For it was their Feist Day,
They said,
Of Peblis to the Play."
Space does not permit me to quote more than the opening verse.
1 Makes ready to go.
2 Enclosed wood, or place.
3 Issue, or go forth.
4 Dressed.
5 Time: German stunde.
Before moving on up the valley, one may recall the fact that at the Old Cross Keys Inn at Peebles Sir Walter found, in its then landlady, the original of his "Meg Dods" of "St. Ronan's Well." Guests arriving now-a-days at this Inn—which is as often called "the Cleikum" as the Cross Keys—still drive into the yard under the "old-fashioned archway" of the novel; still there is shown "Sir Walter's room," overlooking the yard; and still, it may perhaps be noted, there is to be found at the head of affairs one who, while leaving out Meg's "detestable bad humour" and asperity of tongue, in all essentials is worthy to rank as her successor. "Her kitchen was her pride and glory; she looked to the dressing of every dish herself, and there were some with which she suffered no one to interfere.... Meg's table-linen, bed-linen, and so forth, were always home-made, of the best quality, and in the best order; and a weary day was that to the chambermaid in which her lynx eye discovered any neglect of the strict cleanliness which she constantly enforced." The most fervent patriotism cannot, I fear, blind one to the sad fact that a majority of Scottish country inns do not strive very successfully to vie with Meg in those qualities which made her so shining an ornament of her sex. Too often one is left to the greasy attentions of a waiter of foreign tongue, whose mercies it might be desired were more tender than the scrag-end of the cold beef to which, in a parlour of the lethal-chamber variety, he somewhat tardily introduces tired wayfarers. And the beef itself might in many cases taste none the less of beef, if it were served on table-linen not quite so elaborately decorated with outlines of mustard pots and Worcester Sauce bottles, left by the day-beforeyesterday's commercial traveller.
This Cleikum, or Cross Keys Inn, is a building of more than respectable age; it dates from the year 1653, when it was the town house of the Williamsons of Cardrona, a tower a few miles down Tweed, nearly opposite to Horsburgh. Probably both the Cross Keys and its neighbour the Tontine Hotel—. Meg's "Tomteen," the "hottle" of which she spoke so wrathfully—were in Sir Walter's mind when he wrote the novel.
And now we may set out once again up Tweed—not forgetting, however, that Peebles with its mills also contributes no small share to the pollution of that much-injured river. A mile or so out of the town, there is the old castle of Neidpath, in very remote days a stronghold of the Frasers of Fruid and Oliver Castle, in Tweedsmuir. A Hay of Yester, ancestor of Lord Tweeddale, succeeded the Frasers in 1312, by marriage with the daughter of Sir Simon Fraser;
