That fondly meet and twin'd o'er lover's graves,
Who fled o' night through moor up Black Cleuch heights
Pass'd through the horror of the mortal fight,
Where Margaret kiss'd a father's ruddy wounds."
The ballad of the Douglas tragedy is known to everyone; it need not be quoted.
[Original]
This is the kirk where the lovers lie buried, almost within distant sight of the ancient tower from which they had fled, and whose ruins are still to be seen near Blackhouse, on the Douglas Burn. The Douglas stones, which, tradition tells us, mark the spot where Lady Margaret's seven brothers fell under the sword of her lover, are out high on the moor: but there are eleven, not seven, stones, though only three are left standing. It was at Blackhouse, one may remember, that Sir Walter first made the acquaintance of Willie Laidlaw, whose father was tenant of the farm. James Hogg was shepherd here from 1790 to 1800, but he had left before Sir Walter's visit, though the two met very shortly after. It was whilst Hogg was in service here that there came the tremendous snow storm of 1794, of which he gave so vivid a description in Blackwood's Magazine of July, 1819.
There are now no remains of the chapel of St. Mary;