The most famous ground of those historic encounters lies about the East Coast Railway route, where England pushes an aggressive corner across the Cheviots, and the Tweed, that most Scottish of rivers, forms the frontier of the kingdoms now provoking each other to good works like its Royal Border Bridge. Beyond it, indeed, stands Berwick-upon-Tweed, long the football of either party, then put out of play as a neutral town, and at last recognised as a quasi-outpost of England, whose parsons wear the surplice, and whose chief magistrate is a mayor, while the townsfolk are said to pride themselves on a parish patriotism that has gone the length of calling Sandy and John Bull foreigners alike. This of course is not, as London journalists sometimes conceive, the truly North Berwick where a prime minister might be seen “driving” and “putting” away the cares of state. That seaside resort is a mushroom beside Berwick of the Merse, standing on its dignity of many sieges. The Northumberland Artillery Militia now man the batteries on its much-battered wall, turned to a picturesque walk; and the North British and North Eastern Railways meet peacefully on the site of its castle, where at one time Edward I. caged the Countess of Buchan like a wild beast, for having dared to set the crown upon Bruce’s head. At another, it was in the hands of Baliol to surrender to an Edward as pledge of his subservience; and again, its precincts made the scene of a friendly spearing match between English and Scottish knights, much courtesy and fair-play being shown on both sides, even if over their cups a perfervid Grahame bid his challenger “rise early in the morning, and make your peace with God, for you shall sup in Paradise!” who indeed supped no more on earth.
The North British Railway will carry us on near a stern coast-line to Dunbar, whose castle Black Agnes, Countess of March, defended so doughtily against Lord Salisbury, and here were delivered so signally into Cromwell’s hands a later generation of Scots “left to themselves” and to their fanatical chaplains; then over a land now swept by volleys of golf balls, to Pinkie, the last great battlefield between the kingdoms, where also, almost for the last time, the onrush of Highland valour routed redcoat soldiery at Prestonpans. But tourists should do what they do too seldom, tarry at Berwick to visit the tragic scenes close at hand. In sight of the town is the slope of Halidon Hill, on which the English took their revanche for Bannockburn. Higher up the Tweed, by the first Suspension Bridge in the kingdom, by “Norham’s castled steep,” watch-tower of the passage, and by Ford Castle where the siren Lady Ford is said to have ensnared James IV., that unlucky “champion of the dames,” a half-day’s walk brings one to Flodden, English ground indeed, but the grave of many a Scot. Never was slaughter so much mourned and sung as that of the “Flowers of the Forest,” cut down on these heights above the Tweed. The land watered with “that red rain” is now ploughed and fenced; but still can be traced the outlines of the scene about the arch of Twizel Bridge on which the English crossed the Till, as every schoolboy knew in Macaulay’s day, if our schoolboys seem to be better up in cricket averages than in the great deeds of the past, unless prescribed for examinations.
Battles, like books, have their fates of fame. Flodden long made a sore point in Scottish memory; yet, after all, it was a stunning rather than a maiming defeat. A far more momentous battlefield on the Tweed, not far off, was Carham, whose name hardly appears in school histories, though it was the beginning of the Scotland of seven centuries to come. It dates just before Macbeth, when Malcolm, king of a confused Scotia or Pictia, sallied forth from behind the Forth, and with his ally, Prince of Cumbria on the Clyde, decisively defeated the Northumbrians in 1018, adding to his dominions the Saxon land between Forth and Tweed, a leaven that would leaven the whole lump, as Mr. Lang aptly puts it. Thus Malcolm’s kingdom came into touch with what was soon to become feudal England, along the frontier that set to a hard and fast line, so long and so doughtily defended after mediæval Scotland had welded on the western Cumbria, as its cousin Cambria fell into the destinies of a stronger realm. Had northern Northumberland gone to England, there would have been no Royal Scotland, only a Grampian Wales echoing bardic boasts of its Rob Roys and Roderick Dhus, whose claymores might have splintered against Norman mail long before they came to be beaten down by bayonets and police batons.
But we shall never get away from the Border if we stop to moralise on all its scenes of strife—most of them well forgotten. Border fighting was commonly on a small scale, with plunder rather than conquest or glory for its aim; like the Arabs of to-day, those fierce but canny neighbours were seldom in a spirit for needless slaughter, that would entail fresh blood-feuds on their own kin. The Border fortresses were many, but chiefly small, designed for sudden defence against an enemy who might be trusted not to keep the field long. On the northern side large castles were rare; and those that did rise, opposite the English donjon keeps, were let fall by the Scots themselves, after their early feudal kings had drawn back to Edinburgh. In the long struggle with a richer nation, they soon learned to take the “earth-born castles” of their hills as cheaper and not less serviceable strongholds.
The station for Flodden, a few miles off, is Coldstream, at that “dangerous ford and deep” over which Marmion led the way for his train, before and after his day passed by so many an army marching north or south. The Bridge of Coldstream has tenderer memories, pointed out by Mr. W. S. Crockett in his Scott Country. This carried one of the main roads from England, and the inn on the Scottish side made a temple of hasty Hymen, where for many a runaway couple were forged bonds like those more notoriously associated with the blacksmith of Gretna Green. Their marriage jaunts into the neighbour country were put a stop to only half a century ago, when the
