Highways and Byways in the Border / Illustrated

by Andrew Lang; John Lang

It has always seemed to me, (who, being a native, am on that account possibly no impartial witness,) that the people of Selkirk have ever possessed in greater degree than their neighbours the true Spirit of the Sportsman. Of the inhabitants of Yarrow and Selkirk, a seventeenth-century writer recorded that "they are ingenuous, and hate fraud and deceit; theft or robbery are not heard among them, and very rarely a Ly to be heard in any of their mouths, except among them of the baser sort." There has always been in them, I think, little of that "win, tie, or wrangle" disposition which is usually to be found among small communities; and they were never of the sort who "heave half a brick at the head" of the outland wayfarer. In their dealings with the French officers, prisoners of war on parole, who were quartered in the old town from 1811 to 1814, the Selkirk people displayed an admirable generosity and a gratifying amount of good feeling,—though in that respect none of our Border towns can be said to have been lacking. One of these French prisoners afterwards, when an old man, published most interesting reminiscences of his stay, and he writes of his involuntary hosts with appreciation, and almost with affection. In 1811, when the accumulation of prisoners of warm England had become very great, it was decided to distribute a large part of them throughout Scotland. To Selkirk, as its share, came a hundred and ninety men.

How it may be now, I cannot say, but in the writer's boyhood the memory of these prisoners still lived, and old people told innumerable tales of the strange habits of "thae Frainch." "They made tea oot o' dried whun (furze) blossoms, an' they skinned the very paddas (frogs)," said one old man. The writer of the reminiscences referred to above makes no allusion to "paddas," but he does mention that "a lake in the neighbour hood supplied abundance of very delicate pike." This lake may have been the Haining Loch, a picturesque sheet of water over which, however, there is, or used to be, at times a nasty vegetable scum. "One of the most beautiful and peaceful lakes that ever was seen," is Sir Thomas Dick Lauder's description of it as it was in his day. I think, however, that the French writer probably refers to the Pot Loch, a small and once very deep lochan, or pond, nestling in a hollow at the foot of the pleasant heathery hills on which is now the Selkirk Golf Course. It is a much more likely spot than the Haining for the prisoners to frequent. The former is on the town's property, the latter on an estate in private hands. And in the former there are, or at least there certainly used to be, many pike of no great size. It was here, too, that tradition told us the prisoners went to catch frogs? That Frenchmen in their own land lived chiefly on a diet of frogs was the firm belief of a majority of the town's inhabitants, ("French frogs" of course was a term of contemptuous reproach,) and that the prisoners went to the Pot Loch for any other purpose than to obtain supplies of what seemed to the townsfolk to be a very loathsome dainty, would never occur to them. The fact that the edible frog did not exist there, would make no difference in their belief. That was no difficulty; frogs were frogs all the world over; and frogs of course included toads. The French ate them all.

The writer of the reminiscences, M. Doisy de Villargennes, tells us that some of the prisoners were "passionately fond of fishing, and excelled in it,"—national prejudice of course forbids that we should accept the latter part of the statement as correct!—and that they used to fish in Ettrick and Tweed. Part of the former, close to the town, would be within their "bounds," but the Tweed is far outside the mile radius which was their limit of liberty.

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On every road, one mile from the town, was placed a post bearing the words "Limit of the Prisoners of War"; down the road which leads towards Bridgelands there is still a memorial of these unfortunates,—a thorn bush, called the Prisoner's Bush, which marked their limit in that direction. Any prisoner found outside the boundary was liable to be fined one guinea—a process, one would imagine, something akin in certain cases to getting blood from a stone—and the fine was supposed to go to the person who informed on the delinquent. To the credit of Selkirk it must be recorded that no one ever claimed this reward; even when a prisoner uprooted a notice post and carried it a mile farther along the road, it was, we are told, only "to the amusement of the inhabitants," who, M. Doisy adds, "never on any occasion took advantage of a regulation ir virtue of which whoever might see us outside the fixed limits was entitled to one guinea, payable by the delinquent." He himself, he says, "frequently went fishing several miles down the Tweed," and was never fined, never in any way molested. In fact, great and small in Selkirk, from the Sheriff Depute of the county down to the town's bellman, and the "drucken" ne'er-do-weel who is to be found in every small town, and whom one would scarcely expect to be proof against a bribe that would provide him with the wherewithal for a royal spree, all combined to wink at these infringements of the regulations. Sir Walter himself, indeed, who was then living at Abbotsford, used frequently to have some of the prisoners to dine and spend the evening there. It is interesting to read the account of these visits, and to note how Sir Walter impressed his foreign visitors. Says the writer of the Reminiscences: "There was one person just at this time whom I did not then appreciate as I afterwards did—Sir Walter Scott, then plain Mr. Scott. Probably no one knew, unless his publishers, or ever suspected him of being 'The Great Unknown,' the author of 'Waverley.' As for us we only saw in Mr. Scott, the Sheriff of Selkirkshire, a lawyer of some repute in Edinburgh. As sheriff be frequently came to Selkirk, he having his home at Abbotsford, little more than three miles distant from Selkirk.

