[Original]
These Border hills have produced from time to time many a long-distance runner of immense local celebrity,—such for instance, as the far-famed Will of Phaup—but few of them, I imagine, could have "lived" with Jamie Telfer in that burst of his across the trackless heather and the boggy moors from the Dodhead, over by the headwaters of Ale, across Borthwick, across Teviot, on to Slitrig at "Stobs Ha'," and from there back again to Teviot at Coultercleuch. It must be a good sixteen miles at the least, across a country over which no runner could travel at a pace so fast as that with which the ballad credits Jamie. But if anyone did this run, I fear it was no Jamie Telfer. At least in the fair Dodhead up Ettrick there was at the supposed date of the ballad, and for generations before, no Telfer, but a Scott. The Dodhead of the ballad must be some other place of the same name, possibly that near Penchrise, by Skelfhill.
Following up Ettrick, past Hyndhope and Singlie, we come to Deloraine, an ancient possession of the Scotts, for ever famed through its association with William of Deloraine and the "Lay of the Last Minstrel":
"A stark moss-trooping Scott was he,
As e'er couch'd Border lance by knee."
There are various theories as to the derivation of the name "Deloraine."
