “the keckle o’ the kaes” is always distinguishable. The tree-nesting daws are also much shyer than their brethren of the ruins. ”

“ Fieldfares are resident natives, however, in the Border counties, and schoolboys know their nests and eggs as well as they know those of the hedge-sparrow. We have known their nests from boyhood, an incident having occurred in our early years that made us ever afterwards know the nest of a fieldfare when we came upon it. ”

“ The tamed daws are generally got from ruins or precipices, often at great personal risk. We recollect being lowered, when a boy, over a precipice 150 feet high in search of them. We had a rope fastened below our arm-pits, by which we were let down to the nests, from which we procured thirteen birds, and for which the three big boys who worked the rope handsomely allowed us one bird—the puniest in the lot. ”

“ And the rule of play is, that any person holding the ball, or lifting it, or attempting to lift it, is liable to be floored by any means short of striking; so that broken heads and broken bones are by no means uncommon: and a ball is seldom played for a day without being carried into the river in the vicinity of the town or village where the game is annually held ”

“ Upon the duleful braes of Yarrow.
Mount Benger and Altrive Lake, farms occupied by the Ettrick Shepherd, are seen on the right and left, respectively, of the river. The fun and frolic enjoyed by men of parts in the houses belonging to these farms during the poet’s occupancy were of too racy a nature to be easily forgotten. Many pleasant allusions thereto have been made in the writings of the literati who at times enjoyed the Shepherd’s upland retreat. Hogg had his share of the world’s sorrows, but he was ever manly enough to keep even the shadow of such from his guests. ”

“ The fieldfare builds often in the main cleft of large trees. We have seen nests often in the first cleft of detached chestnuts. Nests are also common in Scotch-fir plantations, where they are easily found. Ground nests are never numerous, and they are always built about precipices. ”

“ Losh, man, to think I’ve spoken sae muckle about birds t’ye, an’ you no to ken the young anes o’ a feltie when ye see them,”—feltie being the local name for fieldfare.
A nesting season has seldom passed since our colloquy with the man of black thumbs in which we have not seen the nests of fieldfares, and we might have found them every year had we desired. We have handled the young birds by the side of the nests repeatedly, and, while doing so, have seen the alarmed parent birds flitting from tree to tree around us, uttering their low harsh “chir-r.” ”

“ Carterhaugh was also the place where the great match at foot-ball was played by the men of Ettrick and Yarrow at which Scott and the Ettrick Shepherd were present, both of whom, if we remember correctly, wrote verses in praise of the men whose side they took in the match.
At Fasteneven, both foot and hand ball are still played at most of the towns on the Scottish border; and to a person who has not been accustomed from youth to seeing ball-playing, the game seems barbarous in the extreme. The ball is tossed up midway between two goals, perhaps a mile apart ”

“ The wide range of the Border hills, running almost from coast to coast, with their solitary, and in many places precipitous glens—some of them so narrow and deep that the sun cannot shine into them—form a secluded retreat for a number of birds of prey ”

“ The Grey Mare’s Tail is a waterfall which, from its shape, is not inappropriately named. When the water which forms the fall is fullish, it would have weight sufficient, with an ordinary fall, to turn a country mill. ”

“ They are also, as gamekeepers know, exceedingly destructive in the nesting season, for they can hunt up the nests of pheasants and partridges as cleverly as boys, and when found the eggs are immediately gobbled. They also in dry seasons, when slugs and worms are scarce, occasionally carry off the young of these birds. ”

“ And even the cultivation now spreading so rapidly over many moorlands hitherto considered waste, in our opinion will not render these uplands untenable to the birds that inhabit them for some centuries to come. ”

“ The highest class of song-birds in the district we write of are the song-thrush, missel-thrush, blackbird, redbreast, whitethroat, grey linnet, green linnet, wren, willow-wren, goldfinch, bullfinch, and skylark. ”