"Mr. Scott became acquainted with one of our comrades, named Tarnier, a young man of brilliant talent, excellent education, and of remarkably exuberant spirits. Shortly after, without the knowledge of the Government agent, or rather, with his tacit approval, Tarnier was invited to Abbotsford, and he gave us on his return a vivid description of his reception there. Later, probably at our countryman's suggestion, he was requested by Mr. Scott to bring with him three of his friends each time he was invited to dinner at Abbotsford. Thus I was present on two or three occasions, invited, not by the host himself, but by my comrade Tarnier.

"It would be, as far as I can remember, about the month of February, 1813, and our mode of procedure was as follows:—In the twilight, those who were invited repaired to the boundary the milestone already mentioned—there a carriage awaited us, which took us at a good pace to Abbotsford, where we were most graciously received by our host. We only saw Mrs. Scott during the few moments before the announcement of dinner, at which she was not present. Mrs. Scott was, as we supposed, French, or of French extraction; in fact, she spoke French perfectly: Mr. Scott had married her at Carlisle. Our host appeared to us in quite a different aspect to that under which we had known him passing in the streets of Selkirk. There he gave us the impression of being a cheery good-natured man, whose face was rather ordinary, and whose carriage somewhat common, and halting in his gait, this probably due to his lameness. At Abbotsford, on the contrary, we found him a gentleman full of cordiality and gaiety, receiving his guests in a fashion as amicable as it was delicate. The rooms were spacious and well lighted; the table, without being sumptuous, was on the whole recherché. One need not expect me to describe very exactly the surroundings of Abbotsford, as on the occasions I was privileged to be there, we arrived in the twilight, and we returned when it was quite dark by the same means of locomotion. Thus, with the exception of the dining room, and a short glimpse of the salon, all that I know about Abbotsford has been derived from publications which everyone has read. Neither should it be expected that I can give details of repasts to which I was invited sixty-five years ago. But the general theme of our conversation has remained Immutably fixed in my memory. The principal subject of our discussion did not ordinarily turn on politics, but on minute details concerning the French army. All that particularly referred to Napoleon, and above all, traits and anecdotes, appeared to interest our host in the highest degree, who always found the means, we observed, to bring round the conversation to this subject if it happened to have diverged in any way. As can be imagined, we took good care to repeat nothing unfavourable regarding the character of our beloved Emperor. We little suspected that our host was gathering material for a work published ten years later under the title of 'A Life of Napoleon Bonaparte.'" That Sir Walter's estimate of the Emperor greatly displeased M. Doisy, goes almost without saying. It will be remembered, also, that the French General, Gourgaud, was so bitterly incensed by some statements in this book that a challenge to Sir Walter was fully expected; and assuredly it would have been accepted if given.

Selkirk in the Time of the French prisoners was a small place of two thousand inhabitants or less, the houses nearly all picturesquely thatched, very few roofed with slate as at present. It must have been matter of no small difficulty in such a community suitably to house a sudden influx of strangers. Indeed there was very great difficulty, until it was discovered that the Frenchmen were to pay for their accommodation, and then the difficulty vanished. But it would be hard at the present day to find in Selkirk lodgings of any sort at the rate (2s. 6d. a week) which then satisfied owners of houses.