[Original]
It ran," says Lockhart, "from the precincts of the homestead to near Turn-Again, and has bequeathed the name of the Doctor's reiding-kame to the mass of nobler trees amidst which its dark, straight line can now hardly be traced." I do not think that "the Doctor's redding-kame" now survives as a name, even if the original trees be still to the fore. In any rase they would attract no attention, for what Sir Thomas Dick Lauder says was then "as tame and uninteresting a stretch of ground as could well be met with in any part of the world," is now rich in woods, and everywhere restful and pleasing to the eye—though it may be conceded that Galashiels has stretched a villa-bedecked arm farther up Tweed's left bank than might have been quite acceptable to Sir Walter.
At Boldside, of whose "ruined and abandoned churchyard" he writes in his introduction to the Monastery, there is now a railway station, and suburban villas, large and small, dot the landscape ever the more plentifully as one approaches that important manufacturing town which a century back was but a tiny village peopled by a few industrious weavers. No longer, I fear, can it be said that Boldside's "scattered and detached groves," combining with "the deep, broad current of the Tweed, wheeling in moonlight round the foot of the steep bank.... fill up the idea which one would form in imagination for a scene that Obcron and Queen Mab might love to revel in."
The Fairy Folk have fled from scenes tainted by an atmosphere of railway and modern villa. Even the Water-bull has ceased to shake the hills with his roar around Sir Walter's "small but deep lake" at Cauldshiels. Yet as late as the time of our grandsires people told gravely how, one warm summer's day, a lady and her groom, riding by the sullen shore of this "lochan," ventured a little way from the edge in order to water their thirsty horses, and were immediately engulfed in the Kelpie's insatiable maw. If such a tragedy ever did happen, no doubt the explanation is simple enough. Without any warning the hard upper crust would give way beneath the horses' feet, and, struggling vainly, they would sink in the fathomless, spewing, inky slime below. Once trapped in that, no power on earth could ever bring them out again, dead or alive. A like fate nearly befell the writer when fishing alone one day in a gloomy, forsaken, kelpie-haunted Border hill loch. Dense fog came down, wreathing over the quiet water, hiding the dripping heather and the benty hill. A bird of the bittern kind boomed dismally at intervals, and a snipe bleated. It was a cheerless prospect; and the temperature had fallen with the coming of the fog. But through the mist could be heard the sound of trout rising in the little loch, and one bigger than his fellows persisted in rising far out. The sound was too tempting. The fisher waded out, and still out; and ever the big trout rose, luring him on. Another step, and another; it was no longer stony under foot, and the bottom began to quake, Still the footing was hard enough, and nothing happened; and again the big fish rose just out of casting distance. One more step would do it; and what danger could possibly be added in so small a distance? So one more step was taken, and—without a second's warning the crust broke. Only one thing saved the fisher; instinctively, as he sank through the fetid slime, he threw himself on his back, striking vigorously with his arms. But it took many an agonised, almost despairing, stroke ere his legs sucked out of that death trap. Nor, as long as there was water shoreward deep enough to swim in, did he again attempt to wade. His rod had not been abandoned—which was matter for gratulation; but, soaked to the skin, chilled to the very marrow, and reeking with the stench of putrid swamp, it was no thing of joy that day to make his devious way home over an unfamiliar hill that was wrapped in impenetrable folds of dense mist.
There is an origin, likely enough, for the Water-Bull. A great volume of marsh-gas, bursting from the bottom of a swampy loch, might be seen some still, foggy day, or in the uncertain evening light, suddenly to boil up on the surface far out. The wallowing upheaval caused by the belching gas would readily suggest the part-seen back or side of some formless monster, whose gambols were agitating the water and causing billows to surge upon the weed-fringed shore; and a bittern's hollow boom quivering on the still night air, would easily be construed by the credulous and ignorant as the bellow of this fearsome monster that they thought they had seen wheeling and plunging. If he was anything more substantial than gas, what a beast he would have been to troll for!
One should not forget that it was by the shore of Cauldshiels Loch that Scott wrote the exquisitely sad lines that yet so vividly paint the scene:
"The sun upon the Weirdlaw Hill,
In Eterick's vale is sinking sweet;