JAMES ORROCK, R.I.
(See pp. [23] , [35] , [39] , [60] , [61] , [89] , [90] , [91] , [123] )
Tweed's Well lies in the bosom of solemn, bare hills. There is nothing attractive about the spot. Grey moorlands, riddled with innumerable inky peat-bogs, the whaups crying as Stevenson heard them in his dreams, and the bleat of an occasional sheep are the chief characteristics. There is little heather, and the hills are hardly so shapely as their neighbours further down the valley. A first glance is disappointing, but the memories of the place are compensation enough. For what a stirring place it must have been in the early centuries! Here, as tradition asserts, the pagan bard Merlin was converted to Christianity through the preaching of the Glasgow Saint Mungo. Here Michael Scot, the "wondrous wizard," pursued his mysteries. And even the Flower of Kings himself wandered amongst those wilds, "of fresh aventours dreaming." One of his twelve battles is claimed for the locality. More historic, perhaps, is the picture of the good Sir James of Douglas (red-handed from dirking the Comyn) plighting his troth to the Bruce at Ericstane Brae, close to Tweed's Well, which latter spot, by the way, Dr. John Brown characteristically describes in one of his shorter "Horæ" papers. Readers of the "Enterkin" also will remember his reference to the mail-coach tragedy of 1831, when MacGeorge and his companion, Goodfellow, perished in the snow in a heroic attempt to get the bags through to Tweedshaws. At Tweedsmuir, (the name of the parish—disjoined from Drumelzier in 1643)—eight miles down, the valley opens somewhat, and vegetation properly begins. Of Tweedsmuir Kirk—on the peninsula between Tweed and Talla—Lord Cockburn said that it had the prettiest situation in Scotland. John Hunter, a Covenant martyr, sleeps in its bonnie green kirk-knowe—the only Covenant grave in the Border Counties outside Dumfries and Galloway. Talla Linns recalls the conventicle mentioned in the "Heart of Midlothian," at which Scott makes Davie Deans a silent but much-impressed spectator. In the wild Gameshope Glen, close by, Donald Cargill and James Renwick, and others lay oft in hiding. "It will be a bloody night this in Gemsop," are the opening words of Hogg's fine Covenant tale, the "Brownie of Bodsbeck." The Talla Valley contains the picturesque new lake whence Edinburgh draws its augmented water supply. Young Hay of Talla was one of Bothwell's "Lambs," and suffered death for the Darnley murder. At the Beild—regaining the Tweed—Dr. John Ker, one of the foremost pulpiteers of his generation, was born in 1819. Oliver Castle was the home of the Frasers, Lords of Tweeddale before they were Lords of Lovat. The Crook Inn was a noted "howff" in the angling excursions of Christopher North and the Ettrick Shepherd. Mr. Lang thinks that possibly the name suggested the "Cleikum Inn" of "St. Ronan's Well." At the Crook, William Black ends his "Adventures of a Phæton" with the climax of all good novels, an avowal of love and a happy engagement. Polmood, near by, was the scene of Hogg's lugubrious "Bridal of Polmood," seldom read now, one imagines. Kingledoors in two of its place-names preserves the memory of Cuthbert and Cristin, the Saint and his hermit-disciple. Stanhope was a staunch Jacobite holding, one of its lairds being the infamous Murray of Broughton, Prince Charlie's secretary, the Judas of the cause. Murray, by the way, was discovered in hiding after Culloden at Polmood, the abode of his brother-in-law, Michael Hunter. Linkumdoddie has been immortalized in Burns's versicles beginning, "Willie Wastle dwalt on Tweed"—a study in idiomatic untranslateable Scots. Here is the picture of Willie's wife—a philological puzzle.
"She's bow-hough'd, she's hein-shinn'd,
Ae limpin leg a hand-breed shorter;
She's twisted right, she's twisted left,
To balance fair in ilka quarter;
She has a hump upon her breast,
The twin o' that upon her shouther;
Sic a wife as Willie had,
I wadna gie a button for her.
"Auld bandrons by the ingle sits,
An' wi' her loof her face a-washin';
But Willie's wife is nae sae trig
She dights her grunzie wi' a hushion;
Her walie nieves like midden-creels,
Her face wad 'fyle the Logan Water;
Sic a wife as Willie had,
I wadna gie a button for her."
