Nane of them durst cum neir his hauld.
It will be observed that Gilnockie puts forward as his claim to respect the very robberies in England for which, says the poet, he was hanged. The only sign of treachery is that Johnnie did come to Caerlanrig, probably in hope of making his peace like many other lairds. Whether he were "enticed by some courtiers," or whether he risked the adventure is not manifest. According to Pitscottie he had held England as far as Newcastle under blackmail.
Above Caerlanrig, Teviot winds through the haughs and moors and under the alders to its source at Teviot-stone.
CHAPTER VII TWEED, ST. BOSWELLS, DRYBURGH, NEWSTEAD, AND THE LEADER
We now return from Teviotdale to Tweed, which we left at Kelso. The river passes through one of its rock-fenced and narrow defiles at the Trows of Makerstoun, (accent the penultimate,) itself the home from ancient days of a branch of the once great Argyll clan—and generally western clan—of Mac-dougal. How they came so far from their Celtic kindred, potent in Dalriadic Scotland before the Campbells came to the front as allies of Robert Bruce, is not known to me. As foes of Bruce, the Macdougals of Lome suffered much loss of lands after the king's triumph. At the Trows the river splits into very deep and narrow channels, and to shoot one of them in a canoe needs a daring and a fortunate paddler.
In former years there were four of these channels, two of very great depth—thirty feet and more, it is said—but so narrow that, with the river at summer level, it was possible for an active man to jump from stone rib to stone rib, across the swift rushing stream. The feat was attempted once too often, however, with fatal result, and since then the middle rib has been blasted out, so that it is no longer possible for any one to tempt fate in this manner. Even an expert and powerful swimmer, filling in there, would have but a slender chance of coming out alive, for if he were not sucked under by the eddies of that boiling current and jammed beneath some sunken ledge, the odds would be very great on his brains being knocked out amongst the rocks that thrust their ugly fangs here and there above the surface of the stream. Both below and above the Trows, the trout fishing—for those who may fish—is extremely good, but the wading is licklish; pot-holes, ledges, and large boulders are apt to trap the unwary to their undoing. There are, too, some excellent salmon casts in the Makerstoun Water, and it was in one of them that the famous Rob o' the Trows—Rob Kerss, a great character in Sir Walter's day,—nigh on a hundred years ago landed a fish so huge, that even a master of the art so skilled as Rob,—Stoddart says he had few equals as a fisher—was utterly spent when at length his silvery prize lay gasping on the bank. Before taking the fly from its mouth, Rob turned half aside to pick up a stone which might conveniently be used as a "priest"; but even as he turned, out of the tail of his eye he saw the monster give a wallop. Rob leapt for the fish. Alas! as he jumped, his foot caught the line and snapped it, and walloping fish and struggling man plunged together off a shelf into the icy water,—from which Rob emerged alone. The rod with which Kerss killed so many hundreds of fish is still in the possession of one of his descendants, near Beattock. Compared with present-day masterpieces of greenheart or split cane, it is a quaint and clumsy weapon, of extraordinary thickness in the butt, and of crushing weight. The writer has handled it, and he is convinced that one hour's use could not fail to choke off for the rest of the day even the most enthusiastic of modern salmon fishers.
It is not often that ancient weapons are found in Tweed, but some years ago, when the river was unusually low, a moss-trooper's spear was recovered at a spot a little above Makerstoun. It was lying at the bottom, below what used to be a ford of sorts across the river. Curiously enough, shaft and head were both intact, and in fair preservation after their long immersion. If the spear was not used by some trooper in days when fighting was the Borderer's chief delight and occupation, it is difficult to imagine to what use it could have been put. Salmon cannot be successfully speared with a single-pointed unbarbed weapon; so that it is certain this was no poacher's implement.
Above Makerstoun is Rutherford, once the home of the Rutherfurds of that Ilk, but now it knows them no more. A like doom, as I write, hangs over Mertoun, long the beautiful home of the Scotts of Harden, Lord Polwarth's family.