W. S. Crockett

“ Is there anything in the scenery to account for it—anything in the physical conditions of the glen itself that solves the secret? There is, and there isn't. To a mere outsider—a mere summer tripper hurrying through—Yarrow is little different from others of the southland valleys. Its main features are identical with those of the Ettrick, and the Tweed uplands, or with the Ewes and the Teviot. All of them exhibit the same pastoral stillness. The same play of light and shade are on their hills. The same soothing spirit broods over them. ”

“ Its fine situation early attracted the notice of the Scottish Kings, though Bishop Ecfred of Lindisfarne is believed to have been its true founder. He could not have chosen a more sweet or appropriate nook for his little settlement. Nestling in the quiet valley, and creeping up the ridge of the Dunion, the song of the river ever in its ears, freshened by the scent of garden and orchard, and surrounded by finely-wooded heights, Nature has been lavish in filling with new adornments, as years sped by, a spot always bright and fair. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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! ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ But these books on foreign travel, admirable as they were, did not eclipse the many volumes on British scenery and landscape antiquities. All the ablest men among the earlier water-colour painters—Hearne, Malton, Dayes, Girtin, Turner, Francia, Havell, De Wint, David Cox, Cotman—made topographical sketches for illustrations, and lucky is he who "finds" their earliest efforts. To-day, happily, there are signs of renewed life in the old taste for picture books on the beauty and romance of our own country. ”

“ 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 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Almost everywhere in the land portion of the Border line—the Cheviots generally—the boundary is such that one may stand with one foot in England and the other in Scotland, and the rather curious fact will be noted, says one who has made this Border pilgrimage par excellence, that Scotland nowhere receives a single rivulet from England, whilst she sends to England tiny head-streams of the Coquet and Tyne only. ”

“ And from 79 to 83, Castle Street, the corner building (now a solicitor's office) , between Castle Street and the Green-market, Scott led Miss Carpenter to the altar. Carlisle Castle, a huge, irregular reddish-brown stone structure, grim and defiant, with its almost perfect specimen of a Norman Keep, and battlements frowning towards the north, is still a place to see.
But it is the Cathedral which is Carlisle's chief glory. Rising in the centre of the city, high above all other buildings except the factory chimneys, there is an air of importance about it not altogether justifiable. ”

“ Another night it is a vision of angels that he fancies he beholds bearing the soul of the sainted Aidan to the skies. Such was Cuthbert, a kind of mystic, a dreamer of strange dreams, destined apostle and Bishop, and next to Augustine himself the most illustrious figure in the annals of English monasticism. The church of Channelkirk (anciently Childeschirche) dedicated to the Saint, probably indicates his birth-spot. The Leader valley is full of legends of his boyhood, the whole west of Berwickshire, indeed, being haunted ground for Cuthbert's sake. ”

“ Three kingdoms claim his birthplace. The Irish Life of the Saint alleges him to be sprung of her own blood royal; he is affirmed also to have come of noble Northumbrian descent; whilst the Scottish tradition makes him the child of humble parents, born and reared in Lauderdale, one of the sweetest valleys of the Border. It is a fact, at any rate, that when the light of record first falls upon him the youthful Cuthbert is seen as a shepherd lad by the Leader; he is religiously inclined, and whilst his comrades sleep, he spends whole nights in prayer and meditation. ”

“ More than anything else, the laying down of the great railway lines and the immense road improvements of last century have opened up practically every corner of the Border Country. There are now no places so utterly inaccessible as Liddesdale was during Scott's visits. It is possible to reach the most out-of-the-way parts with comparative comfort. And with the dawn of the motor age, still greater hopes and possibilities appear in store. ”

“ The extraordinary glamour which has been cast over the Tweed and its tributaries by the writings of Sir Walter Scott, the Ettrick Shepherd, John Leyden, and others, has given a prominence to the Scottish side which is nowhere [Pg 19] shared by its southern neighbour. But to say so is no disparagement to the English side. For what it lacks in literature it makes up in other admirable characteristics. Both Borders are rich in historical memories. Their natural features are not dissimilar, and in commercial prosperity they are much akin. In union they have long been happily wedded. ”

“ Of the historic Carlisle little is left, the Castle, the Cathedral, and the Guildhall being almost the sole relics of a long and notable past. Yet how vastly changed the place is from the quiet little Border town of a century ago even! Then it had barely ten thousand inhabitants, now there are over forty thousand. As the county town of Cumberland, and next to Newcastle the greatest railway centre in the north of England, its prosperity has grown by leaps and bounds. ”

“ And if we go to Switzerland we may earn even a reputation for intrepid pluck among the friends who listen to us on our return home, while the unlucky guides, who found for our trembling feet a pathway around each danger, will amuse their families during the winter with little tales at our expense, told with rough satire and with short, gruff peals of laughter resembling the noise of a crackling ice-sheet when it begins to slip downhill. ”

“ The Border Country is a region of streams and hills which hardly rise to the dignity of rivers and mountains. Unlike the Clyde, the Tweed has no broad estuary laden with the commerce of the world. And the highest summits, Broad Law (2754 feet) in Scotland, and the great Cheviot (2676 feet) in England, have nothing in common with the rugged Highland peaks except their height. Both, it has been said, are monuments of denudation only, "lofty because they have suffered less wear than their neighbours." ”

“ For agriculture, it need scarcely be said, is the staple business of both Borders. The Tweed industry, to be sure, affords employment to thousands, but on the Borders, as elsewhere, the land is the crucial problem. Within recent years many of the rural parishes have been woefully depleted, and until the land question is fairly tackled there seems small hope for a fresh and brighter chapter in the domestic history of the Border Country. ”

“ The remotest localities are rendered accessible even for a single day's outing, and a holiday on the English Border is not likely to be a disappointing one. There is something to suit every taste. If one is archaeologically inclined, for instance, Northumberland has one of the finest collections of military antiquities in the kingdom, from the rude circular camps and entrenchments of the primitive inhabitants to the great castles and peel-towers of mediæval times. ”

“ Occasionally we shall meet by chance with the shepherd, maybe, who has his dwelling far down among the "hopes"—the cul-de-sacs of the uplands. Amongst those hills he lives and moves and has his being. All sorts of weather-conditions find him at his work. He never thinks of the loneliness, and the winter storms have not the terrors for him as for his predecessors. In some respects his life is an ideal one, and his class has a goodly record for intelligence and fine physique. ”

“ In Great Britain, as among the Americans, the gift of long sight in business has become very common, and few persons think it worth their while to see the practical good things within easy reach of the blessed short sight of common sense. Our chief aim is not to keep a market open and steady, but to glut it with over-production or to block it with excessive prices. "Here is a holiday-tripper, so let us make him pay!" ”