At Drumelzier Castle the turbulent, tyrannical Tweedies reigned in their day of might. Of their ghostly origin, the Introduction to the "Betrothed" supplies the key. They were constantly at feud with their neighbours, specially the Veitches, and were in the Rizzio murder. See their history (a work of genuine local interest) written quite recently by Michael Forbes Tweedie, a London scion of the clan. In the same neighbourhood, the fragment of Tinnis Castle (there is a Tinnis on Yarrow, too,) juts out from its bold bluff, not unlike a robber's eyrie on the Rhine. Curiously, this is a reputed Ossian scene (see the poem, "Calthon and Colmal.") The "blue Teutha," is the Tweed—"Dunthalmo's town," Drumelzier. Merlin's Grave, near Drumelzier Kirk, should not be forgotten. Bower's "Scotichronicon" narrates the circumstances of his death: "On the same day which he foretold he met his death; for certain shepherds of a chief of a country called Meldred set upon him with stones and staves, and, stumbling in his agony, he fell from a high bank of the Tweed, near the town of Drumelzier (the ridge of Meldred), upon a sharp stake that the fishers had placed in the waters, and which pierced his body through. He was buried near the spot where he expired."
"Ah! well he loved the Powsail Burn (i.e., the burn of the willows)
Ah! well he loved the Powsail glen;
And there, beside his fountain clear,
He soothed the frenzy of his brain.
Ah! Merlin, restless was thy life,
As the bold stream whose circles sweep
Mid rocky boulders to its close
By thy lone grave, in calm so deep.
For no one ever loved the Tweed
Who was not loved by it in turn;
It smiled in gentle Merlin's face,
It soughs in sorrow round his bourn."
A prophecy of Thomas the Rhymer—
"When Tweed and Powsail meet at Merlin's Grave,
England and Scotland shall one monarch have,"
is affirmed to have been literally fulfilled on the coronation day of James VI. and I. Passing on, we reach the resplendent Dawyck Woods. Here are some of the finest larches in the kingdom, the first to be planted in Britain, having that honour done them by the great Linnaeus himself, it is said. Stobo—semi-Norman and Saxon—was the plebania or mother-kirk of half the county. Here lies all that is mortal of Robert Hogg, a talented nephew of James Hogg. He was the friend and amanuensis of both Scott and Lockhart, whom he assisted in the Quarterly. Possessed of a keen literary sense, he would almost certainly have taken a high place in literature but for the consumption which cut short his promising career. (See "Life of Scott," vol. ix). At Happrew, in Stobo parish, Wallace is said to have suffered defeat from the English in 1304. One of the most perfect specimens (recently explored) of a Roman Camp is in the Lyne Valley, to the left, a little above the Kirk of Lyne. On a height overlooking the Tarth and Lyne frowns the massive pile of Drochil, planned by the Red Earl of Morton, who never lived to occupy it, or to finish it, indeed, the "Maiden," in 1581, cutting short his pleasures, his treacheries and hypocrisies. Now we touch the Black Dwarf's Country—in the Manor Valley, to the right. Barns Tower, a very complete peel specimen, stands sentinel at the entrance to this "sweetest glen of all the South." It is around Barns that John Buchan's "John Burnet of Barns" centres. The Black Dwarf's grave is at Manor Kirk, and the cottage associated with his misanthropic career is also pointed out. Scott, in 1797, visited Manor (Hallyards) at his friend Ferguson's, and foregathered with David Ritchie, the prototype of one of the least successful and most tedious of his characters. (See William Chambers's account of the visit). St. Gordian's Cross, mentioned in a previous chapter, is further up the valley, where also are the ruins of Posso, a place-name in the "Bride of Lammermoor." Presently we come to Neidpath Castle, dominating Peebles, the key to the Upper Tweed fastnesses. When or by whom it was built is unknown. In 1795, it was held by "Old Q," fourth Duke of Queensberry. Wordsworth's sonnet on the spoliation of its magnificent woods (an act done to spite the heir of entail) stigmatises for all time the memory of one of the worst reprobates in history.